The Buckinghamshire 11+ Transfer Test: A Complete Guide for Parents

Almost every question we are asked in an introductory session is on this page. It is written for parents in Buckinghamshire and the villages around it who are trying to work out what the Transfer Test actually involves, when things happen, and what preparation looks like across two years rather than two months.

The dates, rules and figures about the test itself come from Buckinghamshire Council and the grammar schools' own published information, and each source is listed at the bottom with the date we checked it. What we say about preparation — including the 104 question types — is our own programme and our own teaching judgement, and we say so where it matters. Check the council's pages before you act on anything time-sensitive. The arrangements change from year to year, and a tutor's website is not the authority on your child's registration.

First, the thing that confuses everybody

Buckinghamshire names each round of testing by the year a child starts secondary school, not the year they sit the test. The test is sat a full year before.

So if you have a Year 5 child and you read "the 2027 test", that is not your child's test. Yours is the 2028 entry, sat in September 2027, and at the time of writing the council has published only the month, not the dates.

This trips up experienced parents every year. If you take one thing from this guide, take the habit of asking "which entry year?" whenever someone quotes you a date. We have put the entry year beside every date below.

Who has to register, and who does not

If your child attends a state-funded Buckinghamshire primary school, they are registered automatically. You do not need to do anything. Milton Keynes state schools are excluded from this.

Everyone else has to be registered by a parent: children at Partner schools, at independent schools, at schools outside the county, and at state-funded schools in Milton Keynes.

That deadline is the single most consequential date in the process, because it is the one with no real remedy. A child who is not registered does not sit the test, and a child who does not sit the test cannot be considered for a Buckinghamshire grammar school.

You do not have to live in Buckinghamshire to sit it. Plenty of the families we teach do not. But qualifying in the Buckinghamshire test qualifies a child for Buckinghamshire grammar schools only — it does not carry to another county's schools, which run their own tests.

If your child has support at school

If your child normally has support in class — an EHC plan, SEN support, or help with reading, concentration, hearing or sight, for example — look at the council's access arrangements guidance early. Any adjustment has to be based on how your child normally works in class, and it is decided by a panel, not granted automatically.

How you start depends on the school. At a state-funded Buckinghamshire primary or a Partner school, the headteacher applies. At any other school, you ask for the request form when you register, and the headteacher completes it. The headteacher deadlines are early: for 2027 entry they were 2 June 2026 (Buckinghamshire and Partner schools) and 16 June 2026 (all other schools). The council has not yet published them for 2028 entry.

What the test actually contains

Two papers, both set and marked by GL Assessment, and every question is multiple choice.

Each paper is about 45 minutes long — 60 minutes including the introduction and the examples. That gap between 45 and 60 matters more than it looks: a good deal of the room's time is spent on instructions, and children who have only ever practised against a stopwatch at home are sometimes surprised by the pace of the real thing.

There is also a practice test beforehand, which your child should normally take. The practice papers are shorter, about 40 minutes each. They are not marked and not sent home — they exist so that the format is familiar, not to tell you anything about how your child is doing.

Children at state-funded Buckinghamshire primaries and Partner schools usually sit both at their own school. Other children sit them at a grammar school or another central venue; for 2027 entry, the council emailed those invitations by 7 August 2026.

How it is marked, and what 121 means

Each child's marks are standardised for their age in years and months on the day of the test, so a younger child is not disadvantaged against an older one. The raw number of correct answers is not the score. The standardised scores are then weighted: half from the verbal section, a quarter from maths and a quarter from non-verbal.

The word consideration is doing real work in that sentence. Qualifying is not the same as being offered a place.

Results: for 2027 entry, most parents are emailed after 4pm on 9 October 2026. For 2028 entry, the council says mid-October 2027.

What happens after the result?

A result is not an application. Qualifying does not apply to any school for you, and it does not guarantee an offer.

• You apply separately. List the grammar schools you want on your child's secondary school application, made to your home local authority — the council for where you live, even if that is not Buckinghamshire. The deadline is 31 October: 31 October 2026 for 2027 entry, and 31 October 2027 for 2028 entry.
• Once a child has qualified, the score plays no further part. A score of 135 gives no more priority than a score of 121. Places go by each school's own admission rules.
• Some schools ask for a Supplementary Information Form as well, returned to the school by 31 October. The council's school directory shows which ones.

The council explains the process on its apply for a grammar school place page.

If your child does not reach 121

There are three routes, and they are not the same thing.

A Selection Review is a written case, heard by a panel of two grammar school headteachers and one primary headteacher, for a child who did not reach 121. It needs academic evidence and evidence of exceptional circumstances around the test. If it succeeds, your child is treated as qualified. The council notes that most successful reviews have been for scores between 110 and 120. For 2027 entry, families who received results on 9 October 2026 must submit the full case by 30 October 2026. The council's Selection Review guidance sets out the evidence and the process.

An Admission Appeal comes later, after offers are made, and is heard by an independent panel for a school you named on your application. If you have already had a Selection Review, the appeal panel first looks only at whether that review was carried out fairly.

Pupil Premium is not a lower pass mark. Some grammar schools give priority to qualified children who receive Pupil Premium, and some keep a small number of places for Pupil Premium children who scored slightly below 121 — sometimes only if they live in the school's catchment. Whether a school does either, and how, is in that school's own admissions policy, and you have to send the school evidence by 31 October. The council summarises this in its admission rules guidance.

If you think you might use any of these routes, include your preferred grammar schools on the application anyway, and — as the council recommends — at least one other school as well. Then read the council's pages and your chosen schools' policies directly: the timescales are short.

Buckinghamshire is not one place

This is the part parents are most often caught out by, and the reason two families in the same village can face quite different odds.

The thirteen grammar schools do not share one set of admission rules. Each sets its own, in its own admissions policy, and they differ on the things that decide places when a school is oversubscribed: whether there is a catchment area, how siblings are treated, which home address counts and on what date, and how distance is measured.

For example, the 2027-entry policies for Sir William Borlase's and Wycombe High both use catchment areas, but they measure distance to different points: Borlase's to the nearest open school gate, Wycombe High to its main entrance gate. Both keep a limited number of places for Pupil Premium children in their catchment who scored below 121, in different score bands. Neither school has published its 2028-entry policy yet. On address dates, the council says that for 2028 entry most grammar schools use your home address on 1 September 2027, but some use an earlier date — so check each policy.

Two practical consequences:

The thirteen grammar schools

Each one sets its own admission rules, in its own admissions policy. The links go to the schools themselves, which is where those policies live.

• Aylesbury Grammar School — Aylesbury
• Aylesbury High School — Aylesbury
• Beaconsfield High School — Beaconsfield
• Burnham Grammar School — Burnham
• Chesham Grammar School — Chesham
• Dr Challoner's Grammar School — Amersham
• Dr Challoner's High School — Little Chalfont
• John Hampden Grammar School — High Wycombe
• The Royal Grammar School — High Wycombe
• The Royal Latin School — Buckingham
• Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School — Aylesbury
• Sir William Borlase's Grammar School — Marlow
• Wycombe High School — High Wycombe

The Royal Latin School in Buckingham is the closest to us, and the one most families we teach are thinking of — but a child who qualifies may apply to any of them, and it is worth reading more than one policy before you rank your preferences.

What preparation actually looks like

This part is our own approach, not council guidance.

We teach the 11+ over two years, starting in Year 4. That is not about starting the pressure earlier. In our experience, a method sticks when it can be taught properly, put down, and returned to a few months later. A single year leaves less room to come back to things, which is why we prefer two — though plenty of families choose a shorter run-up, and that is their call to make.

Year 4 is for meeting the question types and learning a method for each. We break the test down into 104 of them across the four areas — our own breakdown, not an official GL list. In our experience almost all are learnable: they are question shapes with reliable approaches rather than tests of raw cleverness, and a child who has met a type once and been shown the method is in a different position from one seeing it cold.

Year 5 is where it compounds. The same types come back, now mixed together and under time. In our experience, switching between question types is a skill of its own — a child can be fluent at each type separately and still come apart when they arrive in a jumble.

The summer before the test is the shortest and most valuable stretch, and it is mostly about consolidation rather than new material. By then the work is done; what is left is keeping the machinery warm and arriving rested.

Everything we teach in the room is written up: all 104 question types, with the method and worked examples, free to read.

What we get asked most

The honest answer to "is my child grammar school material?" is that nobody can tell you in Year 4, and anyone who does is guessing. In our experience, what you can see in Year 4 is whether a child is willing to be taught a method and use it — and that tells you more than early ability does.

The second most common is whether tutoring is necessary. It is not. Children qualify every year without it. What preparation buys is familiarity — with the question types, the format and the pace — so that the test is not the first time your child meets any of it.

If you want to talk any of this through, come and have a free introductory session. Bring your questions about the process, not just about tuition. We would rather you understood the system than signed up for anything.