Devon 11+ Guide: Plymouth Grammars and Colyton

In short

• Devon has no county-wide 11+ — Colyton Grammar School and Plymouth's three grammars each run their own admissions tests, and Torbay operates a separate co-ordinated system.
• Plymouth offers three grammar schools (Devonport High for Boys, Devonport High for Girls, Plymouth High for Girls); Colyton in East Devon is co-educational and draws a wide, competitive applicant field.
• Because tests are school-run, families can often sit for more than one Devon school in the same season — at the cost of tracking each school's separate registration deadline.
• Prepare the shared core (upper-KS2 maths, comprehension, vocabulary, reasoning styles) first, then add school-specific format practice once each target's current arrangements are confirmed.
• Confirm dates and formats only from each school's own admissions pages — arrangements are set per school, per year.

Why Devon confuses parents (and how it actually works)

Search 'Devon 11+' and you'll find contradictory advice, because Devon is not one system but three. Plymouth, in the south-west of the county, has three grammar schools with their own test arrangements. Colyton Grammar School, in the east near the Dorset border, is a single co-educational grammar running its own entrance exam. And Torbay — Torquay, Paignton and Brixham — is a separate unitary authority whose three grammars use their own co-ordinated test, covered in our dedicated Torbay guide. There is no Devon County Council 11+ and no shared registration: each campaign is run with the individual school. That structure means the first preparation task in Devon is administrative, not academic — list your realistic target schools, pull each one's current admissions arrangements, and build a one-page calendar of registration windows and test dates. Families who do that in the spring of Year 5 sail; families who assume a single 'Devon test' exists discover missed deadlines that no amount of preparation recovers.

The Plymouth grammar schools

Plymouth's three grammars give the city an unusual amount of selective choice for its size. Devonport High School for Boys and Devonport High School for Girls are separate schools with separate admissions, both long-established and well-regarded locally; Plymouth High School for Girls completes the set. Each school publishes its own test arrangements — typically sat in the autumn term of Year 6 — covering core academic skills in English, mathematics and reasoning, with formats confirmed in each year's admissions pack. Because the schools admit against their own published oversubscription criteria, read each policy alongside the test information: distance and other priorities can matter alongside score once the qualifying standard is met. For families on the city's edges, note that Plymouth's system is separate from both Torbay's and Colyton's — sitting for all three areas is possible in principle, but each requires its own registration and its own diary entry. Our Devon region page keeps the school list and key facts in one place.

How hard is Colyton Grammar School to get into?

Colyton is the name that draws families from across the South West, and honestly: it is a competitive field. The school is consistently among the strongest-performing state schools in England, it is co-educational — rare among high-profile grammars — and it draws applicants from East Devon, Exeter, Dorset, Somerset and beyond. There is no published fixed pass mark; as with most oversubscribed selective schools, places go to the strongest performers in that year's applicant field under the school's published criteria, so the effective standard depends on who applies. Preparation for Colyton should therefore assume a super-selective-style field: consistent work from Year 5, regular timed mock papers in the summer before Year 6, and honest topic-level tracking rather than reassuring volume. The school publishes its entrance exam arrangements — typically an autumn sitting in Year 6 — and its admissions pages are the only source worth trusting for this season's dates, format and registration deadline.

Can my child sit for more than one Devon school?

Usually yes, and for many families this is Devon's quiet advantage. Because Plymouth's grammars, Colyton and the Torbay system all test separately, a child with realistic reach across areas can have more than one selective shot in the same season — something single-test counties don't offer. The costs are practical: separate registrations (each with its own deadline, none co-ordinated for you), potentially multiple test days for the child, and the need to check that dates don't clash before committing. The final application still goes through your home local authority's Common Application Form, where you rank up to six schools in genuine preference order — the equal-preference system means an ambitious first choice never costs you a safer one, so a Colyton-plus-Plymouth-plus-comprehensive ranking is a perfectly sensible strategy. Our guide to applying to multiple schools covers how to run a multi-school campaign without doubling the preparation load.

What should Devon 11+ preparation look like?

Because formats vary by school, anchor preparation in the durable core that every Devon selective test rewards: mathematics worked to the upper end of Key Stage 2, reading comprehension with deliberate vocabulary building, and fluency in verbal and non-verbal reasoning question styles. A child secure across those strands can adapt to any specific school's paper with a few weeks of format-focused practice once the current arrangements are confirmed — which is the right order of operations when the formats themselves are school-set and can evolve. Rhythm matters more than volume: short daily sessions through Year 5, one timed paper a week from the summer holidays, an errors log driving what gets practised next, and a deliberate taper in the final week — the full pattern is in our revision timetable guide. GrammarPrep's adaptive engine handles the targeting side automatically and configures practice to each child's exam formats; the free diagnostic will show where a Devon child currently stands across all four core strands in fifteen minutes.

When should a Devon family start, and what are the deadlines?

The academic arc is the standard one: foundations through Year 4, structured practice through Year 5, formats and technique in the final months — our when-to-start guide maps it from any starting point, including a late one. The Devon-specific layer is the admin calendar, and it deserves its own answer because it is the part families get wrong. Registration windows for school-run tests typically fall in the late spring to early autumn of Year 5, but each school sets its own — Colyton's window and the Plymouth schools' windows are independent events, and none of them will remind you about the others. Diary three dates per target school the moment they're published: registration opens, registration closes, and test day. Then add the one deadline that never moves: the Common Application Form to your home local authority by 31 October of Year 6, which is the application that actually allocates places whatever tests your child has sat. A family that fixes the calendar in spring of Year 5 has removed most of Devon's genuine difficulty before a single practice paper is opened.