Staffordshire grammar schools & how to get in.
Staffordshire has exactly one state grammar school — St Joseph’s College in Trent Vale, Stoke-on-Trent — and it is unlike any other in the region: a selective Catholic college that tests every applicant, then ranks by faith rather than by address or by score. This page explains what that means in practice, and where the nearest alternatives are.
Check your postcode against every West Midlands grammar
St Joseph’s has no catchment — but the Birmingham grammars do. See which areas you fall inside, and your distance to each, free.
Real, published boundaries and the latest distance cut-offs — not straight-line estimates.
How St Joseph’s College entry works.
Every applicant sits the college’s own entrance test — verbal and non-verbal reasoning — and must reach an age-adjusted standardised score of 105 to qualify. You register directly with the college by 2 September, at the start of Year 6, and the test follows in mid-September.
You then name the college on your home council’s Common Application Form by 31 October. Offers go out on 1 March.
Around 449 children are put forward for roughly 150 places, so clearing 105 does not secure an offer. What happens next is what makes St Joseph’s unusual.
No catchment — faith decides the order.
St Joseph’s has no catchment area. Among children who reach the qualifying score, places are ranked by faith — Catholic applicants first, then others. Neither your address nor your exact mark above 105 moves you up that order, which is the opposite of how almost every other selective school in England works.
That makes it genuinely open to families across North Staffordshire and South Cheshire, and it means a house move cannot improve your chances. What matters is qualifying, and the faith category you fall into.
Staffordshire’s other towns — Stafford, Lichfield, Tamworth, Burton and Newcastle-under-Lyme — have no state grammar schools, and neither does the Staffordshire County Council area at all; St Joseph’s in the Stoke-on-Trent unitary is the county’s only one. The nearest alternatives are the Birmingham and West Midlands grammars to the south and Haberdashers’ Adams in Newport to the west, which also admits on score with no catchment. Open the map to see them all.
Staffordshire’s grammar school.
The county’s one state grammar school, with a plain-English admissions guide covering its entrance test, the qualifying score and the faith criteria that decide places.