The Kent Test 2027 entry: format, scores and next steps

The Kent Test settles one question: whether your child is assessed as suitable for a Kent grammar school. Kent County Council runs it for every Kent grammar school, in the first fortnight of Year 6. Two papers of about an hour each; you register in the summer term before, and the result comes five weeks after the test.

Almost everything that goes wrong for Kent families happens in the gap between that assessment and an offer. Being assessed as suitable is permission to be considered; Kent’s grammar schools then rank the children who named them on their own criteria, several well above the county standard. What follows is common to all of them; what differs sits on each school’s own page.

What are the dates, and which one catches families out?

What happens	Date
Kent Test registration opened	Monday 1 June 2026
Kent Test registration closed	Wednesday 1 July 2026
Test, for pupils who attend a Kent primary school	Thursday 10 September 2026
Test, for pupils who do not attend a Kent primary school	Weekend of 12 and 13 September 2026
Results day	Thursday 15 October 2026
Secondary application deadline	Monday 2 November 2026
National Offer Day	Monday 1 March 2027

The registration window is the trap. It opens and shuts in the summer term of the school year before the test, and Kent County Council records that registration closed on 1 July 2026 for this cycle. Miss it and the council’s own instruction is to email the Kent admissions team rather than assume the door has shut. Access arrangements for special educational needs go through the primary school’s coordinator before that date.

Registering is not applying. The test decides eligibility only. The offer comes from a separate form, on which every Kent family names up to four secondary preferences .

Who is the test for?

Registration is open to parents of children resident in England, so families outside Kent may register, and the council asks them to do so only if they genuinely intend to apply. It is unusually blunt about the bar too, telling parents that Kent’s grammar schools provide for children in about the top 25% of the ability range and suggesting a word with the primary school first.

The same page adds a line that saves confusion later: the Kent Test is valid for Kent grammar schools only. If you are still working out which 11+ test your child will sit, start there.

What is actually in the Kent Test papers?

Kent County Council describes the papers as multiple choice with a separate answer sheet, marked by computer. That matters more than it sounds: a child who knows the answer and fills the wrong row loses the mark .

Paper	What is in it	Timing as published
English and maths	An English section including a comprehension exercise, then a maths section	About 1 hour: each section is a 5 minute practice exercise then a 25 minute test
Reasoning	Verbal reasoning, spatial reasoning and non-verbal reasoning	About 1 hour including the practice sections; the non-verbal work is split into short blocks, administered and timed one at a time
Writing exercise	A piece of writing under test conditions	40 minutes, including 10 minutes of planning time. Not marked

The reasoning paper is described two different ways. The council’s web page names a verbal and a non-verbal section; the determined arrangements Kent grammar schools publish name three, and Dartford Grammar School’s put it plainly :

This includes tests in Mathematics, English and Reasoning (Verbal, Spatial & Non-Verbal). The tests are marked and the scores age standardised.

Spatial reasoning means holding a shape in your head and moving it: folding a net, rotating a solid, finding one figure hidden inside another. It gets no reported score of its own, because the scores that come back are English, maths and reasoning. A child prepared for verbal and non-verbal reasoning alone is prepared for part of a paper. Where verbal is the weaker half, the verbal reasoning question types sets out what that section asks.

Does the writing task count?

Kent County Council could not be clearer that the writing exercise will not be marked. It exists so a local headteacher panel has a recent piece of writing, done under test conditions, to look at if it reviews a borderline result . So do it properly and build nothing around it. We have watched families spend a summer on creative writing for a paper that carries no score, then meet the reasoning paper having never seen a spatial question.

What score does your child need?

Kent is unusual, and useful, in publishing a real number. Results bring three standardised scores, for English, maths and reasoning, plus a total. For the most recent test the standard was a total score of 332 or more, with no single score lower than 108, on papers standardised from 69 to 141, giving a highest possible total of 423. It is set again each year and published with the results in October, so last year’s figure is the shape of the target rather than a promise.

The second half of that condition is the half parents skip, and it changes what sensible preparation looks like.

A child scores 141 in maths, 141 in reasoning and 105 in English. The published standard for the year is a total of 332 or more, with no single score lower than 108. Is this a grammar assessment?

The usual wrong route

Almost every parent, and most children, answer yes, because the total is comfortably above the bar. The condition has two parts and only the first has been checked.

The method

1. Add the three scores: 141 plus 141 plus 105 gives a total of 387.
2. Compare that with the standard. 387 is well above 332, so the first part of the condition is met.
3. Now check the second part: no single score lower than 108.
4. The English score is 105, which is below 108, so the condition fails on that paper alone.

Two very strong papers cannot buy a weak third one. The floor is what makes balanced three subject preparation the right plan in Kent, and it is why an English comprehension weakness is more expensive here than a slightly slower maths section.

Answer: NoIn the paper: Under a minute.

Standardisation does quiet work behind all of this: each raw mark is adjusted for how old the child was on the day, so no fixed number of correct answers corresponds to a given score. How a standardised age score is built explains the machinery, and what a pass mark or qualifying score really is covers why the same word means different things from county to county.

Kent also publishes a report of how many children scored each possible total, and it holds one counter-intuitive finding about children who cleared the total and were still not assessed for grammar. What the Kent cohort’s scores actually looked like walks through it, and where a Kent Test total sits in the wider range turns the same report into a curve.

What happens between results day and an offer?

Results are emailed on results day to the address used at registration, and posted first class where no email address was given . Then the application takes over: up to four secondary preferences on one form, in true order of preference, with the council stating that naming only one school neither guarantees a place there nor gives any priority over another child .

A grammar assessment does not travel into a school with your child. It makes them eligible to be considered by any Kent grammar school named on the form, and the council says so directly: the school will consider the application, and that is not a guarantee of a place .

The other way back is the headteacher assessment. Where a child misses the threshold on scores alone, the primary school can refer them to the local panel, which looks at their achievement in school, examples of their work and the writing task done on test day . What happens on the day, and afterwards, is set out in results day, waiting lists and appeals.

Which Kent schools publish their own bar?

The county standard is one line, the same for every Kent grammar school. What each school does next is not, and they fall into three groups.

Group	What separates children who all qualified	Examples
Publishes its own outcome	Ranks on score and puts last year’s figures on its own website	The Judd School, The Skinners’ School
Ranks on score, publishes nothing in advance	Ranks on the Kent Test total, or on a margin above the county threshold, but the bar is only knowable after the event	Dartford Grammar School, Tonbridge Grammar School
Does not rank on score at all	Every qualified child is equal, and distance from the school decides	Invicta Grammar School, The Harvey Grammar School, Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School

Read the first group first, because a school’s own published figure is the only definitive one. The Judd School publishes its cut-off for the inner and outer areas, with the mean scores of the boys it offered places to, and The Skinners’ School publishes an offer-day breakdown by criterion. Where a school’s own page and a council freedom of information response disagree, we take the school’s figure: the school ran the allocation.

The second group ranks on score and publishes no target. Dartford Grammar School and Dartford Grammar School for Girls both rank on the Kent Test total, and Dartford’s priority area route asks for a score a stated margin above the county threshold, which is not itself published until results day . Tonbridge Grammar School ranks on combined score inside each of its lists, and Tunbridge Wells Girls’ Grammar School reserves governors’ places for the highest scores.

The third and largest group is the one parents least expect: most Kent grammar schools do not rank by score at all. Once assessed as suitable, a child is equal to every other qualified child, and the criteria decide, ending in distance. Invicta Grammar School, The Harvey Grammar School and Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School all work this way, so a very high score buys nothing extra and where you live decides almost everything. The catchment area checker shows whether that is your situation, and how catchment and distance actually work covers what a priority area does and does not buy.

Which schools run a second route in?

A handful of Kent schools accept a test of their own alongside the Kent Test, and a child may usually qualify by either route. The Folkestone School for Girls and Dover Grammar School for Boys each set their own paper as an alternative, Borden Grammar School runs its own assessment for boys who miss the standard, and Weald of Kent Grammar School adds an equally weighted second assessment for this cycle, and Highsted School and Mayfield Grammar School each run an optional second route of their own, sat at the school. Each description comes from that school’s own admission arrangements, as recorded on our school pages and checked at the start of this cycle. These are registered for with the school rather than the council, so each school’s page carries its own dates.

Medway Council also runs the Medway Test, for schools such as The Rochester Grammar School. It is registered for with Medway rather than with Kent, and a Kent Test result does not carry across .

What should you do next for your child?

• Diarise the registration window, not the test date. It shuts in the summer term before the test, and that is where families lose the year.
• Prepare all three papers evenly. The floor under each score means a weak English paper cannot be rescued by two strong ones, whatever the total says.
• Find out first whether your target school ranks on score at all. If it does not, what changes the outcome is the application and the address, not the last few marks.
• Sit at least one paper in the real shape: printed booklet, separate answer sheet, pencil, short timed blocks, spatial questions included. Our school-format mock papers build the Kent structure section by section, so the format is not what costs marks.

If you are reading this a year or more ahead, the useful question is not which book to buy but when to start preparing.

Common questions

What score does my child need to pass the Kent Test?

For the most recent test a grammar assessment needed a total of 332 or more, with no single score lower than 108 . The standard is set again each year and published with the results in October, so the published figure is the shape of the target rather than a promise.

What is actually in the Kent Test papers?

Two papers of about an hour each. The first is English and maths, each a short practice run then a timed test, with a comprehension exercise in the English part. The second is reasoning, in three named sections: verbal, spatial and non-verbal. There is also a writing exercise, not marked .

Does the writing task count towards the score?

No. Kent County Council says it will not be marked. It exists so that a local headteacher panel has something recent, written under test conditions, to look at if it reviews a result.

What happens if my child misses the standard by a few marks?

The headteacher assessment is the route. A primary school can refer a child who missed the threshold to the local panel, which looks at classwork, examples of work and the writing task done on test day. Ask the primary school rather than waiting to be offered it.

Is a grammar assessment the same as a grammar school place?

No, and that gap is where most of the disappointment in Kent lives. An assessment means a Kent grammar school may consider your child. Each school then ranks everyone who named it on its own criteria, and the most competitive rank on score well above the county standard.