Bishop Wordsworth's Grammar School 11+ 2026: Tuition, Test & Results

Bishop Wordsworth's Grammar School is a fully selective Church of England boys' grammar school in Salisbury, rated Outstanding by Ofsted and offering 160 Year 7 places for September 2027 entry through its own two-paper GL Assessment 11+ test.

Bishop Wordsworth's Grammar School at a Glance

Bishop Wordsworth's Church of England Grammar School is a fully selective boys' grammar school on Exeter Street, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP1 2ED. It converted to academy status on 1 March 2011. Entry to Year 7 depends on the school's own GL Assessment 11+ test, taken by the 480 applicants who live nearest to the school; there is no shared consortium paper. Girls join the school for the first time in the Sixth Form, which is co-educational.

For a full walkthrough of the school's history, founding story and the South Wilts consortium question, see our companion piece, the Bishop Wordsworth's 11+ guide. This page focuses on what parents need to decide and act on now: the exam, the odds, the real results the school produces, and how we prepare boys for it.

Ofsted's most recent visit to the school was a focused monitoring inspection on 29 and 30 April 2026, prompted by a safeguarding concern; inspectors found no evidence to substantiate it and confirmed the school's safeguarding standards were met.

How Competitive Is the Bishop Wordsworth's 11+?

The competition begins before the test itself: under the school's admissions policy, the 480 applicants who live nearest to the school take the entrance test, with distance measured in a straight line, for its 160 Year 7 places — a ratio of three boys sitting the test for every place available (480 divided by 160). Families outside that radius should check the distance rule carefully before committing to a full preparation programme, since it can rule a child out of the process regardless of ability.

The qualifying standard is not a pre-defined mark. The required standard is set after the test each year by the school's Admissions, Property, Health and Safety Committee, based on how that year's cohort of boys actually perform, so a "qualifying score" from a previous year tells you nothing reliable about the threshold for a different year's sitting. A qualifying standard 10% lower than the one required of all other applicants applies to looked-after and previously looked-after children and to boys eligible for Pupil Premium, which is worth knowing about if it applies to your family.

The Bishop Wordsworth's 11+ Test Format

Bishop Wordsworth's own admissions policy sets out a two-paper test using examination papers set by GL Assessment: a verbal skills paper, and a mathematics and non-verbal reasoning paper. Marks are standardised by age weighting.

This pairing matters for preparation: it groups non-verbal reasoning with mathematics in one paper and keeps verbal skills in the other. A programme built around the wrong pairing can leave a boy unpractised at switching between reasoning and calculation inside the same timed paper. A generic verbal and non-verbal reasoning programme will under-prepare a boy for a test that also includes mathematics.

Designated Area and Oversubscription Order

The designated area is shown on a map on the school's website. Living inside it does not guarantee a place. A boy with an Education, Health and Care Plan that names the school is offered a place provided he meets the entry requirements in the policy, and the number of places available reduces accordingly. For every other applicant who has met the required standard, priority runs as follows:

1. Looked-after and previously looked-after children
2. Boys eligible for Pupil Premium
3. Boys whose permanent home is inside the designated area
4. Children of staff employed at the school for two years or more
5. Service children (Service Premium, recent service families, or an MoD child pension under the Armed Forces or War Pension schemes)
6. All other qualifying boys

Within any of these criteria, the shortest straight-line distance from home to the school's Exeter Street gate breaks ties; where distances are equal, the school draws lots under independent supervision. A waiting list, ranked on the same criteria, runs until 30 April 2027.

Bishop Wordsworth's vs South Wilts Grammar School

South Wilts Grammar School is a school for girls aged 11 to 16, coeducational in the sixth form, and does not share a test with Bishop Wordsworth's. Bishop Wordsworth's own admissions policy says the school uses examination papers set by GL Assessment, with the qualifying standard determined by the school's Admissions, Property, Health & Safety Committee. South Wilts's own admissions policy describes a separate process: three multiple choice papers in verbal reasoning, mathematics and English, set by GL Assessment, with admissions the responsibility of its People and Culture Committee. The two schools' own policies give the same test date: South Wilts's policy gives Saturday 26 September 2026 for September 2027 entry, the same Saturday as Bishop Wordsworth's. Each school ran its own registration, and both windows have now closed: Bishop Wordsworth's (see Key Dates) and South Wilts's, which closed at midnight on 1 September 2026. Bishop Wordsworth's admits girls into its own Sixth Form, so a girl joins the school through the Sixth Form. Our Bishop Wordsworth's sixth form guide sets out the 52-point GCSE bar and how the two schools now differ.

Beyond the 11+: What Do Bishop Wordsworth's Results Actually Look Like?

We think parents choosing where to invest years of preparation deserve to see what the 160 places actually lead to, so here is what the school's own published performance data shows.

In the school's own Summer 2026 GCSE results announcement, 65% of grades were awarded at grade 9–7 and 43% at grade 8–9, with 32 boys achieving grades 9–7 across every subject they sat — though a selective grammar school's results should always be read alongside its selective entry. At A-level in summer 2026, 84% of grades were A*–B and 59% were A*/A, an increase of ten percentage points on the previous year; ten students achieved A* in every subject, and 65 students completed their A-levels with exclusively A* and A grades.

On university progression, the school reported that over 85% of its 2026 Year 13 leavers had already received their first-choice placement by results day, with some university places still to be confirmed through UCAS at the time. The school's Sixth Form is co-educational, and the school's own site describes it as around 400 students in total, welcoming boys and girls from a wide range of schools across the region.

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Key Dates for 2026–2027 (September 2027 Entry)

Registering for the 11+ test was a separate step, handled directly with Bishop Wordsworth's online, and that window is now closed for September 2027 entry. Every family must also submit their home local authority's secondary application (Wiltshire Council's, for Wiltshire families), by 31 October 2026 — a deadline confirmed on Wiltshire Council's own site, not only by the school; the school's policy is explicit that a place will not be offered, even to a boy who has met the required standard, if the school is not named as the first preference. Wiltshire Council will consider a late application alongside on-time ones only in exceptional circumstances (for example a family move or a change of family circumstances after the deadline), and only if it is received by 16 December 2026. See the school's own Year 7 admissions page for the official, current arrangements.

Families beginning preparation now are most likely planning for September 2028 entry (boys currently in Year 5), since the September 2027 window has closed. Families should check the school's own admissions page for each year's confirmed dates. The school runs an in-house 11+ familiarisation course for Year 5 pupils, separate from the application process; its most recent courses ran between 11 March and 1 July 2026.

How Should a Boy Prepare?

Because Bishop Wordsworth's tests verbal skills, mathematics and non-verbal reasoning across two papers, effective preparation needs a broader base than a generic verbal/non-verbal-only 11+ programme. English and verbal reasoning preparation should combine timed comprehension practice and the standard pattern-based verbal reasoning question types (codes, sequences, analogies); wide reading remains the single best long-term investment, since it builds vocabulary and stamina no short-term drilling replaces. Mathematics preparation needs to be built on secure Key Stage 2 arithmetic — times tables, fractions, decimals, percentages, the four operations applied quickly and accurately — layered with multi-step, reasoning-style word problems, since maths and non-verbal reasoning share one paper. Non-verbal reasoning responds well to progressive practice across each question type: series, matrices, analogies, figure classification and rotation.

Given how competitive the 160 places are once the oversubscription criteria and the 480-applicant sitting cap are both applied, a personalised one-to-one approach lets a tutor identify precisely which of the three tested areas is weakest for an individual boy and close that specific gap, rather than spreading effort evenly across a generic study plan. Most families we work with begin structured preparation in Year 4 or early Year 5, giving twelve to eighteen months to cover every question type before shifting to full timed practice papers well ahead of test day.

At Leading Tuition, our specialist 11+ tutors work with families across Salisbury, Wilton and the wider south Wiltshire designated area, plus online tuition for families further afield. For a broader look at exam technique across question types, see our 11+ exam technique guide, and for the national timetable of test dates, see 11+ exam dates 2025–2026.

Reviewed October 2026: dates, figures and rules checked against Bishop Wordsworth's Year 7 admissions timetable and Admissions Policy, Wiltshire Council's school admissions page, and South Wilts Grammar School's Admissions Policy 2027.

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