Trafford's eight grammars — including Altrincham Grammar Boys, Altrincham Grammar Girls, Sale and Stretford — share a CEM-style consortium test on the first Saturday of September.
The year in shape
The Trafford test is the earliest in the country. Practice must happen during the summer holidays before Year 6, not into the autumn term.
Catchment for the most popular Trafford grammars (the Altrincham pair, Loreto for faith) is meaningfully tight in oversubscribed years.
Term-by-term plan
Autumn term. In summer of Year 5, transition from topic work to format-specific practice. Trafford uses CEM-style mixed papers, materially different from GL.
Spring term. Through autumn of Year 5, sit one paper per fortnight in CEM-style format. By Easter, the child should be familiar with the mixed-paper structure.
Summer term & holiday. Through summer of Year 5/6, this is the heaviest practice block — full timed papers weekly through July and August in preparation for the September test.
Topics to prioritise
Highest-leverage topics: CEM vocabulary (cloze, synonyms), shuffled sentences, time-distance word problems, and percentage change in worded contexts.
Common mistakes parents make this year
The most common parent mistake is leaving heavy practice for after the summer holiday — the test is the first weekend of September, and there is no after-holiday window.
Signs to look for
Signs the year is going well: child scores consistently in the qualifying range on Trafford-style mock papers by mid-August, has a steady test-day routine, and is calm about the early September date. If these signs are present, the year is going well; if they are absent, the issue is rarely intelligence — it is usually pacing, format unfamiliarity or the wrong tutoring relationship. Identify which and adjust deliberately.
Where to go next
Read the Trafford county guide for the full calendar; read the CEM format guide; book a Trafford-specific mock test in late August. Read across the related guides on this site — the guides index groups them by category for easy navigation.