Disclaimer. The 11+ rules in Buckinghamshire change in detail most years and the Buckinghamshire Council pages are the authoritative reference. This post is accurate to the best of our knowledge for the 2026–27 admissions cycle but should be cross-checked against the council’s published guidance before any decision.
Buckinghamshire runs one of the few remaining fully-selective grammar-school systems in England. Children who score above a published threshold on the Secondary Transfer Test (STT) are eligible for a place at one of 13 grammar schools across the county. Those who don’t go to one of the comprehensive (“upper”) schools, which are highly regarded in their own right but follow a different curriculum.
Because the system is fully selective rather than super-selective, the test is sat by almost the entire Year 6 cohort living in Bucks, around 5,500 children a year — not by a self-selected high-attainment subset. That changes how the test is set, what a typical pass mark looks like, and what sensible practice looks like.
This post explains the format, the timeline, the schools, and the bits parents most often get wrong.
The Secondary Transfer Test, in brief
The STT is set by GL Assessment (the same publisher as CAT4) and consists of two papers, each around 45 minutes long, taken on the same morning in early September of Year 6.
Paper 1 covers verbal reasoning, a small amount of English comprehension, and non-verbal reasoning. Paper 2 covers mathematics and a further section of non-verbal reasoning. The non-verbal reasoning component is the largest single chunk of the test by mark count, and the mathematical reasoning is closer to “reasoning expressed as numbers” than to standard primary-school arithmetic.
Each child receives a single standardised score combining both papers, age-adjusted in the same way as CAT4. The threshold for grammar eligibility is 121 in most recent years. A score of 121 or above is a “secured place” eligibility; below 121, the child can be considered through a separate review process if their primary head teacher submits a case that the score doesn’t reflect their ability.
The familiarisation test
A few weeks before the real STT — usually in late June or early July of Year 5 — children sit a short familiarisation test in school. It uses the same format and instructions as the real test but doesn’t count.
The familiarisation test exists explicitly so that no child sits the real STT having never seen the question style before. It is the council’s mitigation against test-prep inequality: the parents of children with no tutoring know their child has at least met the format once. It does not produce a score that anyone uses for admissions.
In practice, this means the absolute minimum useful preparation for a Bucks child is to make sure they know what each question type looks like, how the answer sheet works, and what the timings feel like, before they walk into the familiarisation test. That’s it. Everything beyond that is optional.
The schools
There are 13 Bucks grammar schools. They split roughly into geographical clusters:
- Aylesbury area — Aylesbury Grammar (boys), Aylesbury High (girls), Sir Henry Floyd (mixed).
- High Wycombe area — Royal Grammar School High Wycombe (boys), Wycombe High (girls), John Hampden (boys).
- Beaconsfield / Chesham — Beaconsfield High (girls), Chesham Grammar (mixed), Dr Challoner’s Grammar (boys, Amersham), Dr Challoner’s High (girls, Little Chalfont).
- Buckingham / north — The Royal Latin (mixed, Buckingham).
- Marlow / south — Sir William Borlase’s Grammar (mixed).
- Princes Risborough — The Misbourne (no longer selective; ignore for grammar admissions).
Admission to a specific grammar from the qualifying score is by distance from the school, with sibling priority. There is no separate school-level test in addition to the STT. This is a meaningful point: if you’re considering moving house to be in catchment, the move is the lever, not the practice.
Several of the grammars also accept out-of-county applicants who have passed the STT, with the same distance rule applied. If you live just over the border in Hertfordshire, Oxfordshire, or south Northamptonshire, sitting the STT is a real option, though oversubscription means it’s never a guarantee.
The timeline
Roughly:
- Spring of Year 5 — register your child for the STT through the council’s portal. Registration closes in late June or early July.
- June or July of Year 5 — familiarisation test in school.
- First week of September, Year 6 — STT sat at the child’s primary school.
- Mid-October — results released to parents.
- End of October — secondary school preferences submitted to Bucks Council via the standard local-authority application.
- March (Year 6) — secondary school offers issued on National Offer Day.
Children who narrowly miss the 121 threshold can be put forward through the selection review process, in which the primary head teacher submits work samples to argue the child’s measured score doesn’t reflect their ability. Around 5–10% of children who go through the review are subsequently deemed grammar-school eligible. This route exists for genuinely-able children who had a bad test day; it is not a back door.
What sensible practice looks like
For a child who is broadly above-average and finds reasoning fun:
- The familiarisation test is, on its own, sufficient exposure to the format. Many parents spend a year preparing and the actual measured benefit over “no preparation” is small for this profile of child.
- A small amount of low-pressure non-verbal reasoning practice is the highest-leverage investment, because the NVR component is the largest single chunk of the test and the format is the least familiar from school.
- Untimed mixed practice across all four reasoning areas, ten minutes a day, beats timed practice in any quantity. (See Why timed practice can harm an anxious child.)
- A single dress-rehearsal-style timed mock in late August, to take the novelty out of the timing, is fine.
For a child who is borderline:
- The same advice, plus a focus on the question types they consistently get wrong rather than blanket “more questions”. A child who gets every analogy right and every figure-matrix wrong should not be doing extra analogies.
- A conversation with their primary teacher in spring of Year 5 about whether the head would support a selection review if needed.
- Honest discussion at home — Bucks has good upper schools, and a child who narrowly misses the grammar threshold is not a child who will fail academically. The sky doesn’t fall.
For a child who is well below:
- The STT pass mark is set so that around a quarter of the cohort qualifies. A child whose recent CAT4 SAS is consistently in the 80s or low 90s is unlikely to qualify on the STT even with intensive preparation, and intensive preparation against a likely failure is bad for the child’s wellbeing and self-image.
- The right move is a calm conversation with the school about the upper-school offer, and a deliberate choice not to put the child through six months of practice they don’t need.
Common mistakes
- Tutoring from Year 3. No published evidence supports this against tutoring in Year 5 with the same total hours. The stress is real; the gain isn’t.
- Mock-test packs from non-GL providers. They aren’t bad as practice, but they don’t predict the STT score well. The closer your child is to the format used by the actual publisher, the better the dress rehearsal.
- Treating the STT as the same as a CAT4. The questions overlap heavily, but the STT has a different paper structure, time pressure, and answer-sheet style. Familiarity with the format is part of the work.
- Letting the child believe their value depends on the result. This is the largest mistake and the easiest to avoid. See How to talk to your child about a CAT4 or 11+ result.
Useful next reads
- 11+ in 2026–27: a parent’s guide by region — the all-regions overview.
- Why timed practice can harm an anxious child — relevant to the STT specifically because of the September timing.
- 11+ practice on Puzzitron — non-verbal reasoning, verbal reasoning, and quantitative reasoning, with a familiarisation-style mock available.