Wilson's School 11 Plus: Two Exams, One Rank Order

Wilson's School is a selective boys' grammar school in Wallington with a Year 7 admission number of 186, and entry runs through two separate examinations. The Selective Eligibility Test on 15 September 2026 is a multiple-choice maths paper and a multiple-choice English paper, with no verbal or non-verbal reasoning. The Second Stage Entrance Examination on 3 October 2026 is written rather than multiple-choice, and it carries four fifths of the final rank order.

What Is Actually in the Selective Eligibility Test?

The Selective Eligibility Test is the first of the two examinations, and it is shared with five other schools: Greenshaw High School, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Sutton Grammar School, Wallington High School for Girls and Wallington County Grammar School. Wilson's School states its content in one sentence: "The Selective Eligibility Test is made up of two papers; a multiple-choice Maths paper and a multiple-choice English paper. The tests do not include verbal reasoning or non-verbal reasoning."

That sentence matters more than it looks, because a great deal of published advice about Sutton entry says otherwise. There is no verbal reasoning paper. There is no non-verbal reasoning paper. There is no adaptive element either — candidates record answers by filling in a lozenge shape for A, B, C, D or E on a separate answer sheet, which is a paper mechanic, not a screen one. A child who has spent a year on shape sequences and word-code puzzles has spent that year on material Wilson's does not test.

The practical details are unusually specific. Each paper takes between 40 and 50 minutes, with a rest and toilet break between the two. There is no negative marking. Rough paper is not supplied, and the school says candidates may use any spare space on the question papers for workings. The content is described as broadly based on the Key Stage 2 curriculum, and while Wilson's does not release specimen papers, it does publish sample questions for both the English and the maths test.

One rule at this stage is worth knowing before results arrive: the two papers compensate. Wilson's puts it plainly — "It is the total score that determines whether your child has passed the test: so for example, a very good performance in English can compensate for one that is a little weaker in Maths." That is not true of the second examination, as the next section explains.

What Is the Second Stage Entrance Examination, and Who Runs It?

Passing the SET does not put a boy in the running for a place at Wilson's. It makes him eligible to sit a second examination, and only boys who have met Wilson's own SET pass mark are invited. For September 2027 entry that examination falls on Saturday 3 October 2026.

Three schools share it. Wilson's School, Sutton Grammar School and Wallington County Grammar School have agreed to run one Second Stage Entrance Examination between them, so a boy sits it once and the result is used by each of the three independently. Wilson's is careful to add that this is a testing arrangement and nothing more: "There is no current or planned connection between the three schools beyond co-operation on our entrance testing arrangements." The three set their own pass marks and combine the scores their own way, so a boy can pass for one school and not another on the same papers.

The Second Stage is a different kind of test from the SET, and the difference is the single most useful thing on this page. It consists of an English paper and a maths paper, each approximately 45 minutes to 1 hour, and Wilson's states that "The tests will not include verbal or non-verbal reasoning, and are not multiple choice." No sample tests are made available for it at all. Content is again described as broadly based on the Key Stage 2 curriculum, so the step up is in the demand of the format rather than in the syllabus.

How Does Wilson's Turn Two Test Scores into One Rank Order?

This is where Wilson's differs from its two partner schools, and where almost every guide to the school stops short. Wilson's publishes the exact weighting: "The rank order of the entrance tests will be determined on the basis of the aggregate scores of the SET and the two elements of the second stage Entrance Examination for Wilson's School in the ratio 1:2:2." Age adjustment is applied before the aggregate is calculated.

Three components, weighted 1, 2 and 2, give five parts in total. Working it through: the SET contributes 1 of 5, which is 20 per cent of the final rank score. The Second Stage English paper contributes 2 of 5, or 40 per cent. The Second Stage maths paper contributes the same 40 per cent. Taken together the Second Stage accounts for 4 of 5 parts, or 80 per cent.

Two consequences follow, and neither is obvious from the way most families talk about Sutton entry. The first is that the exam everyone prepares for — the SET — is the smallest single component of the decision at Wilson's. It is a qualifying hurdle whose main job is to decide who is allowed to sit the paper that actually ranks. The second is that the Second Stage English paper alone outweighs the entire SET by two to one, which is a strange thing to discover in October if a preparation programme has been weighted towards maths.

The 1:2:2 ratio belongs to Wilson's alone. The consortium's own guidance says each school "may apply their own specific ratio", so the arithmetic above should not be carried across to Sutton Grammar School or to Wallington County Grammar School, whose published arrangements differ.

Is There a Pass Mark for Wilson's School?

No, and Wilson's says so directly rather than leaving families to infer it: "It is not possible to state a pass mark in advance of the test. The pass mark will be decided by the participating schools after the test has been marked. Each School may determine its own pass mark." The same applies at the second stage, where pass marks "will be decided by each individual school after the papers have been marked".

Any page that quotes a qualifying score or a target standardised score for Wilson's has invented it. The school does publish something more useful, though, which is how close "close" actually is. Because each candidate's total standardised score is calculated to several decimal places, Wilson's warns that a child one standardised point below the line has not missed by one place — it says there could be "a large number of children (e.g. 50-100)" between that child and the last boy above the line. It is worth being clear that the figures Wilson's uses to illustrate this are an example, not a published threshold.

Two further points on results. Candidates who pass are not told their scores; they are simply told they have met the required standard and are invited to the next stage. Candidates who do not pass are given their standardised scores in both papers, including the age adjustment, and their total. And there is no appeal to the marking itself: every SET answer sheet is marked twice as a matter of course, "firstly by machine and then by hand", and no review or re-marking service is offered.

How Are the 186 Places Actually Allocated?

Wilson's determined arrangements set the Year 7 admission number at 186: "This is a selective boys' school with an admission number for Year 7 of 186." Boys whose Education, Health and Care Plan names the school are allocated a place before anyone else is considered, and the number available under the oversubscription criteria falls by that amount.

What is left is then divided between four designated categories and an open pool. Fourteen places go to boys eligible for Free School Meals, in rank order of standardised score. Nine go to boys who clear the benchmark in the Sport Aptitude Test for the Wilson's Football Programme. Nine go to boys who clear the benchmark in the Music Aptitude Test for the Music Programme. Looked-after and previously looked-after children rank first of all, with no fixed number attached.

The arithmetic is worth doing, because it answers a question families ask constantly and nobody publishes an answer to. Fourteen plus nine plus nine is 32 designated places out of 186, which is 17.2 per cent. The remaining 154 places — 82.8 per cent of the intake — are allocated purely on rank order of standardised score in the entrance tests, and any designated place that goes unfilled rolls into that same pool. The aptitude routes are real, but they are a small door.

Distance is not an entry criterion at Wilson's. The school says its criteria "are not based on catchment areas, post codes or distance criteria" except to separate candidates holding the same rank, and in that case boys living in the London Borough of Sutton come before boys living elsewhere, measured in a straight line from the main front door of the school. If distance cannot separate them either, places are decided by a random ballot supervised by an independent person. This is a meaningful contrast with much of selective entry across the borough, where residence carries more weight earlier in the process.

Key Dates for September 2027 Entry

Registration is a separate act from the school application, and both are required. A boy who sits the tests but is not named on the Common Application Form cannot be offered a place, and Wilson's states that no late registrations are accepted under any circumstances.

Boys are allocated a SET venue about a week beforehand, and it will be Sutton Grammar School, Wallington County Grammar School or Wilson's School. The venue has no bearing on preferences. Wilson's also allocates a different venue for the Second Stage where it can, so that families see two school settings rather than one.

What Changes in Preparation Once the Format Is Clear

Knowing the format changes what preparation should contain, and it removes a good deal of work that would otherwise be wasted.

• Reasoning practice is not preparation for Wilson's. Neither examination contains verbal or non-verbal reasoning. Time spent on those question types is time not spent on the maths and English that both papers test.
• The two stages need different skills. The SET rewards accuracy and pace under a multiple-choice mechanic, including transferring answers cleanly to a separate sheet. The Second Stage is a written paper, so method, legibility and working shown on the page start to matter in a way they never did in September.
• English cannot be the second subject. At the 1:2:2 weighting, the Second Stage English paper alone is worth twice the whole SET. A programme weighted towards maths is weighted against the way Wilson's ranks.
• Compensation stops after the SET. A boy who leans heavily on one subject may still pass the SET on total score, then fail Wilson's because a pass standard is required in each Second Stage paper separately.
• There is no specimen paper for the Second Stage. Wilson's publishes sample questions for the SET but states that no sample tests are made available for the Second Stage, so familiarity has to be built from the format description rather than from past papers.

Wilson's own reasoning for keeping two stages is worth reading, because it explains the design: the school says a boy "only has to perform reasonably well in the Selective Eligibility Test to be able to move through to the second stage, thus allowing him another chance to demonstrate his ability". A modest morning in September is recoverable. A modest morning in October is not.

For families comparing options, the girls' schools in the consortium work differently again — Nonsuch High School for Girls and Wallington High School for Girls hold their second stage on 26 September 2026 and combine scores by a different method. Our guide to the Sutton SET covers the consortium-wide process.

Wilson's School was inspected by Ofsted on 28 September 2022 and judged Outstanding in every category, including sixth form provision. Full details of the admission arrangements summarised here are published by the school on its Year 7 admissions process page, and the school should always be treated as the authority on its own dates and criteria. Our 11+ school guides cover the other selective schools families usually consider alongside it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Reviewed August 2026: paper formats, examination dates, the 1:2:2 weighting and every place count here were checked against Wilson's School's own admission arrangements, criteria and FAQs for September 2027 entry, and the Ofsted judgement against the inspection report.