Rugby High School 11+ guide

Atom Learning is partnered with Rugby High School. You can read more about our partnership here.

Thinking about applying to Rugby High School? Find out everything you need to know about admissions in 2025–2026 and how to prepare your child for success in the 11 plus entrance exam.

• Address: Longrood Rd, Bilton, Rugby CV22 7RE
• Number of pupils: approx 900
• Admissions contact: [email protected]
• Number of places in Year 7: 120
• 11+ exam: West Midlands Grammar School Entrance Test
• Catchment area: yes

Dates for your diary

• Tuesday 6th May 2025: registration opens for the West Midlands Grammar Schools' Entrance Test
• Friday 13th June 2025: reasonable adjustments deadline
• Friday 27th June 2025: test registration closes
• Saturday 13th September 2025: West Midlands Grammar Schools’ Entrance Test
• Friday 17th October 2025: parents receive test results
• Friday 31st October 2025: secondary school applications close at 5pm
• Monday 2nd March 2026: secondary school national offers day

About Rugby High School

Founded in 1903, Rugby High School is a selective girls’ grammar school located in Bilton, Warwickshire with an attached mixed sixth form. The school aims to educate students as ‘ambitious and creative thinkers’ who strive for academic excellence in their studies and a wide range of extracurricular activities.

How to apply to Rugby High School

Rugby High School is a selective state school. This means that your child will need to take the 11 plus exam to be eligible for a place in Year 7.

Rugby High School is a member of the West Midlands Grammar Schools partnership. The partnership consists of 19 schools across Birmingham, Warwickshire, Shropshire, Walsall and Wolverhampton. All 19 schools share the same entrance test. This means that your child will only need to take the test once – even if you’re applying to multiple schools in the partnership.

The registration portal for the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test opens on Tuesday 6th May 2025 and closes on Friday 27th June. After registration, your child will be invited to take the 11 plus exam at one of the participating schools. They will be allocated a test venue and a slot to take the test in September 2025. You’ll then receive your child’s results in mid-October.

To apply to Rugby High School, you’ll need to name the school as one of your preferred schools on the secondary school common application form. This will be available on your home council website from early September and must be submitted by 31st October 2025.

Remember – passing the 11 plus doesn’t guarantee that your child will be allocated a place at your preferred school. Many grammar schools are often oversubscribed with qualified children. Schools and their admissions authorities work through admissions criteria to prioritise children for places. We’ve included the admissions criteria for Rugby High School below.

What subjects are on the entrance exam?

Rugby High School uses the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test.

The exam consists of two one-hour papers. These papers are divided into smaller, individually-timed sections which assess:

• English comprehension
• Maths
• Verbal reasoning
• Non-verbal reasoning

All of the questions in the West Midlands Grammar Schools’ Entrance Test are multiple-choice. Your child will have separate answer sheets which they will use to mark their answers. These are marked electronically.

How does place allocation work at Rugby High School?

Your child’s marks in the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test are weighted for each section:

• English and verbal reasoning: 50%
• Non-verbal reasoning: 25%
• Maths: 25%

These weighted scores are age-standardised to ensure that younger children aren’t disadvantaged.

Rugby High School will then set a qualifying score. This isn’t always decided until after the entrance test takes place. As a guide, the minimum qualifying score for entry to Rugby High School in 2024 was 212.

If the number of children who have achieved the qualifying score exceeds the number of places available, Rugby High School applies oversubscription criteria. Children are prioritised for places in the following order:

1. Looked-After or Previously Looked-After Children who achieve the automatic qualifying score or up to 20 marks below it.
2. Children living in the priority areas who are eligible for Free School Meals and who achieve the automatic qualifying score or up to 15 marks below it.
3. Children living in area 1 (east Warwickshire) who achieve the automatic qualifying score or above.
4. Children living in area 2 (eastern priority circle) who achieve the automatic qualifying score or above.
5. Children living inside or outside the priority areas who achieve the automatic qualifying score or above.
6. Children living inside or outside the priority areas who score below the automatic qualifying score, but above the required minimum academic standard for the waiting list.

Those with the highest scores in each category are given highest priority for a place. In the case of children with the same score in any of these categories, the child living nearest the school in a straight line is given highest priority.

What is the priority/catchment area for Rugby High School?

The overall priority area for Rugby High School is based on a circle with a radius of 10.004 miles drawn from the Rugby Water Tower. This circle is split into two:

-Priority area 1 (east Warwickshire): the town of Rugby and its surrounding villages -Priority area 2 (eastern priority circle): the rest of the circle

You'll need to submit evidence to prove that your child lives within the priority areas by the end of December 2023.

Atom’s top tips for 11 plus preparation

The 11 plus is designed to select the most academically able children in the local area. 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 11 plus. 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

11 plus exams test your child’s ability to analyse and interpret 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 the Devon 11 plus. 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.