The best grammar schools in the UK 2026: Kent, Surrey, London, Essex and more

I taught Year 6 in Kent for six years, and every September I could tell which children were sitting the Kent Test before anybody mentioned it. Not because of how clever they were. Because of how they held their shoulders. There is a particular tightness that arrives in a ten year old in the second week of term, and a particular look on a parent's face at pick up time when they are trying very hard to sound relaxed about a mock paper.

I have since sat on the other side of it with my own two, and I am not going to pretend I was serene. So this guide to the best grammar schools in the UK in 2026 is written for the version of me who was up at eleven at night comparing Tonbridge with Judd and wondering whether we had already left it too late. It has the full ranked list, the county by county picture, the exam each school actually uses, and a realistic view of what preparation should look like.

What a grammar school is, and what it is not

A grammar school is a state secondary school that selects pupils on academic ability. It is funded by the taxpayer, so there are no fees. Children sit an entrance exam in the autumn term of Year 6, the results are age standardised so that a child born in August is not penalised against a child born in September, and places are offered to the highest scorers according to each school's published admissions criteria.

Grammar schools survive in pockets rather than everywhere. Kent, Medway, Buckinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Essex, Trafford, Birmingham, Slough, Wirral, Gloucestershire and a cluster of outer London boroughs are the strongholds. In much of the country there is no grammar school within reach, and the question simply does not arise.

What a grammar school is not is a guarantee. It is a school full of children who all did well on one morning in October. That has real advantages: fast paced teaching, a wide A level offer, peers who are happy to be visibly interested in things. It also has a cost that nobody prints in the prospectus, which is that a child who was near the top of the class in Year 6 is now in the middle, and that lands harder than most of us expect.

The top 100 grammar schools in the UK in 2026

The table below ranks the top 100 UK grammar schools on their 2025 A level and GCSE results. It is searchable, so you can type Kent, Sutton, Birmingham, girls, or an exam board such as CSSE and see only what matters to you. The final column tells you which 11 plus exam each school uses, which is genuinely the most useful column on this page.

Results data is drawn from the 2026 league tables published by The Times and The Sunday Times in December 2025, and the ranked grammar list compiled by Atom Learning.

The grammar school picture county by county

Kent grammar schools

Kent is the largest fully selective system in England, with more than thirty grammar schools, and the Kent Test is the gateway to nearly all of them. Tonbridge Grammar School, Dartford Grammar School, The Judd School, Skinners' and Weald of Kent all appear high in the 2026 table. The test is sat in September of Year 6, which is brutally early, and registration closes in the preceding summer term. Kent also runs a head teacher assessment route for children who narrowly miss, which is worth understanding before results day rather than after it.

If you live in Kent and you are reading this in Year 4, you have time. If you are reading it in July before Year 6, check the registration deadline today. I mean today.

London grammar schools

London's grammar schools are the most oversubscribed in the country and the competition is genuinely fierce. Queen Elizabeth's School in Barnet, The Henrietta Barnett School, The Latymer School in Edmonton, St Michael's Catholic Grammar School and the Sutton cluster of Wilson's, Nonsuch, Sutton Grammar and Wallington High School for Girls all sit near the top of the 2026 rankings. Several run a two stage process: a first paper that shortlists a few hundred children, then a second, harder paper that decides offers.

Because catchments are usually open or very wide, families travel. Before you commit, do the journey at half past seven on a wet Tuesday with your child. A seventy minute commute is a very different proposition in practice than on a map.

Surrey and the Sutton Selective Eligibility Test

Technically Surrey has no grammar schools of its own, but families across Surrey sit the Sutton Selective Eligibility Test, known as the SET, and apply to the Sutton borough schools. Add Kingston's Tiffin School and The Tiffin Girls' School, both of which run their own two stage exams and both of which appear in the 2026 top fifteen, and the Surrey border is effectively one of the most selective areas in England. Reigate, Guildford and Epsom families routinely prepare for three different exam formats in the same autumn.

Essex grammar schools and the CSSE

Essex runs its own consortium paper through the Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex, the CSSE. Colchester Royal Grammar School, King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford, Chelmsford County High School for Girls and Colchester County High School for Girls all use it and all sit in the 2026 top twenty five. The CSSE paper has a distinct flavour: heavier on extended English writing and on multi step maths than the multiple choice papers used elsewhere, which catches out families who have practised only GL style questions.

Buckinghamshire, Birmingham, Trafford and the rest

Buckinghamshire uses the Secondary Transfer Test and is fully selective, with Dr Challoner's High School and Dr Challoner's Grammar School leading. Birmingham's King Edward VI foundation schools use the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test and place several schools in the top thirty. Trafford runs a consortium test serving Altrincham Grammar School for Girls and its neighbours. Gloucestershire has Pate's, Devon has Colyton, Lincolnshire and the Wirral have their own arrangements. The pattern to notice is that the exam is local even when the ambition is national.

The four papers your child may actually sit

• GL Assessment. Multiple choice or standard format papers in English, maths, verbal reasoning and non verbal reasoning. Used widely in London, Kent, Lincolnshire and Northern Ireland style transfers. Speed matters enormously.
• CEM style papers. Now largely absorbed into GL's offer, but some consortia still use the mixed format approach with tightly timed sections and a strong vocabulary weighting.
• CSSE. The Essex paper. English comprehension and composition plus maths, with no separate reasoning paper. Handwriting stamina counts.
• School's own two stage papers. Used by Tiffin, Tiffin Girls', St Olave's, Henrietta Barnett and others. Stage one narrows the field, stage two is genuinely hard and often includes extended writing.

Whatever the format, four skills carry across all of them: vocabulary breadth, reading comprehension under time pressure, arithmetic fluency, and pattern spotting in verbal and non verbal reasoning. Those are the four we build into our own practice, and you can work through them free on our 11 plus quiz, our verbal reasoning workout and our non verbal reasoning workout.

A preparation timetable that does not eat your family

Year 4: quietly build the foundations

No papers. None. Read together every night, including books above your child's comfortable level so they meet unfamiliar words in context. Play with times tables until they are automatic rather than calculated. Do puzzles, crosswords, codes, anything with a pattern in it. This is the year that makes the biggest difference and it should not feel like preparation at all.

Year 5: introduce the shape of the exam

From the spring term, twenty to thirty minutes, three or four times a week. Vocabulary in short bursts, one comprehension a week, arithmetic drills, and an introduction to reasoning question types. Sit one full timed paper at the end of the summer term so the format is familiar, and treat the score as information rather than judgement.

Year 6 autumn: taper, do not cram

By September the work should be getting lighter, not heavier. One or two timed papers a week, careful review of every error, and an absolute protection of sleep. A tired child loses more marks to careless slips than an unprepared child loses to unfamiliar content. In the final fortnight I would do almost nothing new.

On the subject of tutors: a good one can be transformative for a child who needs structure, and a bad one can turn a curious ten year old into a paper filling machine. If you use one, ask how they teach a child to check work, not how many of their students passed.

Super selective, banded or catchment based

One phrase trips up more families than any other in grammar school admissions, and it is worth ten minutes of your time. A super selective grammar school ranks every candidate by score and offers places from the top down, with geography playing little or no part. Queen Elizabeth's Barnet, Henrietta Barnett, Tiffin and the Sutton schools work broadly this way, which is why children travel across London for them and why the pass mark is effectively whatever the last offered candidate scored that year.

A catchment based grammar school sets a qualifying standard and then prioritises children who live inside a defined area, or who attend a named feeder primary. Much of Kent, Lincolnshire and Buckinghamshire works on this model. Here, scoring brilliantly is not enough on its own if you live outside the boundary, and scoring solidly may be plenty if you live close by.

A few schools band their intake, taking a spread of ability rather than only the highest scorers, and others reserve places for pupil premium children as part of a widening access commitment. If your family qualifies for free school meals, check this explicitly, because the priority can be substantial and is often buried on page nine of an admissions policy. Read the actual policy document for each school on your list. It is dry and it is short and it will tell you more about your chances than any forum thread.

What happens if your child does not get a place

Most children who sit the 11 plus do not get a grammar school place. That sentence sounds harsh written down, but it is arithmetic rather than judgement, and saying it out loud beforehand takes a surprising amount of heat out of results day.

Have the other schools genuinely on the table before the exam. Visit them, talk about them warmly, put a real favourite among them. Children absorb the ranking in our voices, and a child who has heard the local comprehensive described as the disaster option for a year will carry that into Year 7 with them.

There is also an appeals route and, in some counties, a late transfer test at 12 or 13. Both are worth knowing about, and both are far easier to navigate if you read the admissions arrangements early rather than in the fortnight after offers.

Key takeaways

• Grammar schools are free, selective and clustered in particular counties. Check what exists within a sensible journey before anything else.
• Use the searchable table above to match each school with the 11 plus exam it uses, because that decides what you practise.
• Registration deadlines fall in the summer term of Year 5 for Kent and early autumn elsewhere. Diarise them now.
• Build vocabulary, comprehension, arithmetic and reasoning slowly from Year 4, then taper in Year 6.
• Fall in love with at least two non selective schools as well. It is the single kindest thing you can do for your child in this process.

Sources

• Atom Learning, the best grammar schools in the UK in 2026 - ranked list, entry gender and 11 plus exam types.
• The Times and The Sunday Times Parent Power league tables 2026 - underlying A level and GCSE results from summer 2025.
• Kent County Council, the Kent Test - registration windows and the head teacher assessment route.
• Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex - the CSSE entrance exam format and timetable.