Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School 11 Plus (11+) Exam Guide

About Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School

Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School (LGGS) is a selective state grammar school for girls aged 11 to 18, located in Lancaster, Lancashire. The school admits 145 pupils into Year 7 each year.

Entry into Year 7 is by competitive entrance test, sat in the September of Year 6. A candidate may sit the test only once in an academic year.

The school provides free online Key Stage 2 and 11+ preparation to pupils who are eligible for Pupil Premium. If this applies to your family, it is worth contacting the school’s admissions team to ask about access.

Key information for 2027 entry to Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School at 11 Plus (11+)

• School type: girls’ grammar school
• Test provider: FSCE (Future Stories Community Enterprise)
• Registration opens – deadline: 1 June – 9 September 2026
• Exam date: Saturday 26 September 2026
• Results date: 17 October 2026
• CAF deadline: 31 October 2026
• National Offer Day: 1 March 2027
• Year 7 places available: 145
• Contact details: www.lggs.org.uk

Admissions information for 2027 entry to Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School at 11 Plus (11+)

LGGS uses the FSCE Entrance Test, written by Future Stories Community Enterprise. FSCE is a company established in 2022 which is itself a trading company of Reading School, so the test is written by a grammar school for grammar schools rather than by an outside assessment provider.

The school’s stated reason for choosing FSCE is that the test covers only the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum taught up to the end of Year 5, which is intended to reduce the advantage held by tutored children.

It is important to note that this is not the same test used by Lancaster Royal Grammar School, which continues to use GL Assessment and includes a verbal reasoning paper. The two schools are a short distance apart and their entrance exams are different, so practice material is not interchangeable between them.

For admission into Year 7 at LGGS in 2027, you must first register your daughter for the entrance test via the school’s website. The entrance test will take place on Saturday 26 September 2026, and results are sent to parents on 17 October 2026.

You must then name Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School on your local authority’s Common Application Form (CAF) by its deadline of 31 October 2026. Registering with the school for the test is not the same as applying for a school place, and both steps are required.

There is no fixed pass mark at LGGS. Results from both papers are standardised, combined and placed in rank order, and the pass mark is then determined by how that year’s cohort performed. A higher-performing cohort can lead to a higher pass mark and vice versa, so any fixed LGGS pass mark quoted elsewhere is an estimate rather than a published figure.

Standardisation is age-weighted, so a girl born in August is not judged against the same raw marks as classmates who are nearly a year older.

If fewer girls reach the pass mark than there are places available, all of them are offered a place. If more girls reach the pass mark than there are places, the school’s oversubscription criteria are applied. These are set out in full in the admission policy on the school’s website.

If anything affects your daughter’s performance on the day, such as illness, you must inform the school within two school days of the test, by 29 September 2026.

How can I register my child for the 11 Plus (11+) exams at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School?

Registration for the entrance test opens on 1 June 2026 and closes on 9 September 2026. You register directly with the school through the admissions section of the LGGS website.

Make sure you check the school website for the registration link and the current admission policy, as dates can change from year to year.

The application process is:

• Register your daughter for the entrance test via the LGGS website
• Sit the entrance test in September of Year 6
• Receive the test results in October
• Complete your local authority’s Common Application Form (CAF), naming LGGS, by 31 October 2026
• Receive your offer on National Offer Day, 1 March 2027

What is the 11 Plus (11+) entrance exam format for Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School?

Girls sit two standardised papers on the same day. Both papers cover English and maths together, rather than splitting the subjects into separate papers. All content comes from the Key Stage 2 National Curriculum taught up to and including the end of Year 5.

The two papers are:

• Adventure Paper – English and maths questions in multiple-choice format. Answers are marked by shading ovals on a separate answer sheet, which is then marked by computer.
• Beacon Paper – English and maths questions answered with short written answers, written into boxes on a separate answer sheet, one digit or one capital letter per box.

A rough guide to topics covered:

• Maths – arithmetic, fractions, decimals and percentages, measurement and unit conversions, geometry, statistics and handling data, word questions
• English – reading comprehension, inference, vocabulary in context, spelling, punctuation and grammar

There is no verbal reasoning, no non-verbal reasoning and no creative writing paper at LGGS. Some other FSCE schools do set a creative writing paper, so if you have read about an FSCE creative response task elsewhere, it does not apply here.

It is important to note that the way an FSCE test is run differs from most other 11+ exams:

• Instructions are played from a voice recording rather than read out by an invigilator. The recording says when to open the booklet, which page to turn to, and how long each section lasts.
• Answers go on a separate answer sheet. Nothing written in the question booklet is marked.
• Girls must write in black biro or ballpoint pen. Frixion pens are allowed, but pencils are not.
• Rulers, protractors, dictionaries, calculators, scrap paper, stopwatches, phones and smart watches are not permitted.
• Multiple-choice ovals must be fully shaded. A line or a tick through an oval will not be read correctly.
• No marks are deducted for a wrong answer.
• Spare time at the end of a section can only be spent on that section. Once a section is closed, your daughter cannot return to it.

The papers are marked using optical mark recognition, with people checking any answers the scanner finds unclear.

Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School 11 Plus (11+) top tips for your child

• Make sure you are familiar and confident with the KS2 syllabus up to the end of Year 5, as this is what the questions are based on. You will need to apply what you know to unfamiliar situations.
• Read as much as possible in the run-up to the exam. This builds your vocabulary and gives you practice at reading and understanding texts quickly, which helps in the English sections of both papers.
• Listen to the recorded instructions carefully! Do not turn over any pages or start a new section before you are told to.
• Check your answer sheet as you go. Make sure the number on the answer sheet matches the number of the question you are answering in the booklet.
• Practise in black pen. If you are used to working in pencil, do a few papers in biro so that writing without an eraser is not new on the day.
• Shade the ovals fully. A line or a tick through an oval will not be read properly by the computer.
• Don’t leave any blanks! No marks are taken away for a wrong answer, so it is always worth putting something down.
• Pay attention to the time! Move on if you are stuck, and come back to the question later if there is time left in that section.

How to prepare your child for the 11 Plus (11+) Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School exam

Start with the official FSCE Familiarisation Guides, which LGGS publishes free on its admissions page in separate versions for children and for parents, alongside an FSCE FAQ. These contain sample questions and sample answer sheets, and are a useful first look at the layout your daughter will meet on the day.

Beyond that, the most useful way to prepare is to use practice tests to familiarise your daughter with the exam format. This gives her practice at working to a clock, transferring answers to a separate answer sheet, and answering both multiple-choice and short written questions, so that the format itself holds no surprises on the day.

Because LGGS sets one multiple-choice paper and one short-written-answer paper, practice in both formats is worthwhile. We would not recommend buying verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning or creative writing material for this school, as none of it appears in the test.

For Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School 11+ preparation, we recommend the following packs: