King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys is a selective state school on Grove Lane in Handsworth, Birmingham, entered at eleven on the shared West Midlands entrance test. This page covers Handsworth Grammar School entry at eleven by the GL Assessment test, for children now in Year 3 to Year 5, and not sixth form, fees or A levels.
Is Handsworth Grammar a boys' school?
Yes at eleven, though not for the whole journey. The school accepts boys from age eleven to sixteen. Above that it runs a co-educational sixth form and states as much on its own site, welcoming female students. A family joining in Year 7 is joining a boys' school. A family arriving later is not.
It sits on Grove Lane in Handsworth and is part of the grammar schools in Birmingham, the King Edward VI Foundation and the King Edward VI Academy Trust. Parents looking here are usually weighing more than one school from that group at the same time, which is worth knowing before you fix a preference order.
The school describes over 160 years of achievement, and pupils belong to houses. Of its sixth form it says the curriculum and ethos are unashamedly those of a grammar school, which is a fair signal of the register a boy steps into at eleven as well.
How does a boy get a place at eleven?
There is no paper written by this school. It sits inside the West Midlands Grammar Schools Partnership, so a child sits one shared entrance test, once, in September of Year 6, and the result travels to every partnership school the family names. The paper itself is set by GL Assessment, the assessment publisher the partnership uses, so the format is the same at every school in the group.
The part that goes wrong is earlier and quieter. Registration is done online in the summer term of Year 5, and the window does not stay open long. Your primary school will not do it for you and will not necessarily remind you. Nothing recovers a missed registration.
It also pays to separate two words that sound like one. Qualifying means a boy reached the standard on the test. Being offered a place is settled later, by the school's own published admissions arrangements, among all the children who qualified.
Two things to diarise: the entrance test registration is made with the partnership during Year 5. The application for a school place is made separately, through your local council, in the autumn of Year 6. Completing one does nothing for the other.
What do the two papers actually ask?
Neither paper is a subject paper. Both mix the areas together, so a boy moves from a comprehension passage to a word puzzle to arithmetic to a shape sequence inside one sitting, then does the same again on the second paper.
Between them they sample English comprehension, verbal reasoning, mathematics, and non-verbal reasoning including spatial questions. Every question is multiple choice. Each paper runs somewhere near fifty to sixty minutes, but that covers the instructions and the worked examples too, so working time is shorter than it reads.
Answers are marked on a separate answer sheet. A boy who drops a row on that sheet loses a run of marks he had genuinely earned, and he rarely spots it while the clock is running.
Where preparation pays off
The weighting tells you where the hours belong. English comprehension and verbal reasoning decide half the result between them, mathematics a quarter, and non-verbal reasoning the remaining quarter.
A plan that gives equal time to all four is quietly overspending on a quarter.
From "Where preparation pays off"
Reading is the slow investment and the one that compounds. Vocabulary, inference and the patience to hold a passage in mind cannot be assembled in a single summer. Non-verbal reasoning behaves in the opposite way: most of the gain arrives soon after a child meets the question types, then the curve flattens.
Mathematics is usually a matter of speed and multi-step problems rather than unfamiliar content. The last thing to rehearse is the switching itself, because moving between four kinds of thinking under time is a skill the papers test whether or not anyone teaches it, and it is the piece that improves last.
Check this first: this page prints no figures that move from one year to the next, and no dates, because the versions circulating on tutoring sites contradict each other. The two sources worth reading are:
King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys official website and the partnership's own site. Check the school's official admissions page for this year's figures.
Pathway Eleven has no connection to King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys, to the partnership or to any admissions authority. We cannot register a child, confirm eligibility, or say anything about catchment or your chances. Pathway Eleven is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by GL Assessment.
Common questions about Handsworth Grammar entry
Does Handsworth Grammar set its own entrance exam?+
No. Boys sit the shared West Midlands Grammar Schools entrance test, once, in September of Year 6. One result reaches every partnership school the family names, so there is no separate Handsworth paper to prepare for and no second sitting.
Is the sixth form boys only as well?+
No. The school accepts boys from age eleven to sixteen and then runs a co-educational sixth form, saying on its own site that it welcomes female students. The shape of the school changes above sixteen, which surprises families reading only the entry pages.
If my son qualifies, is he in?+
Not automatically. Qualifying means he reached the standard on the shared test. The school's own published admissions arrangements then decide which of the qualified children are offered places. Read those arrangements before you settle a preference order, because they separate the two groups.
Other schools in this consortium
King Edward VI Handsworth Grammar School for Boys sits in the Birmingham group of the partnership. One result travels to every partnership school a family names, so the neighbouring schools are worth reading about before you decide which to put down.
- King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls, girls, in Handsworth, Birmingham.
- Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls, girls, in Sutton Coldfield.
- Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, boys, in Sutton Coldfield.
- King Edward VI Aston School, boys, in Aston, Birmingham.
- King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys, boys, in Kings Heath, Birmingham.
Where to go next
- The West Midlands 11 plus entrance test, the shared test in full, with every partnership school listed.
- How to prepare for the 11 plus, the order to work in when the whole thing is new.
- 11 plus verbal reasoning question types, part of the heaviest-weighted half of the result.
- 11 plus preparation in Year 4, the reading habit that pays off two years later.