11 Plus Standardised Scores Explained 2026

When your child receives their 11 plus results, the number on the letter will not be their raw exam mark — it will be a standardised score. The range depends on the test: Kent's scores run from 69 to 141 on each test, and Buckinghamshire's from 60 to 170. Understanding what it means, how it is calculated, and what score your target school actually needs is essential for interpreting results and deciding next steps. See our directory of 11+ school guides for the specific admission numbers and thresholds at each grammar school.

What Is a Standardised Score and Why Is It Used?

A standardised score converts a child's raw exam mark into a number that accounts for two key factors: how the overall cohort performed and the child's age at the time of the exam. Standardisation is applied because a child born in September can be almost a year older than a classmate born the following August, although both started school at the same time. A raw score approach would systematically disadvantage summer-born children.

The conversion process works in two stages. First, the raw score is age-standardised: the examiner looks at all children of exactly the same age in months who sat the paper and calculates what constitutes average performance for that group. A standardised score of 100 represents exactly average performance for a child's age group. Scores above 100 indicate above-average performance; scores below 100 indicate below-average performance. Second, the scores are placed on the test's own scale, which differs between tests: Kent's run from 69 to 141 and Buckinghamshire's from 60 to 170.

The key implication: a child born in August who scores the same raw mark as a child born in September will receive a higher standardised score, because their performance is measured against the lower average baseline for August-born children. This is sometimes called the "age allowance" or "age adjustment." It is designed so that no child is advantaged or disadvantaged because of their age.

How Is a Standardised Score Calculated? A Worked Example

Consider two children sitting the same GL Assessment paper with 80 questions. Both answer 62 correctly — a raw score of 62. Child A was born on 5 September 2014 and is 11 years and 0 months old at a mid-September 2025 exam. Child B was born on 3 August 2015 and is 10 years and 1 month old — nearly a full year younger.

GL Assessment's standardisation tables show the average raw score for each age group. Suppose the average for age 11:0 is 60 questions correct, while the average for age 10:1 is 50 questions correct. Child A scored 2 above average for their age, receiving a standardised score of around 103. Child B scored 12 above average for their age and might receive a standardised score of around 118. Both achieved the same raw mark, but standardised scores differ substantially because B's performance is measured against the lower baseline appropriate to their younger age.

This is why parents of summer-born children are sometimes told the 11 plus favours younger children through standardisation. In fact the adjustment is meant to be neutral: Buckinghamshire says standardisation makes sure that no child is unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged because of their age, and Queen Elizabeth's says its scores are standardised taking account of the ages of the candidates.

What Standardised Scores Do Grammar Schools Require?

What Do Published Cut-Off Scores Show?

A few schools publish the scores behind their decisions, and they show how differently a pass mark and a cut-off behave. Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet publishes five years of figures in its admissions guide:

Two things stand out. The minimum standard is not the score that wins a place: when the school raised its minimum for 2024 entry, the number of boys reaching it fell from 1,111 to 742, but the lowest score actually admitted moved only from 232 to 235. And the field keeps growing, from 2,928 boys in 2021 to 3,433 in 2025, while the school's admission number today is 180.

Tiffin School publishes a different kind of cut-off. Its initial qualifying score, the lowest score of a boy offered a place on 1 March, was 104 for 2024 entry and 100 for both 2025 and 2026, and by the end of Year 7 the lowest score of any boy offered a place had moved to 102 for 2024 entry and 98 for 2025 entry as further places were offered during the year (the 2026 figure is not yet published). Because each school standardises its own tests, neither figure can be compared with the other or with a GL Assessment score, and neither is a target to prepare for: both are set by the strength of that year's field.

What Does a Borderline Score Mean for Admissions?

Every year, thousands of children receive results that place them in a borderline zone — close to the qualifying threshold but not comfortably above it. Different schools handle borderline cases differently, and understanding the process matters when deciding whether to appeal, wait for a list movement, or redirect focus to other schools.

At threshold-based schools like Buckinghamshire grammars, any child scoring 121 or more is considered "grammar-able" and eligible for a grammar school place. For these schools, scoring 122 versus 130 makes no difference to eligibility — both children qualify. What matters is whether the child crosses the threshold. A child who scores below 121 is not qualified and cannot be offered a grammar place from a waiting list; the routes are a Selection Review, an appeal, or the places every Buckinghamshire grammar school keeps for at least six unqualified children eligible for the Pupil Premium.

At super-selective schools like QE Boys Barnet, Henrietta Barnett, and Tiffin, places go to the highest-ranked applicants, after each school's own priority groups, rather than to everyone above a pass mark; Queen Elizabeth's also sets a minimum combined score of 225 before a boy can be considered. One or two points can be the difference between an offer and rejection when 3,433 boys sat Queen Elizabeth's tests for 180 places, as they did for 2025 entry. For these schools, every additional standardised score point matters, and targeted preparation to maximise raw marks — and therefore standardised scores — is essential.

For context on specific school preparation strategies, see our complete grammar school guide, our QE Boys preparation guide, and our 11 plus tuition service. For information on how the GL Assessment format shapes preparation, see our GL Assessment vs CEM guide.

How to Use Your Child's Score to Plan Next Steps

A standardised score — whether a pass, a near-miss, or an outright fail — should feed directly into secondary school planning. A score of 118 in Buckinghamshire does not qualify, but historically most successful Selection Reviews there have been for children scoring between 110 and 120. A combined score of 230 at Queen Elizabeth's clears its 225 eligibility bar but was below 235, the lowest score gaining admission (excluding appeals) in both 2024 and 2025, and a strong score there says nothing about a Tiffin place, which is ranked on Tiffin's own tests and scale. A score in one area does not carry over to another: Kent, for example, only considers children tested and assessed suitable through its own test.

Most selective schools allow only one attempt at Year 7 entry: Henrietta Barnett's policy says a candidate may take its test once only, and the Sutton SET can be sat only once. The realistic responses to a near-miss are in-year or later entry where a school offers it, grammar entry to the sixth form, or independent school entrance at 11+ or 13+, where the selection criteria and exam formats differ from grammar school 11 plus tests.

Three specific statistics that parents find useful when contextualising scores: on a scale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, about 9% of a year group would score above 120 and about 2% above 130; real tests are not scaled against the national year group, though, and Buckinghamshire expects about 37% of its own candidates to reach 121; and about 5% of state-funded secondary pupils attended grammar schools in January 2019, according to the House of Commons Library, but places are concentrated in selective areas, so a qualifying score does not translate into a national percentile.

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