Cumbria grammar schools & catchment, in plain English.
Cumbria has exactly one state grammar school — Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Penrith — and it splits its 160 Year 7 places two ways: one in five goes to the very highest scorers wherever they live, and the rest are decided by priorities that end in a designated catchment area and straight-line distance. This page explains both routes, and lets you check your postcode.
Check your postcode against the Penrith catchment
See whether you fall inside the designated catchment area, your distance to the school and your eligibility — free, no account needed.
Real, published boundaries and the latest distance cut-offs — not straight-line estimates.
How QEGS Penrith entry works.
QEGS runs its own entrance test, and you register directly with the school by 12 July — the summer before Year 6. That date is the one that catches families out: it falls months before the local-authority deadline most parents have in their diary, and there is no second chance.
Children must reach the required standard to be considered at all. You then name the school on your home council’s application form by 31 October, and offers go out on 1 March.
Above that standard, the school splits its intake in a way few others do.
A fifth on score, the rest on where you live.
One in five places — 32 of the 160 — goes to the highest scorers in the test, regardless of address. For a family in Kendal, Carlisle or the Eden Valley villages, that is a genuine route in that does not depend on moving house.
The remaining places run through a set of priorities that end with the school’s designated catchment area, with straight-line distance breaking ties. Since QEGS serves a very large and sparsely populated rural area, that boundary covers a lot of ground — and being just outside it matters more here than it would in a town with several schools to fall back on.
Cumbria’s other towns — Carlisle, Kendal, Barrow-in-Furness, Workington and Whitehaven — have no state grammar schools, so this is the county’s only one. The nearest others are the Lancaster grammars about an hour south. GrammarBound maps the catchment and the distance tie-break — open the map or check your postcode above.
Cumbria’s grammar school.
The county’s one state grammar school, with a plain-English admissions guide covering its test, its catchment area and the criteria that decide places.