John Ball to Secondary Transition

Our pupils go on to a wide variety of secondary schools, both state and independent. The state system for secondary transfer offers each child just one place, as opposed to being able to select from several offers. Additional places are offered through the independent sector. This is a guide to the application process for both sectors.

When your child is in Year 6 you must make your secondary application by 31 October. If you are interested in selective schools you may need to apply to sit an entrance test when your child is in Year 5. It is important that you spend time visiting schools on their open days to choose the best option for your child(ren). Advance booking is often required.

This useful video from Lewisham explains the process: Lewisham Secondary Transfer Process.

Lewisham Secondary Transfer Process

Final destinations for John Ball pupils

Community, Academy or Faith Schools

	Local Authority	Number of pupils
	Local Authority	2026	2025	2024	2023	2022
Thomas Tallis	Greenwich	27	29	24	19	33
Eltham Hill	Greenwich	6	7	7	5	12
Leigh Academy Blackheath	Greenwich	5	3	4	4	8
Prendergast Hilly Fields	Lewisham	0	0	3	2	0
Prendergast Vale	Lewisham	1	7	3	5	2
Trinity Lewisham CE School	Lewisham	1	3	3	4	1
St Matthew Academy	Lewisham	1	1	2	3	5
Addey & Stanhope School	Lewisham	0	0	2	2	0
Harris Academy Greenwich	Greenwich	2	1	1	0	1
St Columba's Catholic Boys' School	Bexley	1	0	1	0	0
Leigh Halley Academy	Greenwich	3	5	1	2	1
Westminster City School	Westminster	0	0	1	0	0
The John Roan School	Greenwich	11	4	1	5	1
Haberdashers' Hatcham College	Lewisham	0	0	1	0	0
Ark Greenwich Free School	Greenwich	0	0	0	1	0
Bonus Pastor Catholic College	Bromley	1	0	0	1	0
Bullers Wood for Boys	Bromley	0	0	0	1	0
Bullers Wood for Girls	Bromley	0	0	0	1	1
Haberdashers' Knights Academy	Bromley	0	0	0	1	1
Sedgehill School	Lewisham	0	0	0	1	1
Serenity School	Greenwich	0	0	0	1	0
St Ursula's	Greenwich	0	0	0	2	1
Stationers’ Crown Woods	Greenwich	0	2	0	1	0
Ravensbourne School	Bromley	0	0	0	2	0
Deptford Green School	Lewisham	0	1	0	0	6
Greenwich Steiner	Greenwich	0	0	0	0	1
Dagenham Park CofE School	Barking and Dagenham	0	0	0	0	1
St Mary Magdalene CoE	Greenwich	0	0	0	0	1
Sydenham School	Lewisham	0	0	0	0	1
Pendengast Ladywell	Lewisham	0	1	0	0	0
Chichester High School	Sussex	0	1	0	0	0
Kingsdale Foundations Dulwich	Southwark	0	1	0	0	0
Francis Bardsley Academy for Girls	Havering	0	1	0	0	0
Bennett School, Kent	Kent	0	1	0	0	0
La Retraite Roman Catholic Girls’ School	Lambeth	1	0	0	0	0
St Thomas the Apostle College	Southwark	1	0	0	0	0

Grammar Schools

	Local Authority	Number of pupils
	Local Authority	2026	2025	2024	2023	2022
Townley Grammar School For Girls	Bexley	3	1	4	2	4
Beths Grammar School	Bexley	0	1	3	0	1
Newstead Wood School For Girls	Bromley	2	1	2	0	0
Dartford Grammar School for boys	Kent	1	2	1	0	0
Chislehurst and Sidcup Grammar School	Bexley	0	0	1	1	0
Wilson's School	Sutton	0	0	1	0	0
Bexley Grammar School	Bexley	1	0	0	1	1
Queen Elizabeth School For Boys	Barnet	0	0	0	2	0
Dartford Grammar School for Girls	Kent	0	1	0	0	1
St Olave's Grammar School	Bromley	0	0	0	0	1
Wilmington School for Girls	Kent	0	0	0	0	1
Wallington County Grammar School	Sutton	1	0	0	0	0

Independent Schools

	Local Authority	Number of pupils
	Local Authority	2026	2025	2024	2023	2022
Eltham College	Bromley	3	0	3	0	0
Colfe's	Greenwich	3	3	3	3	2
St Dunstan's	Lewisham	1	3	2	0	0
Blackheath High School	Greenwich	1	1	2	1	0
Alleyn's School	Southwark	0	0	1	0	0
Babington House School	Bromley	0	0	1	0	0
Brighton Girls	Brighton and Hove	0	0	0	0	1
Farringtons	Bromley	0	3	0	0	0
Dulwich College	Southwark	2	0	0	0	0
Croydon High	Croydon	1	0	0	0	0

State or Grammar Secondary School Applications

Applying online

You can apply for a secondary school place online at www.eadmissions.org.uk.

You should apply through the council where you pay council tax, but you can include schools in other boroughs on your application.

The benefits of applying online are:

it only takes a few minutes
you receive an email confirmation when your application has been submitted
the system checks for errors
there is no risk of your application being lost in the post or arriving late
you can change your school preferences up until the closing date
your details are held securely
on 1 March 2027 (National Offer Day), you will receive an email confirming the secondary school place offered to your child. You can also log in to the eAdmissions portal to view the outcome.

Read a step-by-step guide to applying online at Lewisham Admissions.

After submitting, you will receive a reference number similar to this: 209-2027-09-E-002009. If you do not get a number, your application has not been submitted.

Lewisham

There are 14 secondary schools in the Lewisham borough. It is a good idea to research a range of schools, including those closest to your home address, as not every child can be offered their first preference school. Please spend time looking at the links below to aid your selection process.

Greenwich

There are 16 secondary schools in the Greenwich borough. It is a good idea to research a range of schools, including those closest to your home address, as not every child can be offered their first preference school. Please spend time looking at the links below to aid your selection process.

Greenwich Secondary School Admissions Information

Children with an EHCP

We will be in contact with the families of children with an EHCP. The process is slightly different and she will work closely with you in order to offer you the relevant support.

Academy Banding Tests

Some academies, including Leigh Academy and Halley Academy and Harris Academy Greenwich require that children sit a fair banding test to ensure that children are admitted from across the ability range. These tests are generally done in October of year 6 and must be booked in advance. Applications for these schools may not be considered unless your child has done the fair banding test. Please visit the websites of these schools for more information.

Important Dates

Applications

Schools open for visits (please check with the schools early on as some events require booking)	September and October
Applications open (apply online at www.eadmissions.org.uk)	1 September
Closing date for applications	31 October (we recommend submitting your application well before the deadline
Closing date for supplementary information forms (if required) – return to the school directly	31 October

Offers

Application results

If you applied online, you will get an email after 5pm or you can check on the portal where you submitted your application.

If you applied by post, or if you haven’t been offered a place at one of your preferred schools, results will be sent by first class post on 1st March 2027. First class post does not guarantee next-day delivery.

1 March 2027

Deadline for accepting your offer

If you applied online, you must accept the offer online. If you filled in a paper application, you should return the acceptance slip. We recommend that you accept any offer you receive to ensure that your child has a school place. This does not change your position on the waiting list for preferred schools or your right of appeal.

15 March 2027

Appeals (may vary by borough)

Deadline for making an appeal for community schools in the borough of Lewisham.

14th May 2026

Appeal hearings for secondary community schools in the borough of Lewisham. This is for appeals submitted by 31 March 2026. You will receive written notification at least 10 school days before the appeal hearing.

NOTE: Secondary schools’ appeals lodged after 14 May 2026 will be heard within 40 school days of the appeal deadline or 30 school days of the appeal being received, whichever is the later date. You cannot appeal for a place at any school not named on your original school admission application form.

June-July 2026

Myth busters – get the facts!

It is easy to make assumptions about how school admissions work. Here are some of the common myths and misunderstandings, as well as the facts for state admissions.

Myths	Facts
My child has a right to a place at one of my preferred schools.	The local authority must offer your child a place at the highest available preference school. If there are more children with greater eligibility in accordance with the school’s oversubscription criteria – it is not possible to offer a named preference. There is no right to a place at your preferred school, but you have the right to make an application and have this ranked fairly in line with the admissions criteria. If it is not possible to offer your child a place at your preferred school, your child will be allocated a place at an alternative school with a vacancy.
I have an older child already at the school so I do not need to apply	Everyone must apply for their child even if they have a brother or sister already at the school. Most schools give priority to siblings, these vary with certain requirements, but if you don’t apply you could miss out on a place.
Listing one school will mean that they will have to offer me that school.	Listing only one school does not increase your child’s chances of being offered a place. If your child does not qualify for that school, then they will be allocated a place at the nearest school to your home with a vacancy, after all other places have been allocated, even if that school is many miles away. It is important that you name your schools in order of preference and it is in your child’s best interest to name as many schools as possible and include schools which are local to you.
Listing the same school six times will improve my chances of being offered a place.	Your child can only be considered once for a named school and any duplicated preferences will simply be deleted.
I live nearer to the school than the last child offered under the distance criterion last year so I’m guaranteed a place.	Although the information listed in the Admission Booklet can give you an idea of how likely it is that you will be offered a place at your preferred school, the ‘last distance’ will change every year. We cannot guarantee any child will be offered a place at any school.
Children on my road go to the school so my child will too.	The number of pupils offered under each criterion at each school can change every year, so just because you know pupils living near you go to a certain school, it does not mean that your child will definitely be offered a place there, although it can be a good indicator.
If I apply to a school in another borough, their residents will have priority over me.	A school would not normally set admissions arrangements or catchment areas along an administrative boundary. The distance of the child’s home to the school, regardless of the borough, is taken into account, so children living close to schools in neighbouring authorities will have the same priority as those in the same borough. You can put schools from any borough on your preference list.
It does not matter if my application is late.	If you apply after 31 October 2024, your application will not be considered until after all the on-time applications have been processed. If it is late, it is very unlikely that you will be offered one of your preferred schools.
If I don’t accept my school offer, I will stand a better chance of getting my child into our preferred choice.	You should accept any offer of a school place you receive to ensure that your child has a place in case your appeal is not successful. Accepting another offer will have no bearing on your appeal or position on the waiting list, and the appeals process does not limit other options available to you. If you decline your place you risk being offered a place at a school further away from your home.
The school that my child is offered on national offer day is the school they will have to go to.	On national offer day your child will be offered one school place. If they qualify for a place at more than one school on their list of preferences, they will be offered a place at the school that comes higher on their list. If your child is not offered a place at one of the schools you applied for, they will be offered a place at the nearest school with space. Children are automatically put on the waiting list for any/ all of their preferred schools (i.e. those schools listed above the school which was offered) and they will get the right of appeal for them. Between national offer day and the start of year 7, people move around and many alternative offers are made. Children stay on the waiting lists until the end of December in their year 7, even after they have started school. If after that time you wish to remain on the waiting list you must contact the school(s) to find out how to be placed back on the waiting list.

Grammar schools

If you would like your child to apply for a grammar school, they will need to sit an additional selection test. Registration takes place during Year 5, before the tests are taken at the beginning of Year 6.

For our current Year 5 pupils, the selection tests will take place in autumn 2027, for entry to secondary school in September 2028.

The registration dates for the 2027 Bexley Selection Test and Kent Test have not yet been published. We strongly recommend that parents and carers check the Bexley and Kent admissions websites regularly, as registration deadlines are strict and it is the responsibility of parents and carers to register their child.

As a guide, for the previous year's tests:

Bexley Selection Test: registration opened on 1 March and closed on 31 March.
Kent Test: registration opened on 1 June and closed on 1 July.

We will update this page with the 2027 registration and test dates as soon as they are published.

Bexley Selection Test

This is an optional test for those parents who want their children to attend a Bexley Grammar school. The Bexley Selection Test consists of two papers containing a mixture of questions on verbal reasoning and comprehension, non-verbal reasoning and mathematical reasoning. Each paper is divided into timed sections, most questions are multiple-choice, and all answers are marked on a separate machine-readable answer sheet. Test sessions take place in September annually on weekdays only (Monday to Friday). All children registered for the Bexley Selection Test will be invited to a test session at a test centre. This invite will be shared with parents / carers in early September.

It is the responsibility of parents / carers to ensure that registration for the Bexley Selection Test has been completed by the end of June (when their child is in Year 5) if parents / carers would like their child to sit the test in September. All parents / carers who register their child for the test will be sent a link to familiarisation materials.

In exceptional and extenuating circumstances, for example in the event of a year 5 child moving into the local area in July or August and wishing to sit the Bexley Selection Test in September, despite missing the end of June test registration deadline, parents / carers should contact the Bexley LA School Admissions Team on 020 8303 7777 or via selectiontests@bexley.gov.uk to request a late registration for the Bexley Selection Test.

We recommend that parents / carers read the information outlined in the links.

Kent Grammar School Assessment

This is an optional test for those parents who want their children to attend a Kent Grammar school. Parents wishing their children to sit the Kent Grammar school assessment are required to register with the Kent Admissions Team (either online or using an alternate method available from the team).

Details regarding the administration of the Kent test for Grammar school will be made available to parents in time for the registration.

The tests are multiple-choice with a separate answer sheet. They are marked by a computer. The first test will be an English and Maths paper and will take 1 hour. Each section will involve a 5 minute practice exercise followed by a 25 minute test. The English section will involve a comprehension exercise as well as some additional questions drawn from a set designed to test literacy skills.

The second test will be a reasoning paper. It will take about 1 hour, including the practice sections and questions. It will contain a verbal reasoning section and a non-verbal reasoning section of roughly the same length. The non-verbal reasoning will be split into short sections, administered and timed individually.

There will also be a writing exercise which will not be marked but may be used by a local headteacher panel as part of the headteacher assessment stage of the process. 40 minutes will be allowed for the writing task, including 10 minutes planning time.

This document explains the Kent Test papers for children who will take them: Kent Test Familiarisation Booklet.

Fee-paying/Independent schools

Entrance assessments

Each independent school has its own entrance requirements and tests. These are usually taken during the Autumn term when the child is in year 6.

Reference requests

Due to a rise in reference requests and the significant time it takes to prepare a high-quality reference, we charge a flat fee of £30 for each reference, applicable only to fee paying independent schools. Please contact scole@johnball.lewisham.sch.uk if this is a service you require.