Bromley 11 Plus: A Parent's Guide to Grammar School Entry

If you're starting the 11 plus journey in Bromley, here's the short version. The borough has two grammar schools, St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School in Orpington (boys) and Newstead Wood School (girls), and each sets its own entrance test on its own timeline. Many Bromley families also look over the border: some sit the shared Bexley Selection Test for a shot at Bexley's four grammar schools, others register for the Kent Test if they live near Sevenoaks or Dartford. Underneath all of that sits the borough's general secondary admissions calendar, with the Common Application Form due by 31 October and National Offer Day on 1 March. That's a lot to track from the moment your child starts Year 5, so this guide pulls it all together in one place, including the details a lot of other Bromley 11 plus guides skip over.

How many grammar schools can Bromley families apply to?

Bromley itself has just two: St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School in Orpington, and Newstead Wood School, also in Orpington. That's a small number next to Bexley (four grammar schools) or Kent (more than thirty). So in practice, most Bromley families sitting the 11 plus don't stop at the two local schools. Bromley borders Bexley and sits close to the Kent districts of Sevenoaks and Dartford, so families often register for tests outside the borough too, to keep their options open. We'll cover both routes below, but it's worth knowing upfront: 'Bromley 11 plus' usually means weighing up several tests, not just one.

St Olave's and St Saviour's Grammar School: a two-stage test

St Olave's is a super-selective boys' grammar school (girls are only admitted into the sixth form), and it has no catchment area at all: places go strictly by test score, ranked nationally. The school's own published Published Admission Number (PAN) for Year 7 is 124, plus up to four extra places reserved for Wakeham Choristers, so the effective cohort runs to around 128. You'll sometimes see a figure of 130 quoted elsewhere, but the school's own admissions FAQ is the more reliable source, so plan around 124.

Entry really is a two-stage process. Stage 1 is the SET (Selective Eligibility Test), a one-hour multiple-choice paper covering English comprehension, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. Roughly the top 450 scorers then go through to Stage 2: two separate one-hour papers written by the school itself, one in English (comprehension, inference and a scored creative writing task) and one in maths (problem-solving and reasoning). Competition is fierce, with over 1,400 applicants typically chasing the available places. For 2026, the school has published Stage 1 for Friday 18 September and Stage 2 for Friday 13 November, for entry in September 2027, so registration and testing both happen roughly a year before your child would actually start Year 7.

Newstead Wood School: the 9-mile catchment and its own test

Newstead Wood is a girls' grammar school, also in Orpington, and it works quite differently from St Olave's. Instead of ranking nationally, it draws from a 9-mile radius around the school, with a Published Admission Number of 168 places for Year 7. Around 2,000 girls apply for those 168 places each year, so it stays highly competitive even with the wider catchment.

The school sets its own test in verbal and non-verbal reasoning, and girls need a minimum qualifying score of 210 to be considered. That figure can shift from year to year, so treat it as a guide rather than a fixed target, and check the current cycle's FAQ before relying on it. Admissions priority runs roughly in this order: looked after or previously looked after children first, then Pupil Premium or Service Premium applicants within the 9-mile radius, then other qualifying girls within the radius ranked by score, then qualifying staff daughters, and finally qualifying girls from outside the radius, again ranked by score. For entry in September 2027, registration runs from 1 May to 30 June 2026, with testing on 25 and 26 September 2026, a pattern that holds roughly every year: register in the May or June before Year 6 starts, then sit the test that September.

Looking beyond Bromley: the four Bexley grammar schools

Because Bromley only has two grammar schools, plenty of local families also apply across the border into Bexley, which has four. All four belong to the Bexley 11+ Consortium and share a single entrance exam, which we cover in the next section. Here's how the four schools compare.

Worth flagging: Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School is a different school from Chislehurst School for Girls, easy to mix up when you're researching this part of southeast London.

The Bexley Selection Test explained

Rather than each Bexley grammar school setting its own paper, all four use the same entrance exam: the Bexley Selection Test, run by Bexley Council rather than branded directly to GL Assessment (though the question style is GL-style verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, maths and English). The format is two papers, each roughly 50 to 60 minutes: a 'verbal' booklet covering verbal ability, vocabulary and comprehension, and a 'non-verbal and mathematical' booklet covering non-verbal reasoning and numerical reasoning. Every question is multiple choice, answered on an optical mark reading sheet, and there's no written or creative writing component at all, a real point of contrast with St Olave's Stage 2.

About 30% of children who sit the test achieve a qualifying score. Registration usually opens through Bexley Council in May, with test sessions held in the first full week of September of Year 6. The top 180 scorers borough-wide are ranked and guaranteed a place at their highest-preference Bexley grammar school; the rest of the places go by each individual school's own oversubscription criteria, typically distance. One thing that catches families out: passing the test doesn't secure a place on its own. You still need to list the Bexley school or schools on your home borough's Common Application Form by 31 October.

Considering the Kent Test if you live near the border

Bromley also borders the Kent districts of Sevenoaks and Dartford, and Kent runs its own separate 11 plus, the Kent Test, for its more than thirty grammar schools. Families living outside Kent, Bromley included, can register to sit it as out-of-county candidates. This is a well-established route, not a loophole, and it can genuinely widen your options if you live within reasonable travelling distance of Kent's grammar schools, including those near the Sevenoaks and Dartford border.

In practice that means registering separately through Kent County Council, on a different system and timeline from both Bromley's own applications and the Bexley Selection Test, then sitting the test typically in September of Year 6, much like the other options. As with Bexley, you'll also need to list any Kent school as a preference on your Bromley Common Application Form by 31 October for it to count. We don't have a reliable figure for how many Bromley families take this route each year, so treat it as an option worth looking into if you're near the border, rather than something with a known uptake rate.

Registration and exam timeline: from Year 5 into Year 6

One pattern runs through all of these tests: registration happens earlier than most parents expect, generally in the May or June term of Year 5, well before Year 6 has even started. The tests themselves are sat in September of Year 6, so by the time the 31 October Common Application Form deadline comes round, your child will already have sat them, or at least know that they have.

General secondary admissions in Bromley, and in virtually every London borough, open via eAdmissions on 1 September of Year 6, with the Common Application Form due by 31 October of that same year. So the sequence for most 11 plus families looks like this: register for grammar school tests in spring or early summer of Year 5, sit the tests in September of Year 6, then submit the Common Application Form by the end of October, ranking your preferences with those results in mind.

The Common Application Form deadline and National Offer Day

The 31 October deadline for the Common Application Form is a hard one, and it applies no matter which grammar school tests your child has sat. Whether you're applying to St Olave's, Newstead Wood, one of the Bexley schools, or a Kent grammar as an out-of-county candidate, that school still needs to be listed in your preference order on the CAF by this date. Passing a test alone does not secure a place.

National Offer Day is fixed nationally as 1 March each year. When that date falls on a weekend, offers move to the next working day instead, which is why 2025 entry offers actually went out on 3 March 2025 (1 March 2025 fell on a Saturday). Bromley residents also get a window after offers to confirm or amend their decision through eAdmissions, though the exact date shifts each admissions cycle, so it's worth checking bromley.gov.uk directly for the current year rather than going by a date from a previous one.

Pass marks and qualifying scores: what we actually know

It's tempting to want one clean number to aim for, but pass marks and qualifying scores vary by school and can shift from year to year, so treat any figure below as a guide rather than a guarantee. Newstead Wood currently states a minimum qualifying score of 210 in verbal and non-verbal reasoning, though check this against the current cycle's FAQ before relying on it. The Bexley Selection Test doesn't publish a single fixed pass mark in the same way, but roughly 30% of candidates typically achieve a qualifying score across the four Bexley schools, with the top 180 scorers borough-wide guaranteed their highest preference.

St Olave's doesn't work on a single qualifying score either. Stage 1 filters down to roughly the top 450 candidates for Stage 2, and final offers are then decided by a specific tiebreaker order: maths score first, then the scored creative writing task, then the English multiple-choice component, then the original Stage 1 SET score, and only then random allocation if scores are still tied. That creative writing piece genuinely matters here. It's marked on syntax, paragraphing, punctuation, vocabulary, spelling, handwriting and presentation, and it can be the thing that decides between two boys who are otherwise level on maths.

How to prepare when the tests aren't all the same

One of the trickier parts of being a Bromley family is that these tests genuinely differ in format, not just difficulty. St Olave's Stage 2 asks for a scored piece of creative writing under time pressure, something the Bexley Selection Test never does. Newstead Wood and the Bexley Consortium both lean on verbal and non-verbal reasoning multiple choice (the Bexley test uses a GL-style question format, though it isn't officially GL-branded), while Kent's out-of-county route adds a differently structured test into the mix if you go that way.

The most useful approach is to build strong foundations in verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, English and maths first, since these underpin every version of the test your child might sit. Then layer in format-specific practice closer to September of Year 6: multiple choice speed and accuracy for Bexley and Newstead Wood, extended written answers and creative writing for St Olave's. Our free 11+ practice app covers exactly this kind of adaptive daily practice across all four subjects, so your child keeps building the core skills no matter which combination of schools you end up applying to. And if catchment distance is part of your decision-making, particularly Newstead Wood's 9-mile radius, it's worth running our grammar school catchment checker early, well before registration opens in Year 5.

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Arielle handles SEO and AEO growth at Pip, with over 10 years in the digital marketing space working with brands and founding her own projects.

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