Dartford Grammar School Sixth Form (16+) Entry

Dartford Grammar School's sixth form sets a minimum GCSE point score of 52 across a candidate's best 8 subjects, with at least a level 5 in English and Maths, at least a grade 7 in each subject proposed at International Baccalaureate Higher Level, and a grade 8 specifically if Mathematics is taken at Higher Level. There is no test and no interview: places are confirmed on results day, once actual GCSE grades are known. The Year 12 year group totals 340 students, with an admission number of 150 places reserved for students joining from another school; priority within that allocation goes first to students already at Dartford Grammar School moving up from Year 11. Every Year 12 student studies the same qualification — the school teaches the International Baccalaureate Diploma exclusively, with no A Level route at all — and that single fact is also why Dartford Grammar School's own MP told Parliament in October 2025 that the sixth form's future is genuinely uncertain, a story this page sets out in full, with both sides, further down the page.

What GCSE Grades Do You Need for Dartford Grammar School Sixth Form Entry?

Dartford Grammar School's own Year 12 Admissions page states the bar in a single sentence: “Admission to the Sixth Form will be as a result of applicants (girls or boys) obtaining a minimum point score of 52 for their best 8 subjects (calculated using the DfE equivalence tables – see website).” The “girls or boys” wording is deliberate. Dartford Grammar School is a boys-only school from Year 7 to Year 11, but its sixth form is co-educational — so this 52-point formula is the only route by which a girl is admitted to the school at all.

On top of the overall points score, two subject-specific floors apply. Students need at least a level 5 in GCSE English and Mathematics, and at least a grade 7 in each subject they propose to study at International Baccalaureate Higher Level. Where Mathematics itself is proposed at Higher Level, the required GCSE grade rises specifically to an 8 — the single genuinely subject-specific exception in an otherwise uniform entry bar. Kent County Council's own course-listing site, kentprospectus.co.uk, repeats this identical wording across Dartford Grammar School's individual IB subject pages — Latin at both Standard and Higher Level, Computer Science at Higher Level, German at Standard Level, and others checked — with no separate figure for any other individual subject. A candidate proposing Latin Higher Level and a candidate proposing Computer Science Higher Level face exactly the same GCSE bar, except where Mathematics itself is the Higher Level subject in question.

Two Numbers That Look Alike but Answer Different Questions

Two sets of figures about Dartford Grammar School's sixth form circulate online, and they are genuinely easy to confuse, because both concern the IB and both sit in roughly the same numeric range. The 52-point score above is an entry threshold — the minimum a Year 11 student needs to be offered a Year 12 place. The 45, 44 and 40-point figures that also appear when researching the school, including on our own Dartford Grammar School 11+ guide, are IB Diploma results — scores actual Year 13 students achieved after sitting the IB Diploma's final examinations. In the 2025 results, three students achieved the maximum possible 45 points, a further six achieved 44 points, and 73 students in total scored 40 points or above, out of a maximum IB Diploma score of 45.

These are different measures, on different scales, answering different questions. The 52-point entry score is calculated from a candidate's best 8 GCSE subjects using the Department for Education's own equivalence tables, applied before a student has sat a single IB exam. The 40, 44 and 45-point figures are IB Diploma results, awarded up to two years later on the International Baccalaureate's own separate points scale, which has nothing to do with GCSEs at all. A family reading “45 points” and assuming that is the score needed to get in would be reading an achieved outcome as an entry bar — an understandable mix-up, since no page we found states the distinction plainly, including our own 11+ guide to the school.

How Many Sixth Form Places Are There, and How Many Go to Students Joining From Elsewhere?

The total Year 12 year group is 340 students. Within that figure, the admission number for external candidates — students not already at Dartford Grammar School — is 150 places, though Kent County Council's admissions criteria note this figure “may be exceeded” if internal transfers from Year 11 leave the overall year group below 340, subject to individual IB subject courses still having space. Priority within the Year 12 allocation goes first to students already at Dartford Grammar School who meet the entry criteria and are transferring up from Year 11; external candidates are then considered against the places that remain.

Where external demand exceeds supply, Kent County Council's published oversubscription criteria for Year 12 entry set out a fixed order: children in local authority care first, then students with a medical, health, social or Equalities Act need, then students predicted at least a grade 4 in a full-course foreign language GCSE, and only then distance from the school, measured in a straight line using National Land and Property Gazetteer address-point data. For the current cycle, offers are made before the end of March 2027, and only become firm once the school is notified of GCSE results in August 2027.

Is There a Test or Interview? How Dartford Grammar School Confirms a Sixth Form Place

No test and no interview feature anywhere in Kent County Council's published admissions procedure for Dartford Grammar School's sixth form. All offers made during Year 11 are conditional on students meeting the grade criteria specified, and only become firm offers once GCSE results are actually published, with the school notified in August. Internal Year 11 students already at Dartford Grammar School do not need to make a formal application at all — the school's own guidance states plainly that “there is no need to make a formal application if you are an internal student in Year 11.”

For the September 2026 entry cycle that has already filled this year's Year 12, external applications had to be received by Sunday 18th January 2026 — a deadline now in the past, describing how this September's cohort was recruited rather than what a prospective applicant should expect to book next. Looking ahead to the next cycle, Kent County Council's published 2027-entry admissions procedure confirms that offers will be made before the end of March 2027, and confirmed once the school is notified of GCSE results in August 2027. Parents whose application is refused have a statutory right of appeal, exercised in writing to the Clerk to the Governors, care of the school.

What Is the IB Diploma Dartford Grammar School Teaches, and Why There's No A Level Fallback?

Dartford Grammar School's sixth form runs the International Baccalaureate Diploma exclusively; it does not offer A Levels as an alternative route. The school's own admissions page describes the qualification as one that “offers a full-time education that will enable you to follow any path you should choose,” and its curriculum pages set out the structure directly: students select 3 subjects at Higher Level and 3 subjects at Standard Level, spanning the IB's usual spread of groups from languages and humanities through to sciences and mathematics. Around that six-subject core sits the IB's own compulsory core: a philosophical course in Theory of Knowledge, an Extended Essay written in one of the six chosen subjects, and CAS — activities encompassing creativity, activity and service.

This structure matters more at Dartford Grammar School than it would at a school offering both routes, precisely because there is no fallback. A student who finds the IB's breadth demanding — six subjects studied simultaneously through to age 18, rather than the early specialisation of three or four A Levels — cannot simply switch tracks within the school; the choice to apply here is, in practice, a choice of qualification as much as a choice of school. And because the school is boys-only from Year 7 to Year 11, with the sixth form the only point at which it becomes co-educational, a girl considering Dartford Grammar School is weighing this same IB-only structure as her one route into the school at all, whatever her view of A Levels elsewhere might be.

The Funding Fight in Parliament: What Dartford's MP Said, What the Minister Said, and What the School Hasn't Said

Dartford Grammar School's sixth form is at the centre of a live, unresolved argument in Parliament about how it will be funded from the 2026-27 academic year onward — and it matters to be precise about who has said what, because the school itself has made no public announcement either way.

The dispute starts with a change to a specific funding stream. The Government's own guidance on 16-to-19 funding states plainly that “from academic year 2026 to 2027, the large programme uplift will only apply to the costs of specific larger than normal maths and high value A level programmes to support the progression of students into priority sectors” — a formulation that, as written, no longer includes the IB Diploma. On 29 October 2025, MPs debated this change specifically as it affects the IB in a Westminster Hall debate titled “International Baccalaureate: Funding in State Schools.”

In that debate, Dartford's own MP told Parliament that Dartford Grammar School is “one of the 20 or so schools affected by the decision to remove the large programme uplift for 16-to-19 study programmes, including the IB diploma, from the 2026-27 academic year.” The MP went further, warning: “The LPU funding has been crucial in allowing state schools such as Dartford grammar to deliver it. It is clear to me that without that funding, the IB diploma will no longer be available at Dartford grammar and will become the preserve of private schools that can afford to offer it, cutting off those in the state sector from the limited access that currently exists.” The same MP noted that transitional funding had been raised in the debate — “some transitional funding in place for the next academic year—40% of the current value has been mentioned” — but said it was unclear what that would mean for a school “where the entire sixth form takes the IB”, which “faces the prospect of needing to replace its entire curriculum and restructure staffing for the sixth form over the next year, with extremely limited notice that this was coming.”

A separate contribution in the same debate went further still, describing Dartford Grammar School “as has been mentioned” as “the largest provider of the IB in the country” — a characterisation raised by another Member during the debate, not a statistic the school itself has published — and stated that the school “has already warned that it cannot afford to offer IB to its pupils without the funding.”

The Government's response, from the same debate, deserves equal weight rather than being read past. Responding directly, the minister said: “It is not correct to say that funding has been scrapped for the international baccalaureate… The large programme uplift application has been changed, and that additional 20% will no longer be available for settings that want to offer the international baccalaureate.” Read carefully, the minister's position is narrower than a blanket funding cut: the claim is that a specific 20% uplift is no longer available to IB-offering settings, not that IB funding in general has been withdrawn — a distinction the minister was explicit about drawing.

What Dartford Grammar School itself has said publicly, as of August 2026, is markedly different in tone from either side of that Parliamentary exchange. The school's own sixth form page still reads: “It is rare to be a school within the British education system that offers the IB curriculum exclusively, and we are proud to say that we now offer the opportunity to study the IB Diploma in the Sixth Form to more students than ever.” No statement addressing the funding change, the Parliamentary debate, or any change to the IB's future at the school appears on the school's own news feed. Dartford Grammar School has not announced that it is dropping the IB Diploma. What exists, precisely, is: a national funding change set out in the Government's own guidance; an MP's warning to Parliament about what that change could mean for this specific school; a minister's rebuttal that a blanket funding cut is not the correct description; and a school website that, as of the most recent check, says nothing about any of it. A family with a child currently on the IB Diploma pathway, or considering applying, should treat this as an open, developing situation rather than a settled outcome in either direction, and check the school's own admissions pages directly for the most current position before deciding.

How Dartford Grammar School's Funding Story Differs From Bexley Grammar School's

Bexley Grammar School, in the neighbouring London Borough of Bexley, faced the same national funding change and has already reached a different, published outcome: on 4 December 2025, Bexley Grammar School announced it would not offer the IB Diploma as a programme of study from September 2026, switching its sixth form entirely to A Levels — a decision covered in full on our separate Bexley Grammar School sixth form guide. Dartford Grammar School has made no equivalent announcement. The two schools sit at genuinely different points in the same national story: one has already decided and published a switch away from the IB; the other is the subject of an active, unresolved Parliamentary argument about its own funding position, with no public statement from the school itself either way.

Ofsted, the DfE Record, and Where Dartford Grammar School Sits

Dartford Grammar School's most recent Ofsted inspection took place on 6 December 2022, with the report published on 27 January 2023, and the overall outcome was Outstanding. Sixth form provision was assessed separately within that inspection and was also rated Outstanding as its own distinct sub-judgement, not simply inherited from the whole-school grade.

The Department for Education's official record for the school gives its local authority as Kent, its school type as an academy converter, its admissions policy as selective, and confirms it has no religious character. The same record confirms the school has a sixth form, with a whole-school capacity of 1,550 against a current roll of 1,576 pupils, and a free school meals eligibility figure of 9.5%.

Families researching a younger child's application to Dartford Grammar School at Year 7 can find the school's 11+ entry route — the Kent Test, the priority-area and open-category place split, and the same IB Diploma results referenced above — covered on our separate Dartford Grammar School 11+ guide. For families weighing Dartford Grammar School against the wider landscape of selective sixth forms, our grammar schools directory sets out entry routes at grammar schools across the country, and our IB tuition pages cover subject-by-subject support once a Year 12 place is confirmed.

Frequently Asked Questions