Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet is a boys grammar school in Barnet, Barnet, founded in 1573 with an annual Year 7 intake of around 192 places. Entry is via the CEM-style route used across the wider Barnet area, with admissions then ranked by cohort top decile then distance.
Single-sex / co-ed character
Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet is a single-sex boys' grammar. Boys' grammar admissions in this area tend to attract a slightly different applicant pool from girls' equivalents — the ratio of registered candidates to places is typically lower at boys' schools than at the equivalent girls' schools, but the cut-off score is rarely meaningfully different.
Test format
The school selects via a CEM-style consortium test. CEM-style papers mix subjects within a single sitting and reward broad vocabulary and reading fluency more than rote technique. Daily reading from Year 4 is the single highest-leverage preparation; format-specific practice papers are limited in supply but worth seeking.
Catchment & oversubscription
Admissions here use a super-selective effect: a top-tier of places goes to the highest-scoring children regardless of distance, and only the remaining places are awarded by catchment. Practically, this means that for a strong candidate, distance is irrelevant; for a borderline candidate, distance becomes decisive.
What sets it apart
Notable strength of Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet: One of the highest-performing grammars in England. This is the kind of factor worth weighing alongside raw academic results when deciding how to rank the school on your preference list — two schools with identical qualifying scores can offer very different day-to-day experiences.
Preparation specifics
The most reliable preparation pattern for Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet families: establish a baseline using a CEM-style familiarisation paper at the start of Year 5; address the two weakest topic areas through topic-by-topic workbooks across the spring and summer; sit a full timed paper every fortnight from the summer holidays; and deliberately wind down practice in the final fortnight before the test. Last-minute drilling reduces confidence more often than it raises scores.
Common pitfalls
Common pitfall to avoid: QE Boys super-selective effect — very high scores required. Families who plan around this from the start typically find the application process much smoother than families who only discover the issue in the autumn of Year 6.
How Queen Elizabeth's School Barnet fits into the wider Barnet picture
Most Barnet families do not apply to a single school in isolation. The Barnet 11+ parent guide on this site sets out the full county-level admissions calendar, registration windows and qualifying score history; the Barnet regional papers page catalogues every practice paper we hold for the relevant test format. A typical preference list for this area will rank three to five schools deliberately — distance, single-sex/co-ed character, sixth-form pathway and journey time all matter alongside raw academic results.