Wallington, Greater London · Sutton

Wallington County Grammar School

Shares its first-stage test with six Sutton schools, but its second-stage exam only with two others — the boys' schools, not the full grammar consortium families might assume.

Opened in 1927 and now governed by the Greenshaw Learning Trust, which its own admissions policy names explicitly as the legal admissions authority. Sutton's selective system is more layered than a simple shared consortium: the first-stage Selective Eligibility Test is sat by six schools (the five academically selective grammars plus Greenshaw High School, a comprehensive that uses it to allocate a smaller number of ability places), but the second-stage exam is shared only among Wallington County Grammar, Sutton Grammar, and Wilson's — the borough's three boys' schools — while Nonsuch and Wallington High School for Girls run their own separate second-stage arrangements. Up to 110 of the school's 150 places are awarded by pure rank order of combined score with no catchment or distance threshold at all, making it genuinely superselective in practice.

Key facts

Gender: boys
Age range: 11-18
Region: London
Local authority: Sutton
Established: 1927
DfE URN: 136798
Website: https://www.wcgs-sutton.co.uk

Admissions

Admissions authority: The school sets its own test and criteria
Entrance test board: Not confirmed in any primary source. Secondary tutoring sites conflict directly: some claim GL Assessment administers the test, while at least one other claims the test is 'neither GL nor CEM' and is created in-house by the Sutton consortium schools.sources conflict
No primary source names a test provider, and secondary tutoring sites give conflicting claims about whether the test is externally set (GL Assessment) or written in-house by the consortium schools.
Test format: Two stages. First stage: the Selective Eligibility Test (SET), one multiple-choice Maths paper and one multiple-choice English paper, sat by everyone applying to any Sutton selective school (six schools in total, including one non-selective comprehensive using it for an ability stream). Second stage, shared only among this school, Sutton Grammar School, and Wilson's School (not the two girls' schools, which run separate second-stage arrangements): a Maths paper and an English paper. The combined standardised score weights the two stages 2/5 SET, 3/5 Second Stage.
Qualifying / pass mark: Not published in advance for any cycle. The school's own admissions FAQ states plainly that pass marks 'will be decided by each individual school after the papers have been marked,' based on relative cohort performance and rank order rather than a fixed threshold. Historical FOI-disclosed figures (around 214-218.5 points across 2017-2020 entry) exist but are more than six years stale and shouldn't be treated as current guidance.verify with school
Confirmed directly from the school's own FAQ that no fixed score is published in advance. Historical 2017-2020 figures come from a secondary FOI-request archive that couldn't be directly re-fetched during this research and should be treated as low-confidence and outdated.
Superselective?: Yespartly verified
The specific label 'superselective' traces to a commercial tutoring site rather than an official classification, though the underlying admissions mechanics supporting it are independently confirmed from the school's own primary policy document.

Catchment & priority criteria

None as a general eligibility requirement — the base roughly 110 places are awarded by rank order of score with no distance threshold. Up to 15 of the 150 places are reserved for qualifying applicants living in specified Sutton-area postcodes (SM1 through SM7, plus parts of KT4, CR0 and CR4). Distance is otherwise used only as a tiebreaker between equally-ranked candidates.

Children with an EHC Plan naming the school, subject to meeting the combined qualifying standard
Looked-after and previously looked-after children who meet the combined qualifying standard
Children of permanent staff (2+ years' service, or filling a skill-shortage post) who meet the combined qualifying standard
Remaining qualifying applicants in strict rank order of combined test score, capped at 110 places initially
Up to 25 places for Pupil Premium-eligible qualifiers, ranked by performance
Up to 15 places for qualifiers living in specified Sutton postcodes, ranked by performance
Tie-break: straight-line home-to-school distance, then random allocation independently witnessed

Results

Year	Attainment 8	GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths	Progress 8	A*–A	A*–B
2024	77.8 (secondary source, not independently confirmed against DfE directly)	verify with school	+0.95 — this is the last cohort with a genuine DfE-calculated Progress 8 figure before the nationwide COVID-era gap begins. Some secondary aggregators mis-attach this figure to 2025 — it belongs to 2024.	—	—
A-level (578 entries, school's own results PDF): A-A 62%, A-B 87%.
2025	77.7 (secondary source, not independently confirmed against DfE directly, which was inaccessible during this research)	99.30% (secondary source)	Not calculated — no KS2 baseline data for this cohort nationally. Some secondary aggregators correctly show this as unavailable rather than carrying forward the 2024 figure.	67%	87%
A-level (596 entries, school's own results PDF): A-A 67%, A-B 87%, closely matching a secondary aggregator's slightly different figures (67.8%/87.8%).

Ofsted

Rating: Outstanding — carried forward from the school's last full graded inspection (17 January 2017, also Outstanding) via a Section 8 ungraded visit that confirmed the school 'continues to be an outstanding school.' This predates Ofsted's September 2024 move to report cards, so the single-word grade framework correctly applies; no report-card-style inspection has occurred yet.
Date: 15-16 November 2022
Report: Read the full report

Sources

1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/136798
2. School's own Admission Arrangements 2027/28 — https://www.greenshawlearningtrust.co.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=4374&type=pdf
3. School's own SET/Second Stage FAQ — https://wcgs-sutton.co.uk/content/?contentid=56&pid=16
4. Sutton Council — secondary school tests, assessments and supplementary forms — https://www.sutton.gov.uk/schools-and-learning/school-admissions/information-applying-secondary-school-2027/secondary-school-tests-assessments-and-supplementary-forms
5. Ofsted report, inspected 15-16 November 2022 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50203380
6. School's own Academic Results page — https://www.wcgs-sutton.co.uk/page/?title=Academic+Results&pid=49
7. School's own History of the School page — https://www.wcgs-sutton.co.uk/page/?title=History+of+the+School&pid=19

Last updated 2026-09-01. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.