Gloucester, Gloucestershire · Gloucestershire

The Crypt School

Same Gloucestershire consortium as Pate's, but without the machinery that makes Pate's harder to get into — no per-paper minimums, no quantified top-N group, no national quota.

Founded in 1539, The Crypt is one of Gloucestershire's oldest schools and one of seven sharing the county's GL Assessment entrance test. Comparing its determined admissions policy directly against Pate's Grammar School's reveals a real structural difference: Pate's requires a minimum score on each paper individually, defines a fixed 'Qualifying Group' of the top 250 ranked candidates well above its own admission number, and reserves a minimum of 45 places for UK-wide rank order regardless of postcode. The Crypt has none of that — just a single combined score and a straightforward county-wide rank order for its 155 places. That's a plausible, sourced explanation for why Pate's has a reputation for needing a higher score, even though no single document publishes matching cut-off numbers for both schools in the same year.

Key facts

Gender: co-ed
Age range: 11-18
Region: South West
Local authority: Gloucestershire
Established: 1539
DfE URN: 136578
Website: https://www.cryptschool.org

Admissions

Admissions authority: The school sets its own test and criteria
Entrance test board: GL Assessment, shared across Gloucestershire's seven grammar schools consortium (with Pate's, Denmark Road High, Marling, Ribston Hall, Sir Thomas Rich's, Stroud High), sat once by any applicant to the consortium.partly verified
GL Assessment is named on the school's own 11+ familiarisation-materials page and consistently across independent guides, but the determined admissions policy itself never names the test board — it only calls it 'the Grammar School Test'.
Test format: Two multiple-choice papers, sat on one day: Paper 1 covers English comprehension, vocabulary and verbal reasoning; Paper 2 covers maths, non-verbal and spatial reasoning. Scores are age-standardised and combined into one rank-order score shared across all seven consortium schools.
Qualifying / pass mark: No fixed pass mark — The Crypt sets its own annual 'Qualifying Standard' purely by rank order against its Published Admission Number, 155 for September 2027 entry (raised from 150 for the two prior entry years). Unlike Pate's, which quantifies a 'Qualifying Group' of the top 250 ranked candidates and requires a minimum score on each paper, The Crypt publishes no equivalent group size or per-paper threshold — just the single combined rank order.verify with school
No exact annual cut-off score is published, and there's no Crypt equivalent to Pate's quantified 'top 250' Qualifying Group.
Superselective?: Noverify with school
A structural, mechanism-based comparison verified directly against both schools' own determined policies — not a confirmed numeric score gap, since no source publishes matching cut-offs for both in the same year.

Catchment & priority criteria

None — no geographic catchment or priority zone. Applications come through Gloucestershire's countywide coordinated scheme from any local authority. Distance is used only as a tie-break within priority categories, never as a primary criterion. There is no sibling priority either, matching Pate's.

Looked-after and previously looked-after children who met the Qualifying Standard
Pupil Premium-eligible children who met the Qualifying Standard
Children of staff (2+ years' service, or a skill-shortage appointment) who met the Qualifying Standard
All other children who met the Qualifying Standard, by rank order of score

Results

Year	Attainment 8	GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths	Progress 8	A*–A	A*–B
2024	71.11	~96%	+0.6	34%	—
Last cohort DfE could calculate Progress 8 for — its KS2 baseline (2019) predates the COVID-era cancellations affecting later cohorts.
2025	72.7	—	Not calculated — this cohort's KS2 SATs (due 2020) were cancelled by COVID-19, leaving no baseline	36%	—
Average A-level grade reported by the school as 'B'. School received an Alps platinum award (top 10% nationally for GCSE value-added) — a private-provider metric, not a DfE one.
2026	—	—	—	~50% (provisional, school-reported)	~75% (provisional, school-reported)
School-reported, provisional (not yet on DfE's validated tables as of this research): ~25% grade 9, ~50% grades 9-8, 71% grades 9-7 at GCSE; near-100% A-level pass rate. This cohort's KS2 baseline (due 2021) was also cancelled, so it won't carry a Progress 8 score either — DfE has said it intends to resume Progress 8 reporting from the 2026/27 cohort.

Ofsted

Rating: Outstanding
Date: 12 March 2024
Report: Read the full report

Sources

1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, capacity, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/136578
2. Determined Admissions Policy for September 2027 entry — https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/sh22-cryptschool-org/media/downloads/thecryptadmissionspolicy2027entrydetermined.pdf
3. School's own history page — founded 1539 — https://cryptschool.org/our-story/
4. Ofsted report, inspected 12 March 2024 — https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/136578
5. Gloucestershire County Council — grammar schools consortium overview — https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/education-and-learning/school-admissions/grammar-schools/
6. Comparator: Pate's Grammar School's own determined admissions policy — used for the direct structural comparison — https://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/media/oxvnhfgb/pates-determined-admissions-policy-for-september-2026-entry.pdf
7. School's own GCSE results page, 2025 — https://cryptschool.org/gcse-results-2025/
8. School's own A-level results page, 2025 — https://cryptschool.org/a-level-results-2025/
9. School's own results and performance page — multi-year summary — https://cryptschool.org/results-and-performance/

Last updated 2026-08-30. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.