English
30 minutes marked, after 3 practice questions and 5 minutes of practice time
Comprehension, punctuation and grammar. There are no separately timed sections — the whole paper has to be finished inside the 30 minutes.
The Medway Test: papers, dates and where vocabulary counts
Three papers, tight timings, and the thing that quietly decides two of them.
The Medway Test is Medway's own 11+. A child sits it to be considered for a Medway grammar school, and can sit it whether or not they live in Medway — but it has to be taken at a Medway Council venue, never remotely.
The papers are written specifically for Medway Council by GL Assessment. Medway warns that practice material sold elsewhere as official Medway material is not endorsed by either.
Chatham Grammar is the exception worth knowing: its admissions policy accepts children assessed as suitable through either the Medway Test or the Kent Test.
Starting Year 5? The 2027 test
- The Medway 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.
- Dates for 2027 aren't published yet. In 2026 registration ran from 18 May to 12 June, earlier than Kent's, so check the council's page from spring.
- There is only one sitting: no resit, no alternative date if it clashes with another test, and no remark.
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: Medway Council — Medway Test dates, checked on 28 October 2026.
After results day (2026)
- Results are emailed after 10am on Wednesday 14 October 2026, to the address used to register, or posted that day if you didn't give one. If nothing has arrived by Thursday 15 October, email medwaytest@medway.gov.uk.
- There is no resit, no remarking of any paper and no appeal for a remark.
- If your child was assessed as non-grammar, you can still apply for grammar schools. Medway suggests naming a mixture of grammar and non-grammar schools, and after outcomes on 1 March 2027 you can appeal to a school.
- Apply for secondary school places by 31 October 2026.
We don’t interpret individual results. Everything above is from Medway Council — Medway Test results, checked on 6 October 2026.
What is in the Medway Test
Papers set by Medway Council, with papers from GL Assessment.
Mathematics
50 minutes marked, after 2 practice questions and 2 minutes of practice time
Mathematical elements, again with no separately timed sections.
Reasoning
45 minutes marked in total — 25 minutes verbal, 20 minutes spatial and non-verbal
Verbal reasoning in one timed section; spatial and non-verbal reasoning split across four separately timed sections.
- There is a break of at least 20 minutes between papers.
- There is no resit, no remarking of any paper, and no appeal for a remark.
- Passing does not guarantee a place. Oversubscribed grammar schools fall back on their own admissions criteria.
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 18 May 2026
- Registration closed
- Friday 12 June 2026
- Invitations sent
- By the end of August 2026
- Testing for children at a Medway primary or junior school (at their own school)
- Tuesday 15 and Wednesday 16 September 2026
- Testing with special arrangements
- Thursday 17 and Friday 18 September 2026
- Testing for children not at a Medway primary or junior school
- Saturday 19 or Sunday 20 September 2026
- Results day (by email after 10am, or by post)
- Wednesday 14 October 2026
- Contact Medway if results have not arrived
- From 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 — Medway closes registration months before the test, and late entries are not generally accepted. Always take the live dates from Medway Council — Medway Test.
Where vocabulary actually counts
Two of the three Medway papers lean on vocabulary, and neither of them calls it that.
The English paper gives 30 minutes for comprehension, punctuation and grammar together. That is a tight paper, and the time a child loses is rarely lost on punctuation — it goes on rereading a sentence because one word in it is unfamiliar.
Verbal reasoning is 25 minutes, the single longest vocabulary-dependent block in the test. Word pairs, synonyms and antonyms are exactly the kind of question where knowing the word is the whole answer.
With no resit and no remark, there is no second attempt to prepare differently for. Vocabulary is the part of this that has to be built over months rather than revised in a fortnight.
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 Medway Council — Medway 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.