Getting into Gravesend Grammar School
The Kent Test, the one 11+ Kent County Council runs for every Kent grammar school: what it involves and what to do next, for entry in September 2027.
Every fact on this page is checked against the school’s published admissions information, and nothing is guessed. · View sources · Report an error
Registration for the September 2026 test closed on 1 July 2026. Kent asks parents who missed it to email kent.admissions@kent.gov.uk rather than assume the door is shut. Otherwise: 1 weeks to test day.
What to do and when
Sitting the year after (2028 entry)? These are 2027-entry dates, and yours are not published yet: there is nothing you need to do this far out. Sign up for reminders and tick the 2028-entry box, and we’ll email only when your cycle’s dates are out and it is actually time to act.
5 dates as a calendar file, for Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. Share the link with anyone who needs them.
Life’s busy, so we’ll email you a nudge before each Gravesend Grammar deadline above. Nothing else: no newsletter, no marketing, and the reminders stop for good after National Offer Day (1 Mar 2027) unless you sign up again for another school.
The test, in one look
Gravesend Grammar sits the Kent Test, set by GL Assessment.
GL Assessment sets the 11+ for most grammar schools in England, including this one. Papers are multiple-choice, and scores are age-standardised: children born at different points in the school year are marked against slightly different scales, so a summer-born child isn’t disadvantaged. Because GL is the most widely used format, familiarisation materials and practice papers in the same style are easy to come by.
Because GL is multiple-choice and age-standardised, the two things that move a score are accuracy under time pressure and covering every question type rather than the comfortable ones. PlusProgress practice is adaptive across English, Maths, Verbal and Non-Verbal Reasoning, so it keeps finding the types your child is weakest on instead of rewarding what they already do well, and mock papers follow the format this school sets. Progress is reported as a standardised age score, the same scale the school will use.
How places are decided
210 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No catchment area that shuts anyone out: the final criterion is simply all other eligible boys. Living in the Borough of Gravesham ranks first among the geographic tiers, then named parishes including Hartley, Longfield and Swanscombe, then Stone, Darenth and Cliffe.
Ahead of the list, eligible children with an EHCP naming the school are admitted and the published admission number is reduced accordingly.
8 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked After Children and previously Looked After Children.
- 2.Medical health, social and special access reasons, applied in line with the Equality Act 2010, supported by written evidence from a suitably qualified practitioner showing a special connection between the need and the school.
- 3.Eligible children who have a sibling who will be attending the school when the child joins.
- 4.Eligible children with a parent who is a member of staff at the school, employed for at least two years or recruited to a vacant post with a demonstrable skills shortage.
- 5.Eligible children who live within the Borough of Gravesham.
- 6.Eligible children who live within the civil parishes of Ash-cum-Ridley, Bean, Fawkham, Hartley, Longfield and New Barn, Southfleet, Swanscombe and Greenhithe, Stansted, and the Unparished Area of Ebbsfleet.
- 7.Eligible children who live within the civil parishes of Stone, Darenth, Horton Kirby and South Darenth, Cliffe and Cliffe Woods.
- 8.All other eligible children.
No place quotas are attached to any Year 7 criterion.
Within every criterion, children in receipt of Pupil Premium are ranked highest, and everyone else is ranked beneath them; within each group ranking is by straight-line distance from home to school using NLPG address points, with random selection to break an exact tie.
What an EHCP is: an Education, Health and Care Plan, a legal document from your council for a child with special educational needs. Where a plan names a school, that school has to offer a place, so those places are taken out of the number above before anyone else is ranked. It is not a route most families can apply through.
Taken from the school’s own determined admission arrangements. The full document is linked under sources.
What the appeal figures show
Schools and councils publish some of this and not all of it. The numbers below came from Freedom of Information requests, which anyone can make, and each one links to the reply it came from.
The school has confirmed twice that it does not use Kent Test scores in its oversubscription criteria at all. Once your child is assessed as selective, a higher score gains nothing.
Over 2 years we have figures for, 186 families appealed and 28 won, about 15%.
- 2023 entry: 96 heard, 14 upheld
- 2022 entry: 90 heard, 14 upheld
An appeal is a hearing where you explain to an independent panel why your child should have a place. How appeals work, and the figures for every school
How pupils here do at GCSE
This is based on how pupils at this school go on to perform in their GCSEs, five years after the 11+. Attainment 8 is their average result across eight subjects. Read it as a description of outcomes rather than of teaching: a selective school admits children who were already scoring well at ten, so a high position here reflects who the school takes in as much as what it does with them.
Scores from Compare school and college performance data in England, Department for Education, 2024/25, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The Department publishes the scores and does not publish a ranking: the position above is ours, calculated over state-funded schools with a published score. See the full table.
One sitting, 33 schools
The same test also covers these schools:
Common questions
Kent publishes a real number, which is rarer than you would think. For the 2025 test, a grammar school assessment needed a total of 332 or more with no single score below 108. The council sets it again each year and publishes the new figure with results in October, so treat 332 as the shape of the target rather than a guarantee. Papers are standardised from 69 to 141, so the highest possible total is 423.
Two papers of about an hour. The first is English and Maths, each section a 5 minute practice run then a 25 minute test, with a comprehension exercise in the English part. The second is reasoning, and the council’s own familiarisation booklet gives it three sections: Verbal Reasoning, one 20 minute test after a practice run; then Spatial Reasoning and Non-Verbal Reasoning, both in short blocks of 4 or 5 minutes each, in an order the council does not fix. Spatial means picturing a shape and moving it in your head, folding it or turning it or finding it hidden inside another. It counts towards the reasoning score rather than getting a score of its own. There is also a 40 minute writing exercise which is not marked: it exists so a headteacher panel can look at it if your child’s scores fall just short.
That is what the headteacher assessment is for. A child who does not meet the standard on scores alone can be referred by their primary head, and a local panel looks at classwork and the unmarked writing exercise before deciding. It is a real route, not a formality, and it is worth asking the primary school about early.
No, and Kent says so plainly: it means grammar school is judged suitable, not that a place is held. Each school then applies its own admissions criteria, and in the most oversubscribed schools that means distance or the highest scores. The pages here carry each school’s own rules.
Children at Kent primary schools sit it in their own school on Thursday 10 September 2026 for 2027 entry. Everyone else is invited to a Kent testing centre on the weekend of 12 and 13 September 2026. Results are emailed on Thursday 15 October 2026, before the 31 October council deadline.
No. The council is explicit that the test is only valid for Kent grammar schools. Medway runs its own Medway Test and Bexley its own selection test, each with separate registration, so a family on a boundary may be looking at two registrations and two test days.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.
PlusProgress mocks return a standardised score for each paper, the same currency Kent reports back, so you can see where he stands against that 332 well before September.