Dame Alice Owen's School 11+ guide

Key information for Dame Alice Owen's School

• Address: Dame Alice Owen's School, Dugdale Hill Lane, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, EN6 2DU

• Number of pupils: 1,400+

• Admissions contact: [email protected]

• Number of academic places in Year 7: 65 (33% of total intake)

• 11+ exam: GL Assessment (Part 1) and school’s own (Part 2)

• Catchment area: yes

What’s on the Dame Alice Owen’s School entrance exam?

The Governors’ Entrance Exam for Dame Alice Owen’s School consists of three papers, separated into Part 1 and Part 2.

Part 1

All children who have been registered for an academic place by the deadline will be invited to take Part 1 at Dame Alice Owen’s School.

Part 1 consists of one verbal reasoning paper. It is provided by GL Assessment – one of the UK’s leading providers of 11 plus exams.

Verbal reasoning is not taught on the national curriculum. It’s a type of reasoning which assesses how well your child can apply logic and solve problems with written information, such as letters, words, symbols and numbers. Many grammar schools use 11 plus verbal reasoning papers because they indicate potential, rather than learned knowledge.

The paper takes 50 minutes to complete and consists of 80 multiple-choice questions. Your child will be given a question booklet and an answer sheet for each paper. The answer sheet is marked using OMR (optical mark recognition), which scans the marks your child has made to indicate their chosen answer(s) for each question.

Part 2

After the verbal reasoning test, children’s scores are placed into rank order. The top 325 children are then invited back to Part 2 of the Dame Alice Owen’s School entrance exam.

Part 2 consists of an English paper and a maths paper which are created internally by school staff. The English paper consists of a reading comprehension task and a creative writing task. The [maths]https://atomlearning.com/blog/11-plus-maths) paper tests your child’s knowledge and understanding of the concepts taught on the Key Stage 2 national curriculum.

Both papers in Part 2 take one hour to complete.

How are academic places allocated at Dame Alice Owen’s School?

There are up to 65 places available for children selected by academic ability. Children are allocated places based on their rank order from their total combined mark in the two parts of the school entrance exam.

If two or more children have the same total combined mark, the verbal reasoning mark is used as the tie breaker. If this mark is also the same, the English mark is used as the tie breaker.

Historical information can be useful as a guide to how many children take the exam each year, and how many children are offered places. Here is some of the key historical data for academic place admissions at Dame Alice Owen’s School in the last few years:

• 2023: 1,007 children were registered to take the entrance exam. 65 academic places were offered up to and including the total ranked position number 102.

• 2022: 1,011 children were registered to take the entrance exam. 65 academic places were offered up to and including the total ranked position number 102.

• 2021: 1,021 children were registered to take the entrance exam. 65 academic places were offered up to and including the total ranked position number 85.

• 2020: 1,083 children were registered to take the entrance exam. 65 academic places were offered up to and including the total ranked position number 114.

Does Dame Alice Owen's School have a catchment area?

There is a catchment area at Dame Alice Owen's School. This is split into ‘priority areas’. Only children who live within the priority areas, or are educated within the London Borough of Islington, are eligible for academic places at Dame Alice Owen’s School.

The priority areas cover:

• Hertfordshire parishes and towns: Aldenham, Bayford, Brickendon Liberty, Colney Heath, Elstree & Borehamwood, Essendon, Hatfield, Little Berkhamsted, London Colney, North Mymms, Northaw & Cuffley, Potters Bar, South Mimms and Ridge, Shenley, and Welwyn Garden City

• Postcodes within the London Boroughs of Barnet, Enfield and Islington: EN2 (sectors 7 and 8), EN4, EN5, N11 (sectors 1 and 3), N12, N13 (sectors 4 and 5), N14, N20, N21, and all London Borough of Islington postcodes

Atom’s top tips to prepare for the entrance exam

The Governors’ Entrance Exam at Dame Alice Owen’s School is designed to be challenging. The school uses it to identify the most able children in their year group. Here are our top tips to help you and your child feel confident for exam day.

Bitesize learning

It’s important to build a good knowledge base before the exam. Using a ‘little and often’ approach when learning is key – our brains encode new information more effectively when dealing with smaller ‘chunks’ of information. For children aged 10–11, child psychologists recommend regular study sessions of 20–30 minutes.

Atom Home makes learning a more enjoyable process for your child. They'll explore exciting worlds full of interactive questions, earning coins to spend in the Atom shop. Atom adapts to your child, showing them questions at just the right level of difficulty to keep them motivated.

Read widely

Part 1 of the Dame Alice Owen’s School entrance exam tests verbal reasoning. This involves analysing and interpreting written information. Regular reading is a great way to help your child build these skills.

Encourage them to read books from different genres and by a diverse range of authors. Increasing the variety of your child’s reading will help them understand different styles, tones and purposes. Meanwhile, reading a little every day will help widen their vocabulary, sharpen their analytical thinking, and enhance their imagination.

Refine exam technique

When your child feels confident with the topics they’ve learnt in Year 5, they’ll be ready to put their knowledge to the test.

Practice tests can help your child develop problem-solving skills and build confidence working under test conditions. They’re also a great way to consolidate learning and highlight knowledge gaps for further improvement.

With Atom Home, you'll unlock online mock tests and printable practice papers for 11 plus verbal reasoning, English and maths. Enjoy automatic marking and progress tracking with the online tests, and help your child get familiar with the real exam experience with printable practice papers.

Celebrate progress

Setting regular, achievable goals and celebrating your child’s progress – no matter how big or small – will help keep their motivation high.

Make sure to encourage a growth mindset. This means celebrating effort, as well as achievement! When your child makes mistakes or struggles to understand a particular topic, help them understand that they’ll improve through practice. Regular praise will help your child improve their resilience when tackling new and challenging topics.