St Paul's Girls' School

St Paul's Girls' admissions guide

SPGS sets three written papers, not two. What General Comprehension actually is, how the ISEB stage fits in, and the dates for 2027 entry.

By Richard and Freddie, who joined The Perse in 2019 and left in 2026 after Year 13 to become expert admission tutors.
Last checked 11 September 2026

Most preparation for St Paul's Girls' covers English and maths. The School sets a third written paper, it is worth a third of the written assessment, and it is neither.

This guide covers 11+ entry into Year 7 for September 2027, and 16+ entry into the sixth form. Those are the only two ways in.

Not the same school as St Paul's School

The practical difference is the one that costs a year if you get it wrong. St Paul's Girls' runs 11+ and 16+ only. The boys' school runs 7+, 11+, 13+ and 16+, with 13+ as its main external round. A family that has been reading about the boys' school arrives here planning for a 13+ that does not exist, and by then Year 6 has gone.

The three stages

Stage 1 — the ISEB Common Pre-Test. Adaptive and computer-based, covering verbal reasoning, mathematics and non-verbal reasoning. Sat at an approved centre or on site at the School, and it must be done by 18 November 2026.

Stage 2 — three written papers, one day.

Two rows there deserve a second look. The maths paper is explicitly in two halves, and the second half tests whether a candidate can pick up an idea she has not been taught in the middle of a timed paper — which is a different thing from knowing the syllabus well. And the third row is not a subject at all.

Stage 3 — interview. Around twenty minutes, assessing creativity, engagement and the capacity for independent thought. Offers weigh all three stages together with a school reference.

The third paper is the one to plan for

General Comprehension does not test English and it does not test maths. It gives a candidate unfamiliar material — a chart, a passage, a set of figures, usually gathered around a theme — and asks what it means.

That is a genuinely trainable skill. It is also one almost nothing sold as 11+ preparation includes, because it does not map to a school subject. A girl drilled hard in English and maths can sit down in front of it having never seen anything of the kind, in the third hour of a long morning.

Dates for September 2027 entry

The application fee is £265, non-refundable, and waived for candidates applying for a bursary only.

The pre-test deadline is the one that catches people. It sits twelve days after applications close, and it is the family's job to have booked it — a candidate who registers on the last day and then looks for a pre-test slot has under a fortnight to find one.

Fees

For 2026-27, the fee is £12,854 a term including VAT — £38,562 a year — and it covers lunch and personal accident insurance.

New Year 12 entrants pay more, at £13,880 a term, or £41,640 a year. That is worth knowing early if you are weighing 11+ against 16+ entry, because budgeting the sixth form from the 11+ figure understates it by around £3,000 a year.

Fees change every September. The figures above were checked against the School's own fees page on 11 September 2026 and carry their own date on this site for that reason — the number in general circulation when this guide was written was a year out of date.

Bursaries

Awards run from 5% of the fee upwards to a full remission. The School gives a gross household income guide of £150,000, above which parents are unlikely to be considered. About 11% of pupils currently hold a bursary, and the School states it wants to increase that to 20% "in as short as time as possible".

What is less well known is what a full award brings besides the fees:

• A £500 entry grant towards initial costs
• One co-curricular activity — music, LAMDA or PE
• £500 a year towards trips
• School transport
• £225 a year for textbooks and exam fees
• A school laptop

Between 75% and 95% the same provisions apply with adjusted grants; below 75% it narrows to textbooks, the laptop grant and exam costs. The School notes the provision is reviewed annually.

We sell tutoring, so it is worth saying plainly: if a bursary is in play, apply for it before you spend anything on preparation. The application fee is waived for bursary-only applicants, and a full award is worth more than any amount of tutoring.

Scholarships

Music exhibitions, a lesser award, are made at the School's discretion following the same auditions.

Places and competition

The School does not publish how many places it offers at 11+, or how many girls apply for each one.

Two figures circulate — roughly seven applicants per place, and around 110 girls admitted — and both come from tutoring firms rather than from St Paul's Girls'. They are probably in the right region, and we are not going to present them as the School's own numbers when the School has chosen not to give any. Treat them as an order of magnitude, not a target.

Access arrangements

If your daughter needs access arrangements for the entrance examinations, the School's own instruction is short:

If your child requires access arrangements for the entrance examinations due to a special educational need or disability, please indicate this on the application form. We will contact you to learn a little more about your child's needs and discuss the current arrangements they have in school. We will talk through options for arrangements we can put in place at each stage of the admissions process.

So it is a tick on the form, not a separate application, and the conversation follows. The School states that it welcomes applications from students with SEND. Flag it at application rather than later: arrangements are discussed for each stage, and the pre-test is the first of them.

Sixth form entry

16+ is a different shape from the 11+ entirely, which surprises families who have been through the younger round.

Registration closes at 9am on Friday 25 September 2026, offers go out on 1 December 2026, and acceptances are due by 9am on 9 December 2026, with a deposit of half a term's fees.

Note how early that whole cycle runs — offers land in the December of Year 11, well before most GCSE-year families have started thinking about it.

How to prepare

Start with reading, a year out. Close reading of literary prose and a comprehension paper built around a theme both reward a girl who reads difficult things willingly. That is not buildable in a term.

Download the three samples. They are free, they are the School's own, and the General Comprehension one is the only reliable picture of a paper nothing else prepares for.

Practise the maths in two halves. Arithmetic fluency and problem solving first, then the harder skill the second section actually tests: taking an unfamiliar idea and using it immediately.

Rehearse having an opinion. Twenty minutes assessing creativity and independent thought is not a test of what she knows. It rewards a girl who can hold a view and follow it up, which is practice, not personality.

The shorter version of all this, with the assessment laid out beside our preparation for it, is on our St Paul's Girls' School page.

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