Newstead Wood School 11+ guide

Atom Learning is partnered with Newstead Wood School. You can read more about our partnership here.

Thinking about applying to Newstead Wood School? Find out everything you need to know about admissions and how to prepare your child for success in the 11 plus.

Key information about Newstead Wood School

• Address: Newstead Wood School, Avebury Road, Orpington, London, BR6 9SA
• Number of pupils: 1,250+
• Admissions contact: [email protected]
• Number of places in Year 7: 168
• 11+ exam: GL Assessment
• Catchment area: yes

Dates for your diary

• 11+ registration opens: Thursday 1st May 2025
• 11+ registration closes: Monday 30th June 2025
• 11+ exam date: Friday 26th – Saturday 27th September 2025
• 11+ results released: Friday 17th - Thursday 23rd October 2025
• Secondary school application deadline: Friday 31st October 2025
• National school offers day: Monday 2nd March 2026

About Newstead Wood School

Newstead Wood School is a grammar school in Orpington, Bromley for girls aged 11 to 18 with a mixed sixth form. It opened in 1954 as Orpington Grammar School for Girls due to rapid growth in the area.

The school is academically-selective and a popular choice in the area. Students at Newstead Wood consistently achieve excellent exam results. There are lots of enrichment opportunities, including the Duke of Edinburgh Award, sports, music, debating, and music and performing arts.

Newstead Wood School is in the midst of a 10-year plan which aims to improve the facilities on the school site. This includes a renovated library, a new DT kitchen area and refurbished science laboratories.

How to apply to Newstead Wood School

Newstead Wood School is a selective school. This means that your child will need to take the 11 plus exam to be eligible for a place.

The deadline to register for the 11 plus exam at Newstead Wood School is 30th June 2025. The exam will take place September 2025 – your child will be invited to one of two exam days. You’ll receive your child’s results by 23rd October 2025. You can then use these results to decide whether to apply for a place at Newstead Wood School.

To apply, 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 Newstead Wood School below.

What subjects are on the entrance exam?

The Newstead Wood School selection test consists of two test papers. These papers are supplied by GL Assessment. Your child takes both papers on the same day with a short break in between.

Each paper lasts approximately 50 minutes to one hour. Your child will have a question booklet and separate answer sheets. All the questions in the test are multiple-choice, so your child needs to mark the answer options they think are correct on the answer sheets.

The papers assess verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. These subjects are not taught on the national curriculum, so your daughter may not have seen these types of questions before.

• Verbal reasoning: using logic and reasoning to solve problems with written information, such as letters, words, symbols and numbers
• Non-verbal reasoning: using logic and reasoning to solve problems with visual information, such as shapes, diagrams and pictures

How does place allocation work at Newstead Wood School?

Children applying to Newstead Wood School have their papers marked by GL Assessment. The answer sheets are marked using technology called Optical Mark Recognition (OMR). This technology picks up the marks your child has made to indicate which answers they think are correct. Your child receives a mark for every correct answer.

These marks are then age-standardised for each paper. Age-standardisation is a common practice in 11 plus scoring and ensures younger children aren’t disadvantaged. The two age-standardised scores are added together to give your child one overall score and placed in rank order with other candidates.

Girls applying to Newstead Wood School need to achieve a required standard of 210 marks. This is the final mark after the scores from both papers have been added together and age-standardised.

If the number of children who have met the qualifying standard for entry to the school exceeds the number of places available, Newstead Wood School applies oversubscription criteria. Children are prioritised for places in the following order:

1. Looked after and previously looked after children
2. Girls who live within a 9-mile radius of the school and receive Pupil Premium or Service Premium
3. Girls who live within a 9-mile radius of the school, and daughters of Newstead Wood staff who live outside a 9-mile radius of the school
4. Girls who live outside a 9-mile radius of the school

The catchment area for Newstead Wood School covers a 9-mile radius from the school site. The distance is measured in a straight line from the child’s home to the main school entrance.

Atom’s top tips for 11 plus preparation

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