English and maths
1 hour in total — each section is 5 minutes of practice, then 25 minutes marked
The English section is a comprehension exercise plus further questions testing literacy skills. The maths section follows in the same hour.
The Kent Test: papers, dates and where vocabulary counts
What the papers contain, how the year runs, and the part of it nobody revises for.
The Kent Test decides whether a child is assessed as suitable for a Kent grammar school. It is sat in Year 6, in the September before the secondary school application closes, and it is taken by children in and outside Kent.
It is multiple choice with a separate answer sheet, and it is marked by computer. Being assessed as suitable does not guarantee a place: grammar schools can be oversubscribed and then use their own admissions criteria.
Kent is clear that the test is not designed for everyone. Its own guidance says Kent grammar schools provide for children in roughly the top 25% of the ability range, and suggests talking to your child's primary school before registering.
From 2027 the papers will come from a new provider, Quest Assessments. Kent says the test's purpose, format, timing and role in grammar school admissions will stay the same.
After results day
- Results are emailed on Thursday 15 October 2026, to the address used to register. Families who gave no email address get them by first class post that day; if the letter doesn't arrive, your child's primary school can give you the scores the day after.
- Your child gets three standardised scores (English, maths and reasoning) and a total. In 2026 a grammar school assessment needed a total of 345 or more, with no single score below 111. Scores run from 69 to 141, so the highest possible total is 423.
- Assessed as suitable means any Kent grammar school you name will consider your application. It doesn't guarantee a place: oversubscribed schools rank applicants by their own admissions criteria.
- Not assessed as suitable? You can still name a Kent grammar school. That application will be refused when places are offered on 1 March 2027, and you then have the right to appeal.
- Kent's deadline for secondary school applications is Monday 2 November 2026.
We don’t interpret individual results. Everything above is from Kent County Council's Kent Test results, grammar school and secondary school places pages, checked on 28 October 2026.
Starting Year 5? The 2027 test
- The Kent Test is sat in the September of Year 6, so a child in Year 5 now sits it in September 2027, for secondary school in September 2028.
- That will be the first Kent Test from the new provider, Quest Assessments. Kent says the purpose, format and timing stay the same and that "you will see very little difference". It will publish new familiarisation materials when it has them.
- Registration dates for 2027 aren't published yet. In 2026 registration ran from 1 June to 1 July, so check the council's page from late spring.
The reading and vocabulary habits worth starting now are in why vocabulary is the one thing you can’t cram, and our free 11+ word list has over 1,100 words with their meanings.
Source: Kent County Council — Kent Test (October 2026 update), checked on 28 October 2026.
What is in the Kent Test
Papers set by Kent County Council.
Reasoning
About 1 hour, including practice
A verbal reasoning section and a non-verbal reasoning section of roughly the same length. The non-verbal reasoning is split into short sections, each timed on its own.
Writing exercise
40 minutes, including 10 minutes of planning
Not marked as part of the score. It may be used by a local headteacher panel during the headteacher assessment stage.
- The Kent Test is only valid for Kent grammar schools. Medway runs its own Medway Test and the London Borough of Bexley runs its own selection test.
- Children with a severe visual impairment who cannot access the papers can be assessed by a headteacher panel looking at classwork instead.
- Access arrangements have to be applied for by the primary school's SENCO before registration closes, not afterwards.
How the 2026 round ran
These are the dates for the tests sat in September 2026, for children starting secondary school in September 2027. They are here so you can see the shape of the year — roughly when registration opens, how long the window is, and how soon results follow.
- Registration opened
- Monday 1 June 2026
- Registration closed
- Wednesday 1 July 2026
- Test — children at a Kent primary school
- Thursday 10 September 2026
- Test — children not at a Kent primary school
- Weekend of 12 and 13 September 2026
- Results day
- Thursday 15 October 2026
Do not plan from this table.
Next year’s dates had not been published when we wrote this, and registration windows are short and unforgiving — Kent closes registration months before the test, and late entries are not generally accepted. Always take the live dates from Kent County Council — Kent Test.
Where vocabulary actually counts
There is no vocabulary paper in the Kent Test, which is exactly why vocabulary tends to fall off the revision list. It is spread across the parts that are marked.
The English section is built on a comprehension exercise. A comprehension question is only ever as answerable as the passage is readable — a child who stalls on two or three words in a paragraph is answering a harder question than the child sitting next to them, in the same 25 minutes.
Verbal reasoning makes up about half of the reasoning paper. Synonyms, antonyms, odd-one-out and word-pair questions are vocabulary questions wearing a different hat; there is no technique that rescues a word a child has never met.
The writing exercise is not marked, but a headteacher panel may read it. Under 40 minutes of time pressure a child writes with the words they genuinely own, not the ones they revised last week.
No selective test in England has a paper called vocabulary. That is precisely why it is the thing that gets left to look after itself — and why it is the one part of 11+ preparation that genuinely cannot be crammed.
We have written about that at more length in why vocabulary is the one thing you can’t cram, and our list of over 1,100 words with meanings is free to browse, with nothing to sign up for.
Where this came from
Every fact on this page was taken from Kent County Council — Kent Test, checked on 28 October 2026. We have not repeated figures from other preparation sites, because we found them disagreeing with the council’s own pages. If you spot something out of date here, the council is right and we are wrong.