Schools in Walsall
126 open schools · Ofsted ratings, catchment areas and admission criteria · best primary schools · best secondary schools
Walsall has 120 state schools: 85 primary, 18 secondary, 1 all-through, 8 nursery. Between them they teach around 47,173 pupils. 79 have enough published data for a score, averaging 4.5 out of 10, and 7 score 8 or above.
20 have a sixth form. 80 take children from age three or under. 25 have a religious character, which usually means the school sets its own admissions criteria rather than the council's. 2 are selective and set an entrance test. How the score works.
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Undersubscribed schools rated Good or Outstanding
These schools didn't fill on first preference in the latest admissions year, despite an Ofsted rating of Good or Outstanding — worth a look if you're chasing the same handful of famous names everyone else applies to.
How places are allocated in Walsall
Primary schools: Confirmed via direct fetch of the 2025-26 admission arrangements: catchment/designated areas are used, not purely distance-based. (source)
Most schools use the local authority's default scheme rather than a school-specific catchment map — see each school's page for its own designated/catchment area where one is published.
Walsall entrance test format
Both Walsall grammar schools (Queen Mary's Grammar School and Queen Mary's High School) use the West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test — the shared GL Assessment test also used by the Birmingham and Telford grammars: Two multiple-choice papers of about 50 minutes each (roughly an hour per session with administration), assessing verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning, numerical reasoning and English comprehension. Scores are age-standardised and each school sets its own qualifying and priority thresholds from the shared result. One registration (early May to late June of Year 5) and one sitting in mid-September of Year 6 covers every West Midlands consortium school you name.
Key dates
| Entry year | Event | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Sept 2028 | Application deadline | 2027-10-31 |
| Sept 2028 | Primary application deadline | 2028-01-15 |
| Sept 2028 | Offer day | 2028-03-01 |
| Sept 2028 | Primary offer day | 2028-04-17 |
| Sept 2027 | Test date | 2026-09-12 |
| Sept 2027 | Results released | 2026-10-16 |
| Sept 2027 | Application deadline | 2026-10-31 |
| Sept 2027 | Primary application deadline | 2027-01-15 |
| Sept 2027 | Offer day | 2027-03-01 |
| Sept 2027 | Primary offer day | 2027-04-16 |
| Sept 2026 | Application deadline | 2025-10-31 (passed) |
| Sept 2026 | Primary application deadline | 2026-01-15 (passed) |
| Sept 2026 | Offer day | 2026-03-02 (passed) |
| Sept 2026 | Primary offer day | 2026-04-16 (passed) |
Out-of-area applications
Walsall's two grammar schools — Queen Mary's Grammar School (boys) and Queen Mary's High School (girls) — use the shared West Midlands Grammar Schools Entrance Test (the same single test as the Birmingham and Telford grammar schools). Register once via the West Midlands Grammar Schools portal (historically early May to late June of Year 5, 4pm deadline); one sitting covers every participating school. Children living outside Walsall can register and sit the test — the Queen Mary's schools draw from across the Black Country and Birmingham. Apply via your home LA's Common Application Form by 31 October, and check each school's oversubscription criteria for priority-area effects.
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