Grammar schools in Liverpool & how to get in.
Liverpool has exactly one state grammar school — the Liverpool Blue Coat School in Wavertree — and it admits on test score alone, with no catchment area. Where you live in the city makes no difference; roughly a thousand children compete for 180 places. This page explains how its two-phase entry works, and where the nearest other grammars are if it doesn’t come off.
Check your postcode against every North West grammar
Blue Coat has no catchment — but the Wirral and Trafford grammars do. See which you fall inside, and your distance to each, free.
Real, published boundaries and the latest distance cut-offs — not straight-line estimates.
How Blue Coat entry works.
The Blue Coat School runs its own entrance test and fills all 180 Year 7 places in rank order of score. You apply online directly to the school in the spring of Year 5 — the window closes on 24 April, far earlier than most families expect — and the test itself runs in two phases, the first in July and the second that September.
You must still name the school on your home council’s Common Application Form by 31 October. Doing well in the test without doing that means no offer.
Around a thousand children sit it for those 180 places, so the qualifying standard is only the entry point — what decides an offer is where a child ranks.
No catchment here — but there is next door.
Because Blue Coat is fully score-selective, an address in Woolton counts for exactly as much as one in Southport or St Helens. There is no priority area, no distance tie-break to plan around, and no advantage to moving. It is the one grammar school in England’s North West that a house move cannot help with.
The city’s other secondary schools are comprehensive, so families looking for a second selective option usually look across the Mersey. The six Wirral grammars are the nearest cluster, and several of them do admit by distance — where you live decides. See the Wirral grammar schools guide for how those work. Further out, the Trafford grammars in Greater Manchester and the Lancashire grammars are the next nearest.
Since Blue Coat, Wirral and Trafford all run separate tests on separate timetables, a family aiming at more than one is managing several registrations at once. GrammarBound maps every catchment in the region — open the map or check your postcode above.
Liverpool’s grammar school.
The city’s one state grammar school, with a plain-English admissions guide covering its test, its two-phase timetable and the criteria that decide places.