Aylesbury High School: Admissions Guide & 11+ Preparation

Admissions & Oversubscription Criteria

Aylesbury High uses the standard Buckinghamshire admissions criteria: qualifying at 121 is required, then oversubscription criteria apply in the order of looked-after children, siblings, and distance. The school is consistently popular and oversubscribed.

All Buckinghamshire grammar schools share the same entry requirement: a standardised score of 121 or above on the Secondary Transfer Test. Qualification is necessary but not sufficient — at oversubscribed schools, qualified applicants compete for places on the basis of each school's published oversubscription criteria. These are typically ordered as: looked-after children, siblings of current pupils, then distance from the school gate in ascending order. All families should read the individual school's admissions policy (available from the school and via Buckinghamshire Council's admissions portal) rather than relying on general summaries.

Catchment & Location

Located in Aylesbury town on Walton Road (adjacent to Aylesbury Grammar School), the school draws applications from Aylesbury and across a wide area of Aylesbury Vale including Wendover, Haddenham, Princes Risborough, and surrounding villages.

Distance Cut-Off

Aylesbury High is the main girls' grammar option for a large geographic area. Distance allocation dynamics tend to favour families within Aylesbury town and immediate surrounding areas. Girls from more rural parts of Aylesbury Vale should check recent admissions data to understand their position.

Distance cut-offs vary year to year based on the number of qualifying applicants and the proportion who list this school on their SCAF. In years with higher-than-average qualifying rates across Buckinghamshire, the effective catchment distance at popular schools can compress. Families should use any published historical cut-off figures as a guide only — the actual distance for any given year is determined at the point of offer in March.

What Makes Aylesbury High Distinctive

Aylesbury High shares a campus with Aylesbury Grammar School for boys, providing a unique co-adjacent grammar school arrangement in the town. Despite the shared site, the schools operate independently with separate admissions, management, and facilities.

The Admissions Process for Aylesbury High

There is no separate entrance examination for Aylesbury High — entry is based entirely on the Buckinghamshire Secondary Transfer Test result. The process for families applying to this school follows the standard Buckinghamshire grammar school admissions timeline:

Preparation Advice for Aylesbury High Applicants

Girls applying to Aylesbury High often also consider Sir Henry Floyd Grammar School (co-ed) in the town. Preparation targeting all four GL Assessment domains is equally relevant for both schools, as both use the same Secondary Transfer Test.

Because Aylesbury High is typically oversubscribed, qualifying at the threshold is not sufficient to guarantee a place for families who do not live close to the school. For families in the likely catchment area, qualifying comfortably above 121 reduces the risk of a borderline result that could be questioned in a difficult year. For families outside the typical catchment, qualifying is a prerequisite but the admissions outcome depends on distance — not on how far above 121 a child scores.

What the Four Test Domains Look Like

Regardless of which grammar school a family targets, all applicants must qualify via the same Secondary Transfer Test. The four domains are: Verbal Reasoning (word codes, analogies, compound words, sequences), Non-Verbal Reasoning and Spatial Reasoning (matrices, reflections, rotations, nets, cube views), Mathematical Reasoning (number, fractions, percentages, ratio, algebra, shape, data), and English Comprehension (retrieval, inference, vocabulary in context, author technique). All answers are multiple-choice. The test is delivered with audio timing — a recorded voice announces each section and controls the pace throughout.

Practice with a GL Assessment-style readiness check early in Year 5 identifies which domains need the most work before the September Year 6 test. Domain-specific practice, timed papers, and realistic mock conditions in the summer holidays are the core of effective preparation.