Dulwich College 11 Plus (11+) Exam Guide

Dulwich College is a boys’ independent day and boarding school for in Dulwich, London. It contains a co-educational Junior School (for 4 to 11-year-olds), and a Senior School (11 to 16-year-olds) and a Sixth Form (16 to 18-year-olds) for boys. The school’s history can be traced back to 1619 when the famous Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn created the charitable foundation ‘Dulwich College College of God’s Gift’ to initially support twelve poor scholars – six girls and six boys. Today, Dulwich College supports over 1400 students in total, around 1100 of whom are in the Senior School. The school aims to balance two priorities, the ‘primacy of the classroom’ (academic challenge and excellent teaching) and ‘free learning’ (engagement with learning beyond the curriculum), and they aim to instil in every pupil ‘an aptitude for work, study and a sense of service so they have the potential to make a positive difference in the world’.

The school sits in a large campus with facilities for art, drama, science and music, as well as boarding houses for around 140 boarders. There are also sports facilities including a sports ground, swimming pool, athletics track, cricket pavilion and sports centre. There is also a vast range of extra-curricular activities on offer at Dulwich College, including art, music, dance, theatre, sports, clubs and trips, in addition to the Duke of Edinburgh Award, Scouting and the Combined Cadet Force. Upon joining the school, students also join one of eight Houses – Drake, Grenville, Howard, Jonson, Marlowe, Raleigh, Sidney and Spenser – as a part of which they may participate in inter-house competitions.

In addition, Dulwich College has been well reviewed; in their most recent ISI inspection, they scored ‘excellent’ in all categories. In 2023, The Tatler Schools Guide described Dulwich College as ‘another world’, ‘like a countryside school with its wide green spaces (and) iconic red-brick buildings’, where ‘grades tend to be top-notch, space is made for intellectual exploration and ‘free learning’, and there’s also a thoughtful approach to the arts’. Dulwich College was also selected as a finalist for the Development Award for Outstanding Fundraising Achievement by the Independent School Parent magazine in 2023.

Furthermore, Dulwich College boasts outstanding academic performance, which is reflected in their 2024 exam results, with 75.6% of GCSE grades being 9-8 and 63% of A-Level grades being A*-A.