11 Plus Pass Marks and Qualifying Scores by Area

Search for the 11 plus pass mark and you will be told, confidently and repeatedly, that it is "around 80%". That number appears on some of the largest tuition sites in the country. It is not published by a single local authority, consortium or examination board in England. We looked for it on the official admissions pages for Buckinghamshire, Kent, Medway, Lincolnshire, Bexley, Essex, Birmingham, Trafford and Wirral, and there is no percentage threshold on any of them. There is no percentage threshold because percentages are not the unit selective admissions runs on.

What councils and consortia actually publish is a standardised score: a mark that has been converted so that a child's age in years and months is taken into account, then compared against everyone else who sat the same paper. The thresholds are numbers like 121, 220, 303 and 332. Some are fixed and stated in advance. Some are decided after the tests are marked, once the authority can see where the cohort landed. And in a surprising number of areas, no threshold is published at all, even though other sites will happily quote you one.

This guide does three things the rest of the results for this query do not. It answers the percentage question head on. It sets out the qualifying scores area by area with the official page each figure was read on, including two places where the widely repeated numbers are wrong. And it separates the areas where a published threshold genuinely exists from the ones where the "pass mark" is an output of the cohort, or simply not public information at all.

Is 70% enough to pass the 11+? The short answer

The honest answer is that nobody can tell you, and anybody who does is guessing. Seventy per cent of the raw marks on a paper is not a quantity that admissions authorities work with. Your child's raw score is converted before anyone looks at it, and the conversion depends on the age of every child who sat the paper and on how hard that particular paper turned out to be.

The practical consequence is that the same 70% can produce very different outcomes:

• A younger child in the year group gets a larger age adjustment than an older one, so two children with identical raw marks can end up several standardised points apart.
• A paper that the whole cohort found difficult will convert 70% into a higher standardised score than an easy paper would.
• The threshold that standardised score is measured against is set locally, so it differs from county to county and can move from one entry year to the next.

So the question "is 70% a pass" cannot be answered, but a better question can be. Ask instead: what standardised score does my area require, is that figure fixed or set annually, and how many children typically reach it? That is a question with real answers, and the rest of this guide supplies them.

Why there is no national 11 plus pass mark

There is no national pass mark because there is no national 11 plus. Selective admission survives in around 36 English local authority areas plus a scattering of individual schools, and each of those areas designs its own arrangements. Test formats differ, subject weightings differ, and the body that sets the threshold differs.

GL Assessment, whose papers are used across much of the country, is explicit that it supplies the assessment rather than the cut-off. Its guidance describes a Standard Age Score as a conversion of a pupil's raw score into a standardised score that takes account of the pupil's age in years and months, with an average of 100. What counts as qualifying is then decided by the local authority, the consortium or the school's own trust.

That is why the weightings vary so much. Buckinghamshire builds its Secondary Transfer Test Score from 50% verbal skills, 25% mathematical skills and 25% non-verbal skills. Bexley uses the same 50/25/25 split across verbal, numerical and non-verbal. Medway weights its papers English times two, Mathematics times two and Reasoning times one. Essex, through the CSSE, uses only English and Mathematics, each worth 50%. Four areas, four different definitions of a total score, and therefore four incomparable thresholds. If you want the format detail behind these, our guide to the 11 plus exam covers what each area actually asks children to sit.

11 plus qualifying scores by area, with sources

Every figure below was read on the official page cited beside it. Where a number in wide circulation disagrees with the official page, we say so.

Buckinghamshire: 121. The council states that if a child's Secondary Transfer Test Score is 121 or above, they qualify for grammar school. Standardised scores fall between 60 and 170, and around 37% of children are expected to score 121 or above. The page was last updated on 9 April 2026. Source: Buckinghamshire Council, marking the Secondary Transfer Test.

Kent: 332 total, with no single score lower than 108 (2025 threshold). Children receive three standardised scores, in English, maths and reasoning, plus an aggregate. For the 2025 threshold, a grammar school assessment required a total of 332 or more with no single score below 108. Individual scores range from 69 to 141, and the highest possible total is 423. The 2026 threshold is due in October 2026. Source: Kent County Council, Kent Test results.

Correction worth noting: Atom Learning, the page most prominently cited in Google's AI Overview for this query, states the minimum single score as 109. Kent's own page says 108. Where a tuition site and a council disagree about the council's own threshold, use the council. There is more Kent-specific detail in our Kent Test guide.

Medway: 481 for 2026 admissions. Medway sets a minimum total weighted score every year. Recent figures are 481 for 2026 admissions, 482 for 2025 and 492 for 2024. The tests are designed to assess the equivalent of 26% of children attending Medway maintained schools as suitable for grammar. Source: Medway Council, the Medway Test.

Lincolnshire: 220. Answering "what is the pass mark" directly, the Lincolnshire Consortium of Grammar Schools states that the qualifying level is a total standardised score of at least 220 across both papers. The Consortium also notes that the tests identify potential rather than attainment, may be taken only once in an academic year, and that raw scores are not released to parents. Source: the Lincolnshire Consortium selection process FAQ at grammarschools.lincs.sch.uk.

Bexley: no fixed pass mark. All children who take the test are ranked in order of their total age-standardised score, and the council, together with the four grammar schools, then determines the selective score. The average total weighted age-standardised score is 200, with roughly two-thirds of candidates scoring between 170 and 230. In 2025, 5,866 children sat the test, 2,070 reached the selective standard, and 800 grammar places were available. Source: Bexley Council, about the selection test.

Essex (CSSE): 303 minimum, but not a guarantee. The CSSE Information Guide for 2027 entry states that offers are not made to any child scoring under a total standardised score of 303, with successful appeal places awarded outside that criterion. The same guide is careful to add that the actual cut-off scores are only known after national offer day in March, and that there is no guarantee of a place based on historical information. Candidates sit English and Mathematics, each sixty minutes, with ten minutes additional reading time for English.

King Edward VI schools, Birmingham: 205 qualifying, 224 priority. The academy trust board determined that the qualifying score for entry in September 2025 would remain at 205, with a priority score of 224. This is a useful example of an area using two distinct thresholds: one to qualify, and a higher one that carries priority in the allocation of places.

How to read the table: fixed thresholds versus annually set cut-offs

The figures above look like the same kind of thing. They are not, and this is the distinction that most competing pages skip.

Fixed, published thresholds are stated in advance and hold steady from year to year. Buckinghamshire's 121, Lincolnshire's 220, the CSSE minimum of 303 and King Edward VI's 205 all sit here. You can prepare against them, because the authority has told you the number before your child sits the test.

Annually set or ranked cut-offs work in the opposite direction. Bexley ranks every candidate and then decides the selective score. Medway sets a minimum total weighted score each year, which is exactly why it has moved from 492 to 482 to 481 across three admission rounds. Kent publishes its threshold in October, after the tests have been marked. In these areas the pass mark is an output of the cohort, not a target set in advance. Quoting last year's number as though it were this year's is the single most common error on this topic.

That distinction matters for how you prepare. Against a fixed threshold, you are aiming at a stated bar. Against a ranked cut-off, you are competing with the children who happen to sit the test in the same year as yours, which makes consistent performance across full papers more informative than any single score. Timed mock tests under exam conditions are the closest proxy families have to that.

Areas where no official pass mark is published at all

There is a third category, and it is the one where misinformation is thickest.

Trafford Council's grammar entrance test page publishes no qualifying score. It says only that to be considered for a grammar school place, a child must first pass the entrance test for that school. It lists test dates (Trafford Consortium on 15 September 2025, Loreto Grammar and St Ambrose College on 19 September 2025 for September 2026 entry) and nothing resembling the figure of 334 that circulates widely online.

Wirral Council, writing about assessment for grammar school education starting in September 2027, publishes no qualifying score either. It confirms that the assessment is administered by Quest Assessments on 15 September 2026, and it makes a point that applies everywhere: meeting the standard does not guarantee a place, and an oversubscribed school will use other criteria to decide who is offered places.

Redbridge is frequently quoted at 104 by tuition sites. We could not locate that figure on an official council or school page.

If a number is not published by the authority that sets it, the responsible thing is to say so rather than to fill the gap with a plausible-looking figure.

In these areas, the useful preparation question is not "what is the score" but "how many children apply, how many places exist, and what are the oversubscription criteria". Those are published, and they tell you more.

How standardised scores work, and why percentages are the wrong unit

Standardisation does two jobs. First, it adjusts for age, so that a child born in August is not penalised against a child born the previous September. Second, it places every child on a common scale where 100 is the average, which allows scores from different papers to be added together sensibly.

A worked example, using invented numbers to show the mechanism rather than to predict anything: imagine two children each score 42 out of 60 on the same reasoning paper, which is 70%. One is 10 years 2 months old at the time of the test, the other 11 years 1 month. After the age adjustment, the younger child's standardised score comes out higher, because the same performance from a younger child is more unusual. Neither child ever sees the 70%. The admissions authority sees only the standardised figures.

This is also why score conversion tables published by tuition companies should be treated as illustrations, not lookups. The conversion is recalculated for each live paper against the actual cohort. Nobody outside the awarding organisation has the real table, and the ones circulating online are demonstrations. Understanding which board your area uses helps here, and our comparison of GL, CEM and ISEB explains how the marking differs.

What counts as a good 11 plus score: 111, 121, 129 and above

On a scale where 100 is average, a rough reading of standardised scores looks like this:

1. Around 100: in line with the national average for the age group.
2. Around 111: comfortably above average, and enough to qualify in some partially selective arrangements, though rarely in the most competitive counties.
3. Around 121: the qualifying line in Buckinghamshire, where roughly 37% of children are expected to reach it. In more competitive areas this is respectable but not a safe margin.
4. 129 and above: a strong score in most areas, and the sort of level that tends to sit above ranked cut-offs rather than just at them.

Treat these as orientation only. A score of 121 means something specific in Buckinghamshire and nothing in particular in Bexley, where totals are built differently and the bar is decided after the fact. Comparing a single-subject standardised score against a multi-paper total, as some online score calculators encourage, produces numbers that mean nothing at all. Tracking progress over time against full papers in your own area's format is more informative than any one figure.

Qualifying does not mean a place

Reaching the qualifying standard entitles your child to be considered. It does not entitle them to a place. Bexley's own 2025 figures make the point plainly: 2,070 children met the selective standard, and there were 800 grammar places available. Wirral says the same thing in words, noting that oversubscribed schools use other criteria to decide who is offered places. The CSSE adds that actual cut-off scores are only known after national offer day in March.

Kent spells out the consequence for families who apply anyway. If a child is not assessed as suitable for grammar, you can still name a Kent grammar school on your application, but that application will be refused when places are offered on 1 March 2027, with a right of appeal.

So the sequence is: sit the test, receive a standardised score, be assessed against a threshold or a rank, then enter the general admissions round where distance, siblings and other published criteria apply. Build a preference list that works at every stage, not just the first one.

When these numbers change and how this page is maintained

The annually set thresholds land in autumn. Kent emails results on Thursday 15 October 2026 and will publish its 2026 threshold in October 2026. CSSE candidates for 2027 entry sit on Saturday 19 September 2026 with results emailed on 12 October 2026. Medway sets a fresh minimum weighted score each admission round.

Because of that, this page is reviewed each October, when the new thresholds appear, and again in spring after national offer day. Any figure we cannot find on an official page is reported as unpublished rather than estimated. If you are working out where your child currently stands against a real paper rather than a rumour, you can start a free account and use full-length papers in your area's format.

11 plus pass mark FAQs

Is there a percentage pass mark for the 11 plus?

No. No local authority or consortium we checked publishes a percentage threshold. Thresholds are published as standardised scores, because raw percentages do not account for age or paper difficulty.

Why do so many sites say 80%?

It is a figure that has been repeated between tuition sites until it acquired the appearance of a fact. It does not trace back to a primary source. Ask any page quoting a percentage which authority publishes it.

What is the highest possible 11 plus score?

It depends entirely on the area, because totals are constructed differently. In Kent, individual scores range from 69 to 141 and the highest possible total is 423. In Buckinghamshire, standardised scores fall between 60 and 170.

Can my child retake the test if they miss the threshold?

Generally no within the same admissions round. Lincolnshire, for example, states that its tests may only be taken once in the academic year. Some areas operate a review or appeal process instead, which is not the same as a retake.

How should we prepare if our area does not publish a pass mark?

Focus on full-paper consistency rather than a target number. Where cut-offs are ranked or unpublished, repeated timed practice under real conditions, using mock exams in the correct format, is a better guide than any score you can look up.