Wirral Grammar Schools and the Wirral Selection Test

Wirral has six grammar schools and three entrance routes. Four use the council’s Quest assessment. St Anselm’s College and Upton Hall School FCJ each have their own entrance examination and school registration.

For September 2027 entry, the council scheduled results for 21 October 2026. The separate school application deadline is 31 October 2026. If a result has not arrived, contact the relevant admissions team and keep track of the application deadline. A test registration is not an application for a school place.

Which schools use which test?

School	Entrance route
Calday Grange Grammar School	Wirral council assessment
West Kirby Grammar School	Wirral council assessment
Wirral Grammar School for Boys	Wirral council assessment
Wirral Grammar School for Girls	Wirral council assessment
St Anselm’s College	Separate school examination
Upton Hall School FCJ	Separate school examination

The council’s assessment page confirms Quest Assessments as the provider for the non-Catholic route, with two papers held on 15 September 2026, covering verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and mathematics. The council route does not register a child for either Catholic school exam. Check each school’s entry-year policy for eligibility and priority rules.

Our Wirral assessment-route page brings the council route together. The school guides above provide a starting point for individual policies.

West Kirby policy caveat: the school’s currently linked 2027/28 policy still gives a September 2026 intake, an October 2025 late-application deadline and a December 2026 waiting-list date in its body. Do not reuse those dates for 2027 entry. Ask the school to confirm its current arrangements, including its admission number, if that affects your application.

Dates for September 2027 entry

The council timetable gives:

• 1 May 2026: council assessment registration opened.
• 21 October 2026: non-Catholic assessment results scheduled to be sent.
• 31 October 2026: school preference forms due.
• 1 March 2027: email offers sent; paper-form offers posted second class.
• End of March 2027: appeal deadline, exact date still to be confirmed.

Registration for this intake closed on 31 May 2026. Do not reuse that date for a later intake. The assessment page allows late registration only where a child moved to Wirral after the closing date; contact the council about that route.

Requests for special access arrangements for the September assessment were due by 7 June 2026. The council considers supporting evidence and normally expects arrangements already used at primary school. Additional time or another adjustment is not automatic for every child with a diagnosis. Speak to the council and your child’s SENDCo about individual circumstances.

The lookup is planning information. The official school and council pages remain the sources for your child’s entry year.

What to practise for the council assessment

Quest’s Wirral Consortium page provides free familiarisation booklets, child and parent guidance, a vocabulary list and reading suggestions. Quest’s general parent guidance warns that schools can use different papers and structures: these materials show styles of question, rather than guaranteeing the exact Wirral format or timing.

The Wirral Consortium and Quest candidate pack describes paper one as verbal reasoning and paper two as mathematics and non-verbal reasoning. Each lasts approximately 50 minutes, plus instructions, with a supervised break. It describes multiple-choice questions and separate answer sheets.

Use the official materials first to learn the instructions and answer-sheet layout. Try unfamiliar question types without a timer, explain the method, then add timing if it helps rehearse the confirmed local format. Check that an answer is entered against the intended question number. Misalignment can affect later answers, but it does not necessarily mean every later mark is lost.

For general teaching examples, see our verbal reasoning question types, non-verbal reasoning question types and 11 plus maths papers guide. These are independent resources. They do not reproduce the current Quest papers or predict a result.

There is no prescribed one-year preparation plan or proven number of mock sittings attached to this guide. Choose work that fits the child’s understanding, school workload and wellbeing.

What does the result mean?

The council assessment page says reaching the grammar standard does not guarantee a place. An oversubscribed school applies its own admissions policy. The result is therefore one part of the application process.

The council’s allocation guidance says scores are standardised for age and describes a total weighted score across verbal reasoning, mathematics and non-verbal reasoning. It does not give a numeric qualifying threshold or component weights on that page. We cannot turn a practice percentage into an admissions score, or infer how the qualifying standard was set from the cohort. Ask the council about the outcome supplied to your family.

Keep eligibility, priority and an offer separate. A child can meet an academic standard while another qualifying applicant has higher priority under a school’s policy.

Submit the separate school application

For Wirral residents, the council allows up to five schools in genuine preference order and recommends at least two non-selective choices when a child is being assessed for selective schools. If the grammar standard is not met, the council withdraws the grammar preferences and moves the remaining preferences up.

Families elsewhere in England use their home authority’s application. The council assessment guidance directs families outside England to use the Wirral form for Wirral schools. Check the relevant authority’s instructions, including any additional school forms. Save the confirmation when you submit.

Do not rank a school first merely because it is selective. Put it first if it is genuinely your first choice, and check each named school’s published criteria.

The two Catholic school routes

St Anselm’s College is a Catholic grammar school for boys. Its 2027/28 admissions policy describes three tests: English, mathematics and verbal reasoning. Its separate school registration closed 31 July 2026. Academic qualification is followed by the policy’s oversubscription categories, including faith and looked-after-child criteria. Registration for the council’s assessment did not register a child here.

Upton Hall School FCJ is a Catholic grammar school for girls. Its September 2027 policy set a school registration deadline of 10 July 2026, scheduled the main examination for 19 September 2026 and said results would be sent to parents no later than 23 October 2026. It describes a 50-minute verbal reasoning paper and a 45-minute English paper, with age weighting and minimum standards in each part. The policy also sets out its qualifying and priority rules.

For either school, use its own result and current policy. Contact the school about missing results, late applications or any unclear qualifying rule. Neither a council assessment result nor a practice score establishes eligibility for these separate examinations.

Offers, waiting lists and appeals

Offers for September 2027 entry are scheduled for 1 March 2027. Read the response instructions from the authority before declining a place. Waiting-list rules differ by admissions authority: check how to join, how it is ranked and whether you must renew a request.

The Wirral appeals page still includes dates for the previous 2026 intake. For 2027, the current timetable says the deadline will be at the end of March, with the exact date to be confirmed. Use the refusal letter and the relevant admissions authority’s published appeal instructions when they are available.

An appeal and a waiting-list request are separate processes. If the child did not meet the academic standard, read what academic evidence the panel needs. Do not assume one report guarantees success, or that academic evidence is the only issue a panel will consider.

Planning for a later intake

The council timetable already lists some September 2028-entry milestones, including registration from 1 to 31 May 2027. It describes the assessment only as expected in September 2027, without an exact sitting date on that timetable. Check the new assessment page when published and confirm the provider, format and access-arrangement instructions for that cycle.

For schools elsewhere in Merseyside, start with each school’s own admissions page. The Wirral council assessment does not establish another school’s entrance procedure.