Twyford C of E School- Sixth Form pre tests in January 2026

[gwendy]

Hi there- can anyone shed any light on what the verbal reasoning part of these tests look like? No information online & email from the school says you can't revise for them but wondering if anyone whose child has sat this can share anything- thank you!

The admissions tests must be a new addition to their policy. It's a breach of the Admissions Code to apply different academic standards to external and internal applicants, so someone should refer their policy to the Schools Adjudicator. They've had a couple of referrals in recent years so you'd think they would understand the rules by now.

Hmmm. It does seem unfair that only the external applicants are subjected to testing- its also not a policy we have come across in any other state school sixth forms applications we have made...

@gwendy this is the Admissions Code clause they are breaching.

p.s. This clarification from the Adjudicator's 2018/19 annual report makes clear that they can rank external applicants within the shared academic criteria (i.e. by their GCSE results) but they can't rank them using a completely different academic criterion that doesn't apply to their internal students.

They're probably doing it because they don't want to wait for results day to rank their external applicants, but the outcome is that some external applicants will be unfairly de-prioritised.