Tiffin Girls' Designated Area — 2026 Admissions Guide

Tiffin Girls' School in Kingston gives priority to girls living in a Designated Area of 44 named postcode districts, with a smaller Inner Area of 13 electoral wards inside it. A girl outside it can still register and sit the tests, but apart from looked-after girls and girls with an EHCP naming the school, she is ranked behind Designated Area girls, and since 2014 every place has gone to a girl living inside it. For 2026 entry, 1,468 girls sat Stage One for 180 places.

What Is the Tiffin Girls' Designated Area?

The school's determined admissions arrangements for September 2027 entry define the Designated Area, in paragraph 5.4.1, as 44 postal districts: KT1 to KT10, KT12, KT13, KT17 and KT19; TW1 to TW5 and TW7 to TW17; SW13 to SW15 and SW17 to SW20; W3, W4, W5, W7 and W13; SM4; and CR4. It is a list of postcode districts, not boroughs, so it cuts across council boundaries. It takes in Kingston upon Thames, Richmond upon Thames and much of Hounslow, Wandsworth and Merton, parts of Ealing (W3, W5, W7 and W13), parts of Sutton (KT4 Worcester Park and SM4), and in Surrey Long Ditton (the Surrey part of KT6), Thames Ditton and Molesey (KT7, KT8), Esher, Walton-on-Thames and Weybridge (KT10, KT12, KT13), Ewell and north Epsom (KT17, KT19, and the Epsom and Ewell side of KT4 Worcester Park; KT18 is not included) and Ashford, Sunbury and Shepperton (TW15 to TW17). KT11 (Cobham), TW6 (Heathrow) and SW16 (Streatham) are not on it, and nor is any Bromley (BR) or Reigate (RH) postcode. Families in Surrey beyond the list may run an independent application in parallel with the Kingston process: Dunottar School in Reigate, for instance, holds its Year 7 assessment day on Saturday 7 November 2026 for September 2027 entry, the same day as the Tiffin Girls' Stage Two test.

It is essential to check the school's determined admissions arrangements for your daughter's year of entry directly on the Tiffin Girls' School website, as the arrangements are reviewed every year. The document lists the exact postcode districts included. Do not rely on information from previous years without verifying it against the current published policy.

How Residency Is Defined and Verified

Living within the designated area is not simply a matter of having a local postcode. The school applies strict residency rules to prevent families from using temporary or fraudulent addresses. Key points include:

• The address that counts is your daughter's permanent place of residence, which you confirm on your home local authority's application form, due by 31 October. The local authority, not the school, verifies it.
• The address used must be the child's permanent home. Where parents live separately, your home local authority's own child's home address policy decides which address counts.
• Your local authority may ask for evidence of the address, and the school may also check its authenticity.
• If you move during the admissions process, you must follow your local authority's moving-home process. After the initial allocation on 1 March, the waiting list uses the girl's permanent place of residence at that time.
• If a fraudulent address is discovered at any point — even after a place has been offered — the offer could be withdrawn.

Families who have moved within the last 12 months, or who move after submitting the application form, should contact their home local authority about verifying the address: the school's own FAQs say it cannot help with that, although its admissions arrangements still ask parents to notify the school as well as the local authority of any change of address.

The Entrance Examination: What Year 6 Girls Need to Know

Tiffin Girls' School selects on academic ability, with priority for disadvantaged girls and for where a girl lives. For September 2027 entry, registration ran from 2 June to 12.00 noon on 1 September 2026 and has closed; Stage One is on Thursday 1 and Friday 2 October 2026, and Stage Two, for girls invited on or around 14 October, is on Saturday 7 November 2026. The school publishes each year's dates on its Year 7 Admissions page.

The school names no outside test provider, and its tests assess English and mathematics only. At Stage One the English paper is multiple choice and the maths paper mixes multiple-choice and numerical answers, each under 60 minutes and marked by computer. Stage Two is written English and maths of similar length, and its English paper includes a reading comprehension task and a creative writing task. There is no verbal or non-verbal reasoning paper and the school does not publish past papers, which means generic 11-plus preparation materials alone are unlikely to be sufficient.

Girls who sit Stage Two are ranked on a Combined Mark of 60% English and 40% maths, with the English mark from Stage Two and the maths mark from Stage Two and Stage One in a ratio of 3:1. After any girl with an EHCP naming the school, and looked-after or previously looked-after girls at or above the 350th-ranked mark, up to 60 places go to girls at or above that 350th-ranked mark who qualify for Pupil Premium and live in the Inner or Designated Area (with a 10% leeway below that mark), and then to girls living in the Inner Area. The remaining places go in rank order to girls in the Designated Area, and only then to girls outside it.

How Many Places Are Available and How Competitive Is It?

Tiffin Girls' School admits 180 girls into Year 7 each September, in six forms of 30. Its Admissions Information 2024-26 shows how many compete for them: for September 2026 entry, 1,468 girls sat Stage One, 474 sat Stage Two, and all 180 places went to girls living in the Designated Area or Inner Area. That is 8.2 girls tested for every place, or about 12 per cent of Stage One candidates offered one (our arithmetic).

The school is a state-funded selective grammar school and an academy, meaning there are no fees. Every girl studies 10 examined GCSE courses in Years 10 and 11, including the three separate sciences and French or Spanish, and then A-levels in the sixth form. The school is not affiliated with a specific exam board for all subjects, but commonly uses AQA, Edexcel, and OCR depending on the subject.

Our 11+ specialists help families understand the Tiffin Girls' designated area criteria and prepare students for the assessment itself. Our students have achieved a 95%+ offer rate across selective school entry, and we're rated 4.8/5 on Trustpilot. Book a free consultation here.

Because the school is non-fee-paying and highly regarded, demand significantly outstrips supply every year: 1,468 girls sat Stage One for 180 places for 2026 entry.

Applying Through Kingston's Secondary Transfer Process

Even if your daughter sits both stages of the Tiffin Girls' entrance examination, you must still name the school on your Local Authority (LA) Common Application Form (CAF). London families, Kingston's included, apply through the pan-London eAdmissions website (www.eadmissions.org.uk), and the national secondary school application deadline is 31 October each year.

Tiffin Girls' is an academy and its own admissions authority, but places are still coordinated through the LA on National Offer Day — 1 March (or the next working day). Families living outside Kingston but within the designated area apply through their own LA's CAF and name Tiffin Girls' as one of their preferences.

The Tiffin Girls' registration process (to sit the exam) has its own earlier deadline, separate from the LA application. Missing the exam registration deadline means your daughter cannot sit the test, regardless of where you live.

Common Misconceptions About the Designated Area

Several misunderstandings circulate among families new to the process. The most important ones to correct are:

Misconception 1: "Only girls who live in the designated area can sit the test." They are not stopped from sitting it. The school sets no limit on registrations, and its own FAQs describe the Inner Area and Designated Area together as a catchment area that allows it "to prioritise the allocation of places". But apart from looked-after girls and girls with an EHCP naming the school, girls outside it are ranked behind Designated Area girls, and since September 2014 no place has gone outside it.

Misconception 2: "Living closer to the school gives you an advantage." Within the Designated Area every postcode is treated equally, so living 1km or 8km away makes no difference to where a girl ranks. But living in the Inner Area, 13 electoral wards around the school, can decide a place: up to 60 of the 180 places go first to Pupil Premium girls in the catchment and then to Inner Area girls whose combined mark is at or above the 350th-ranked mark, so an Inner Area girl does not need to be in the top 180. Distance from the school also helps break a tie for the 60th or the last place.

Misconception 3: "The designated area changes every year." The list of 44 districts is identical in the arrangements for September 2026 and September 2027 entry, but the school does review its admissions arrangements annually. Always read the current year's published policy rather than relying on secondhand accounts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Understanding the designated area is genuinely the starting point for any Tiffin Girls' application: a girl outside it can sit the tests, but no place has gone outside it since 2014. Once you have confirmed your postcode district is on the list, the focus can shift entirely to helping your daughter prepare thoroughly for an examination that rewards strong literacy, mathematical reasoning, and clear written expression. Leading Tuition works with families across south-west London and Surrey on exactly this kind of focused, exam-specific preparation. If you are at the early planning stage, the most useful next step is simply to read the school's current admissions policy in full and note every deadline in your calendar.