Cranbrook School 11+ Preparation

Cranbrook School is a co-educational state grammar school in the Weald of Kent, founded under a charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1574. Unusually among Kent's 32 grammar schools, Cranbrook is also a state boarding school — though boarding only begins at Year 9, not Year 7. Entry to Year 7 is through the Kent Test, Kent County Council's selective entrance assessment, sat in September of Year 6 for entry the following September. With 90 Year 7 day places and a priority area that favours families in and around Cranbrook itself, competition for places from outside the priority parishes is intense. This guide sets out the facts, dates and thresholds families need for Cranbrook School 11+ entry, and how to prepare effectively.

What Are the Key Facts and Dates for Cranbrook School 11+ Entry 2027?

The table below sets out the essential facts about Cranbrook School Year 7 admissions and the key dates for the 2026 Kent Test, which decides September 2027 entry (Year 6 families now). Dates are based on Kent County Council's published Kent Test schedule and Cranbrook School's own admissions pages; families should always confirm the latest dates directly with the school and Kent County Council nearer the time.

Applications for Cranbrook School follow Kent County Council's co-ordinated admissions scheme. Registration for the Kent Test itself is separate from — and earlier than — the secondary school application (CAF) submitted to your home local authority. For September 2027 entry, families who missed the 1 July 2026 Kent Test registration deadline could not sit the September test in the normal round, so early registration is essential for Year 5 families too, particularly for families new to Kent or applying from outside the county. Full details of the Year 7 day admissions process are published on the school's own Cranbrook School admissions pages, and should always be checked directly for the latest confirmed dates and criteria.

What Does the Kent Test Involve?

The Kent Test — formally the Procedure for Entry into Secondary Education, or PESE — is delivered using GL Assessment materials and is the same test used across all Kent grammar schools, including Cranbrook. A single Kent Test registration and result is used when applying to any combination of Kent grammar schools, so families do not need to register separately for each school. Cranbrook School specifically requires the standard Kent Test result for any application made until the end of the first term of Year 7; late or in-year applicants after that point are instead assessed using CAT4 cognitive ability testing.

Each paper includes a short five-minute practice section before the timed test begins, so children are not encountering the question format cold. All four subject scores — English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning — are standardised to account for the age of the child at the time of testing, then combined into the total score reported to families. Cranbrook School's own published guidance confirms that each subject score ranges from 69 to 141, giving a maximum combined score of 423 across the four elements.

How Competitive Is Cranbrook School 11+ Entry?

Meeting the Kent-wide qualifying score of 345 for September 2027 entry (332 for September 2026 entry), with no single score below 111, makes a child "grammar qualified" — eligible to apply to any Kent grammar school. It does not, however, guarantee a place at Cranbrook specifically. Because Cranbrook is oversubscribed within its priority area every year, the school's own published admissions data shows that the actual lowest score offered a place has consistently sat well above the qualifying standard.

The September 2026 entry figure of 349 is the highest closing score in Cranbrook's published five-year admissions history, and it is data most 11+ guide sites researching this school have not yet caught up with — several still quote the 2025 or 2024 figures as current. The pattern is not a smooth upward trend; it moves with the strength of each year's applicant cohort within the priority area, and families should treat 340 and above as a realistic working target for a genuinely competitive application, rather than relying on the Kent-wide qualifying figure (345 for September 2027 entry) alone.

These closing scores apply specifically to applicants within Cranbrook's priority area. The priority area itself is defined in two tiers: Tier 1 covers eight named civil parishes — Cranbrook, Sissinghurst, Goudhurst, Staplehurst, Frittenden, Benenden, Sandhurst and Hawkhurst — and Tier 2 extends to an 8.5km straight-line radius from the school, measured using the National Land and Property Gazetteer. Within the priority area, places are allocated first to looked-after children, then Pupil Premium pupils, then children with a demonstrated social or medical need, then siblings of current pupils and children of staff, and finally by standardised score with distance as the final tie-breaker. Families outside both tiers are only considered once priority area applicants have been placed, which makes a strong score even more important for out-of-area families hoping for a place.

Can My Child Board at Cranbrook School?

This is one of the most common points of confusion for families researching Cranbrook School, and it is worth stating plainly: boarding is not available at Year 7. All 90 Year 7 places are day places, admitted purely through the Kent Test. Cranbrook's boarding provision — one of a small number of state boarding schools in England — only opens at Year 9 entry, through a separate admissions process with its own application window, typically 1 September to 31 October in the year before entry.

For the September 2026 Year 9 intake, Cranbrook offered 52 boarding places and 8 day places, with boarding fees from £5,859 per term for 2026/27 (day pupils do not pay fees, as Cranbrook is a state school; only the boarding element is charged). Around 230–240 boarders are typically resident across the school's boarding houses at any one time. Cranbrook's boarding provision was rated Outstanding by Ofsted following an inspection on 17–19 June 2025, with inspectors describing a "very special community" and strong pastoral care. Families specifically seeking a boarding place for their child from age 11 should look elsewhere, or plan for the Year 9 boarding round at Cranbrook rather than the Year 7 Kent Test round.

What Is Cranbrook School Like Academically?

Cranbrook School's most recent full inspection under Ofsted's mainstream schools framework rated the school Good, published 22 March 2022. The school has since been inspected again, in May 2026, with the resulting report published in July 2026 — families should check the school's own website or the Ofsted Reports service for the current published outcome.

Academically, Cranbrook's 2025 examination results show a school performing solidly within the strong field of Kent grammar schools. At GCSE, 53.4% of grades awarded in 2025 were at grades 9–7 (broadly equivalent to the old A*–A), and 95.8% were at grades 9–4. At A Level, 38.4% of grades were A*–A, 66.4% were A*–B, and 90% were A*–C, with pupils going on to universities including Cambridge, Bath, Durham, Edinburgh, Exeter, UCL, LSE and Imperial across a wide range of subjects. Almost all pupils follow the English Baccalaureate curriculum through Key Stage 4, and sixth form retention runs at approximately 90%.

Beyond the exam results, Cranbrook has a distinctive history that sets it apart from other Kent grammars. Its charter, granted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1574, is kept in the school library — and in 2003, astronaut Piers Sellers carried a copy of that charter into space aboard the Space Shuttle, a detail the school still marks with pride. The 75-acre campus includes the Sellers Observatory, opened in 2005 and named for the same astronaut, which houses a 22.5-inch telescope used by the school's astronomy society. Combined with strong SEN provision and an increasingly visible commitment to pastoral inclusivity, Cranbrook offers a genuinely distinctive character among Kent's 32 grammar schools — one that goes well beyond its Kent Test results alone.

See also our guides to Weald of Kent Grammar School and Tonbridge Grammar School for other Kent Test options, our Kent 11+ borough guide for a county-wide overview, and our general 11+ Tuition page for how we support families across all selective schools.

How Should I Prepare My Child for the Cranbrook School 11+?

Effective Kent Test preparation for Cranbrook requires structured, progressive work over a sustained period rather than a short burst immediately before the September test. Because the Kent Test qualifying standard (345 for September 2027 entry) is a Kent-wide figure but Cranbrook's own closing scores run well above it, families targeting Cranbrook specifically should prepare for a genuinely competitive score, not simply the pass mark.

Year 4 (Optional Early Start): Families who want maximum preparation time can begin in Year 4, focusing on enjoyment and fluency rather than exam-style practice. Build core maths through games and problem-solving, encourage wide reading across fiction and non-fiction to strengthen the vocabulary base that underpins both the English and verbal reasoning papers, and introduce light non-verbal reasoning exploration through age-appropriate puzzle books. No timed tests at this stage.

Year 5, September (Structured Preparation): This is the ideal entry point for most families. Begin systematic work on all four Kent Test subject areas — English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning — using age-appropriate GL Assessment-style question banks. Verbal reasoning in particular benefits from consistent weekly exposure over a long period, since the vocabulary and pattern recognition it demands cannot be crammed. Build maths fluency in multi-step problem solving and the geometry and number topics that feature heavily in the Kent Test.

Year 5, January onward: Increase session frequency and begin introducing timed section practice. Track performance by subject to identify weak areas — most children find one of verbal or non-verbal reasoning noticeably harder than the other, and preparation should weight accordingly. Begin practising the writing task under time pressure (10 minutes planning, 30 minutes writing) so that pacing becomes automatic.

Year 6, September onward: Run full timed mock papers under exam conditions at least monthly, replicating the two-paper structure of the real Kent Test. Confirm your Kent Test registration by the deadline on Kent County Council's Kent Test page (for September 2027 entry it was 1 July 2026). Continue targeted practice on remaining weak areas rather than broad, unfocused revision in the final weeks before the test date (10 September 2026 for September 2027 entry).

Summer before the exam: Maintain a light schedule of two to three sessions per week over the summer holidays to keep skills sharp without risking burnout. Because the Kent Test falls in the first fortnight of the autumn term, children need to be exam-ready before the summer holidays end, not after.

Understanding the Kent Test Score and Cranbrook's Admissions Criteria

The Kent Test produces a standardised score for each of the four subject areas — English, maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning — each ranging from 69 to 141, with a maximum combined total of 423. Standardisation adjusts the raw mark for the age of the child on the day of testing, so that a child born in September is not disadvantaged relative to a child born the following August who has had almost a full extra year of development. The standardised total is the figure that determines whether a child is "grammar qualified" and is what appears in the results letter sent to families in October.

A combined score of 345 or more, with no single score below 111, was the Kent-wide qualifying standard for September 2027 entry (332, with no subject below 108, for September 2026 entry) that made a child eligible to apply to any Kent grammar school. For Cranbrook specifically, being grammar qualified is only the first step — the school's own oversubscription criteria then rank qualified applicants within the priority area first, and the closing scores shown above (349 for September 2026 entry) reflect where that ranking has actually settled in recent years, not the minimum theoretical qualifying mark.

Families should also note that Cranbrook's priority area system means postcode has a substantial effect on outcome. A child scoring 335 from within the eight named Tier 1 parishes may well receive an offer in a year where the Tier 1 cohort is not especially strong; a child scoring the same from outside both priority tiers is very unlikely to. Families living outside the priority area but still within reasonable travelling distance should factor this into their wider Kent grammar school strategy, applying to Cranbrook alongside other Kent grammars such as Weald of Kent Grammar School or Tonbridge Grammar School to maximise the range of realistic options.

Cranbrook 11+ 2027 test: September 2028 entry (Year 5 now)

Children now in Year 5 sit the 2027 test for September 2028 entry. The September 2027 entry cycle below shows the order the stages follow, and Cranbrook School's Year 7 day admissions page is where it publishes its admissions information.

Kent Test and application route

For September 2027 entry (2026 test), Cranbrook School applications complied with the co-ordinated admission scheme administered by Kent County Council.

Results

For September 2027 entry (2026 test), Kent emailed results on Thursday 15 October 2026 and grammar assessment needed 345 or more with no single score lower than 111.

Offers

For September 2027 entry, secondary school places are offered on Monday 1 March 2027.

Dates for September 2028 entry will appear on the school's Year 7 day admissions page.

Reviewed October 2026: Kent Test results, qualifying score and offer date checked against Kent County Council; day places and closing scores checked against Cranbrook School's Year 7 day admissions page.

Frequently Asked Questions About Cranbrook School 11+ Entry