Apply to King Edward VI Five Ways School, in plain English.
King Edward VI Five Ways is a heavily oversubscribed co-educational selective grammar in Bartley Green, south-west Birmingham — around 1,390 families applied for 2025 entry, for 180 Year 7 places. Children sit the shared West Midlands Grammar Schools Consortium 11+ and must reach the school's qualifying score; places are then filled in rank order of score, with priority to children living in the school's catchment area of named Birmingham and Sandwell wards. Register your child for the test via the King Edward VI Foundation by 4pm on 26 June 2026 — separately from, and months before, the October Common Application Form.
The three things to know first.
If you read nothing else on this page, read these. They're the bits that catch parents out.
You register for the 11+ test by 26 June 2026 — long before the CAF.
King Edward VI Five Ways uses the shared West Midlands Grammar Schools Consortium 11+ — one registration and one test sitting covers the Foundation's Birmingham grammar schools. Registration is online via the King Edward VI Foundation and closes at 4pm on 26 June 2026 — months before, and completely separate from, the October Common Application Form. Miss the registration deadline and, apart from exceptional circumstances, there is no route to a place for 2027 entry.
This is a score-led school — but with a real catchment.
Every applicant must reach the school's qualifying score in the test; below it, a child is not eligible. Above it, Five Ways has a genuine catchment area: children who live inside it are ranked ahead of children outside it once the looked-after and Pupil Premium places are filled. A quarter of places are set aside for Pupil Premium children, in-catchment first.
The catchment is 15 named wards — check yours.
The catchment area is the home addresses inside 12 Birmingham wards (Bartley Green, Harborne, Northfield, Weoley & Selly Oak, the two King's Norton wards and more) plus 3 Sandwell wards (Abbey, Bristnall, Old Warley). It is defined by ward, not by distance — so check which ward your address falls in on your council's website. Your child must live at the qualifying address on the CAF deadline, 31 October 2026.
Four steps — the first deadline is summer, not October.
Registering for the consortium 11+ test (step 1) closes at 4pm on 26 June 2026 — months before the CAF deadline that catches most families out. Registering for the test is not the same as applying for the school.
If more children reach the standard than there are places, these 5 criteria decide.
A child with an EHCP naming the school is admitted first, within the 180 (the Admission Number reduces accordingly). Everyone else who reaches the qualifying score is then placed in the order below. Distance from the front gates — straight-line, measured by the council's computerised system — is the ranking or tie-break within several criteria. Tap any criterion to see the exact wording.
In plain English: Children in council care, or who were in care before being adopted (including from state care outside England), come first — provided they reached the qualifying score in the 11+ test. Tell the council about looked-after status when you apply.
What the document says: Looked After Children / Previously Looked After Children who achieve the qualifying score. Applicants in this category will be ranked by test score and then by distance from the school.
In plain English: Children eligible for the Pupil Premium who reach the qualifying score and live in the catchment area are placed next, ranked by how close they live to the school. The school aims to fill up to a quarter of the 180 places with Pupil Premium children; in-catchment Pupil Premium children come first within that share. You must submit a completed Pupil Premium eligibility form before the day of the test.
What the document says: Children attracting the Pupil Premium who achieve the qualifying score and live within the school catchment area. Applicants in this category will be ranked by distance from the school.
In plain English: If fewer than a quarter of places have gone to in-catchment Pupil Premium children (criterion 2), the school tops the Pupil Premium share up with eligible children from outside the catchment, until 25% is reached. These children are ranked by test score; a tie is settled first by whether they have a sibling already at the school, then by distance.
What the document says: If fewer than 25% of places offered are offered to applicants in category 2, offers will be made to children attracting the Pupil Premium who achieve the qualifying score and live outside the catchment area, until a total of 25% of places have been offered. Applicants in this category will be ranked by test score. Where scores are equal, priority will be given to those with a sibling at the school; then by distance from the school.
In plain English: This is how most in-catchment children get in. Children who reach the higher priority score and live in the catchment area are placed here. A child with an older sibling already at the school is given priority within this group; otherwise children are ranked by how close they live to the school. The qualifying score and the higher priority score are both published by the Foundation before the test.
What the document says: Applicants who achieve the priority score and live within the school catchment area. Applicants in this category will be given priority if they have an older sibling at the school; then ranked by distance from the school.
In plain English: Any remaining places go to all the other children who reached the qualifying score — including children living outside the catchment area — strictly in rank order of test score. Where two children have the same score, the place goes first to a child with a sibling at the school, then to the child living closer.
What the document says: Applicants achieving the qualifying score. Applicants in this category will be ranked by test score. Where scores are equal, priority will be given to those with a sibling at the school; then ranked by distance from the school.
A real boundary — 15 named wards.
King Edward VI Five Ways has a genuine catchment area, defined by electoral ward rather than by distance. It covers 12 wards in Birmingham — Allens Cross, Bartley Green, Bournville & Cotteridge, Frankley Great Park, Harborne, King's Norton North, King's Norton South, Longbridge & West Heath, Northfield, Quinton, Rubery & Rednal and Weoley & Selly Oak — and 3 wards in Sandwell: Abbey, Bristnall and Old Warley. In-catchment children who reach the priority score are ranked ahead of children living outside the area.
Distance is straight-line, measured by the local authority's computerised system from the applicant's home to the school's front gates using Ordnance Survey co-ordinates. It is used to rank in-catchment Pupil Premium children and to break ties; there is no single published distance cut-off — the catchment is the ward list, not a radius.
See the catchment area on the GrammarBound mapInside the wards: priority. Outside: only if places remain.
Child A lives in Harborne — one of the catchment wards — so once they reach the priority score they are ranked ahead of out-of-catchment children (criterion 4), or in the Pupil Premium band if eligible. Child B lives in Edgbaston, a Birmingham ward that is not on the list, so they are only considered under the final all-by-score criterion (5), after in-catchment children. Both must reach the qualifying score; the catchment ward decides priority.
You have two routes, and you can use both.
Waiting list
If your child isn't offered a place, they go onto a ranked waiting list of children who reached the qualifying score but didn't receive an offer from Five Ways or a more-preferred school. When a place comes free in the first term of Year 7 it goes to the next child under the same oversubscription criteria — not first-come-first-served, and with no need to re-sit the test. From January of Year 7 onwards, places are filled by in-year application and a separate test.
Priority on the waiting list is not based on the date you applied or asked to join.
Appeal
You have a statutory right of appeal against the Governing Body's decision not to offer a place. Send written grounds of appeal to the Clerk to the Governors; an appeal is arranged within 30 school days of the request and heard by an independent panel. A repeat appeal in the same year, for the same school, is only heard if your circumstances have materially changed. Appealing does not affect your child's waiting-list position.
Joining Year 12 at King Edward VI Five Ways.
Internal Year 11 students who meet the academic requirements move up; for September 2027 around 20 external places are expected for students from other schools, who apply directly to the school.
The grade floor.
Applicants — internal and external — need a minimum of six GCSE passes at grade 6 or above, including English and Mathematics. To take a subject at A-level you need at least a grade 7 in that subject at GCSE; Further Maths needs a grade 8 in GCSE Mathematics. Offers are conditional on course capacity as well as on grades.
Apply direct to the school.
External applications go directly to King Edward VI Five Ways — not through the CAF. Offers are conditional on achieving the required GCSE results in the subjects applied for, and on course capacity. If external places are oversubscribed, students are ranked first by looked-after status, then by attendance at a named feeder school (King Edward VI Balaam Wood Academy and King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls), then by Pupil Premium eligibility (up to 25% of external places), then by GCSE attainment.