Sutton SET Exam 2026: A Complete Guide for Parents

The Selective Eligibility Test (SET) is the shared first-stage 11+ exam for six schools in the London Borough of Sutton, sat on Tuesday 15 September 2026 for entry in September 2027. It decides eligibility, not places. Five of the six then set a second written exam - on 26 September 2026 for the two girls' schools and 3 October 2026 for the three boys' schools - and each school weights the two rounds differently.

Updated for 2027 entry — August 2026. The SET group is six schools, not the five usually listed, and the second stage runs as two separate exams on two dates — 26 September and 3 October 2026 — with Greenshaw sitting none at all. This update adds the per-school weighting table, taken from each school's own determined arrangements: Wallington County Grammar's 2027/28 arrangements give its split as two fifths SET and three fifths Second Stage. Sutton Grammar's postcode-tied total is 85 places — 75 on rank order plus up to 10 Pupil Premium places in the same postcodes. None of these schools allocates places by sibling or residence priority.

Which schools use the SET, and which of them make you sit a second exam

Six schools share the SET, and it is worth being precise about which, because most guides are not. The consortium's own FAQ names them: Greenshaw High School, Nonsuch High School for Girls, Sutton Grammar School, Wallington County Grammar School, Wallington High School for Girls and Wilson's School. Five of those are grammar schools. Greenshaw is a comprehensive, and it uses the SET for one narrow purpose only - to identify children eligible for its 60 ability places.

The distinction that matters more is what happens next. Greenshaw stops there: the consortium confirms that "Greenshaw High School does not hold a Second Stage Entrance Examination". The other five all do, and they split into two groups that never meet.

The three boys' schools - Sutton Grammar, Wallington County Grammar and Wilson's - sit a common paper. The consortium's wording is careful: "The test will be common to all three schools, but the criteria applied to be of selective ability will be determined by each school individually." The two girls' schools share more than that: "Both the test and the criteria applied to be of selective ability will be common to both schools." So a girl who reaches the standard is of selective ability at both Nonsuch and Wallington Girls simultaneously; a boy can pass at one of his three and fail at another on the same script.

Wilson's puts that bluntly on its own site: the three boys' schools "have different Admissions Criteria and different methods of determining a SET pass, combining the scores from the SET and Second Stage Examinations and of calculating the final outcome", and so "it is possible that a boy may pass the examinations for one of our schools and not for the other".

The two second-stage dates, and why one date is wrong

For entry in September 2027 the timetable published by the consortium runs as follows.

The two second-stage dates are a week apart and are not interchangeable. This is the single most common error in published SET guides: at least one well-known 11+ site lists the second stage as 26 September 2026 with no qualification, which is the girls' date presented as though it applied to everyone. A family with a son who diarises 26 September has the wrong Saturday.

Results move quickly in between. The SET outcome arrives "during the week after the Selective Eligibility Test", and second-stage outcomes are emailed "by the end of October", deliberately before the CAF closes on 31 October so that families can rank their preferences knowing where their child stands.

How much is the SET actually worth at each school?

This is the question that decides how a family should spend the autumn, and it is the one almost no guide answers. The consortium refuses to generalise, and says why: the rank order "will be determined on the basis of the aggregate scores of the Selective Eligibility Test and the papers which make up the shared Second Stage Entrance Examination. Each school may apply their own specific ratio and you are advised to look further at the websites of the individual schools."

Following that advice to each school's own published arrangements produces the table below. The differences are not marginal. At Wilson's the SET carries a fifth of the weight; at Sutton Grammar it carries twice that.

The final column is arithmetic, not a quotation: 1 part in 5 at Wilson's, 4 parts in 10 at Sutton Grammar and Wallington County, and half a SET against two full second-stage papers at the girls' schools, which is one part in five again. The schools publish the formulae; the percentages are ours, and any family relying on them should read the school's own wording, which is quoted in full above.

One note on the Wallington County row. That school states its split in words rather than as a ratio, and it states it in the governing document: its determined Admission Arrangements 2027/28, adopted by the Greenshaw Learning Trust board on 13 February 2026, say that "the total standardised score is made up of two fifths from the SET total score and three fifths from the Second Stage total score". That is the same two-to-three split the school set out for 2026 entry, now carried into the determined arrangements for this round. Its 2027 FAQ page carries no figure of its own - it links out to the consortium's shared document - which is why the arrangements rather than the FAQ are cited here. And a ratio tells you how the marks are combined, not what score is needed - see below.

Why nobody can tell you the pass mark

Families arrive at this question expecting a number, and there is a straightforward reason there is not one. The consortium's answer is unambiguous: "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 holds at the second stage: "Pass marks will be decided by each individual school after the papers have been marked. Wilson's School, Sutton Grammar School and Wallington County Grammar School may not necessarily set the same pass mark."

So a published Sutton "pass mark" is either a figure from a previous year that carried no promise of recurring, or an invention. Both are common. The useful planning question is not what the threshold will be but how far above a bare pass a child needs to sit, and that is answered by the allocation rules rather than by the mark.

Two mechanical points do help. Scores are age-standardised, and the consortium gives the rule in full: "There is no fixed amount for the age adjustment. It is calculated for each test separately." A late-August birthday is accounted for, then, but the adjustment is worked out afresh for each paper and its size is never published. And within the SET the papers compensate: "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 every school at the second stage. Wilson's requires candidates to "pass both the English and the Mathematics papers" and to meet the overall mark; the two girls' schools require candidates to "pass both parts of the NWSSEE". Sutton Grammar does not impose a per-paper hurdle.

What is in each paper

The two rounds are different exercises, and preparing for one is not preparing for the other.

The SET is two multiple-choice papers, Mathematics and English, each "between 40 and 50 minutes", with a rest and toilet break in between. There is no verbal reasoning and no non-verbal reasoning - the consortium says the tests "do not include verbal reasoning or non-verbal reasoning", which sets Sutton apart from reasoning-led systems elsewhere in London. Answers go on a separate sheet by filling in a lozenge for A, B, C, D or E, and changes must be rubbed out as fully as possible, so a child who has never used a machine-marked answer sheet should practise on one. Content is "broadly based on the Key Stage 2 curriculum", and no specimen papers are published.

The second stage is again Maths and English, but "are not multiple choice" and each paper runs "around 45 minutes to 1 hour". That is the shift families underestimate: written answers, working shown, extended responses. No sample tests are made available for this round either.

Papers are marked "twice as a matter of course: firstly by machine and then by hand", and there is no re-mark service and no special consideration.

How places are actually allocated once the tests are over

Reaching the standard is not an offer. Each school then applies its own oversubscription criteria, and these differ so sharply that a child's address can matter enormously at one school and not at all at another. There is no shared Sutton catchment, and none of these schools gives sibling priority.

Wilson's is the outlier and the reason blanket statements about Sutton residency are wrong. Its 2027 arrangements set an admission number of 186 and allocate places to looked-after children, then 14 places for boys eligible for free school meals, then 9 for sport aptitude and 9 for music aptitude, then "remaining places... according to their position in the rank order of standardised score in the entrance tests". Address appears nowhere. A boy in Croydon and a boy in Carshalton are ranked identically on score.

Sutton Grammar works differently again. Its determined policy sets the admission number at 150 and reserves 75 places - half the intake - for boys living in named postcodes, with up to 10 further places for Pupil Premium boys in the same postcodes. It also adjusts marks for "a boy's age and income deprivation score", using the government's 2019 IDACI index. Ties are broken by straight-line distance to the front door in Manor Lane. Lower intake figures for this school circulate in local authority material; where published sources disagree, the school's own determined arrangements are the governing document, and they set the number at 150.

The two girls' schools share a test and a standard but not a catchment. Nonsuch links up to 125 places to residence within 5.25 km of its front door; Wallington Girls links up to 110 to a 6.7 km radius of its main entrance. Both hold 35 places for Pupil Premium children irrespective of address, and both apply a notable concession there: a Pupil Premium candidate whose score is "up to 20% lower than the standardised pass mark" can still be deemed of selective ability. Both measure residence as at 31 October 2026.

If you are weighing these schools against each other, our Sutton grammar schools guide compares them side by side, and there are individual guides to Wilson's School, Nonsuch High School and Wallington High School for Girls.

Registering: the two steps, and the one that is missed

Registration and application are separate, and both are compulsory. The SET registration form opens on 1 May 2026 and closes at midnight on 31 July 2026. One form covers all six schools - "You only need to complete the online Registration Form once" - and it doubles as the supplementary form for every school in the group. No late registrations are accepted "under any circumstances".

If your child needs access arrangements, the deadline is earlier and easily missed: supporting evidence must reach the consortium by 12 June 2026, submitted by the primary school's SENCO rather than by you.

The second step is the Common Application Form, submitted through your home local authority by 31 October 2026. Naming the school is what makes the application exist. Passing both rounds without listing the school on the CAF produces nothing at all.

Three constraints catch families out. The SET can be sat once only - "Children can only sit the Selective Eligibility Test once" - so there is no retake and no second attempt in a later round. It is for children in Year 6 at the date of the test, with an expected date of birth between 1 September 2015 and 31 August 2016. And there is no overseas provision: a child must be physically present at one of the six schools to sit it.

The consortium also makes a request worth honouring. It asks families to register only if genuinely interested, noting that "Parents using our tests as a free 'mock' for more distant grammar schools or for independent schools generate unnecessary costs for us", because second-stage scripts are marked by teaching professionals.

What this means for preparation

The weighting table has practical consequences. A family targeting Sutton Grammar or Wallington County, where the SET carries 40% of the final aggregate, cannot treat September as a formality to be scraped through; a family targeting Wilson's or either girls' school, where it carries 20%, has more room to recover in October but a harder written round to survive. A family listing schools across both groups is preparing for both weightings at once, and for two different Saturdays.

The format shift matters more than the content shift. Both rounds draw on the Key Stage 2 curriculum, so the mathematics and the comprehension are not new. What changes is that the second stage asks for written answers under time pressure, with no options to eliminate, roughly a fortnight or three weeks after a multiple-choice paper. Children who have practised only multiple-choice arrive at the second stage having never written a full solution against the clock.

Because neither round publishes specimen papers, preparation has to be built from the Key Stage 2 curriculum and from timed practice in both formats rather than from past papers. Our 11+ tuition programmes work to the schools a family is actually naming on the CAF, and families in Sutton and neighbouring boroughs can work with us in person or online. The full official position on every point above is published by the consortium in the Sutton SET frequently asked questions, which is the document to check before acting on anything you read anywhere else, including here.

Reviewed August 2026 against the determined admission arrangements for 2027 entry published by Wilson's School, Sutton Grammar School, Wallington County Grammar School, Nonsuch High School for Girls and Wallington High School for Girls, together with the consortium's SET and second-stage FAQs for 2027 entry, with every date, ratio, admission number and catchment distance on this page confirmed at the school that publishes it. Wallington County Grammar School's two-fifths to three-fifths split was read directly from its determined Admission Arrangements 2027/28, published by the Greenshaw Learning Trust.

Frequently asked questions