Holcombe Grammar School 11+ Guide 2026: Medway Test, Co-Education and Admissions

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Holcombe Grammar School 11+ entry for September 2027 carries an unusually significant angle this year: the school is admitting girls into Year 7 for the first time in its history. Holcombe Grammar School has been a selective boys' school for Years 7 to 11 for well over a century — tracing its roots to 1913 as Chatham Junior Technical School — with a co-educational Sixth Form, and from September 2026, Year 7 entry is open to both boys and girls. The school sits on Maidstone Road in Chatham, Kent, holds a Good Ofsted rating from its March 2024 inspection, and has around 1,050 pupils on roll. It sits within the Medway selective admissions system, using the Medway Test set by GL Assessment to identify grammar-suitable children, with 180 Year 7 places available for September 2027 entry — up from 150 places before the co-educational change. This guide covers what the co-educational transition means for families applying now, exactly how the Medway Test works and how it differs from the neighbouring Kent Test, the oversubscription criteria, key dates for 2027 entry, Holcombe's academic results and history, and how to prepare effectively. For the wider regional picture, see our Kent grammar schools guide 2026.

Key Facts: Holcombe Grammar School

Is Holcombe Grammar School Still a Boys' School?

Not for much longer — and for families currently planning Year 7 entry, this is the single most important change to understand. Holcombe Grammar School began life in 1913 as Chatham Junior Technical School, training boys aged 13 to 16 for careers in the Royal Navy and the Royal Dockyard at Chatham. It moved to its present site at Holcombe Manor, on Maidstone Road, in the 1920s, converted into a technical school after 1945, and was granted full grammar school status in 1982 under the name Chatham Grammar School for Boys. In 2016, the school rebranded as Holcombe Grammar School in preparation for an earlier, ultimately delayed, attempt at co-education originally planned for 2018/19.

The change that is actually happening now follows a longer and more formal process. Medway Council first proposed making three of its single-sex grammar schools co-educational in April 2022, citing an imbalance in how the schools were filling their places: Chatham Grammar School and Fort Pitt Grammar School, both girls-only, were struggling to attract enough Medway girls to fill their Year 7 intake, while Holcombe Grammar School had the mirror-image problem attracting enough Medway boys, with unfilled boys' places routinely offered to out-of-area applicants instead. Consultations ran in 2022, were paused by the Department for Education in July 2023, and further consultations followed in December 2023 and January 2024. The DfE's South East Advisory Board referred the matter to the Minister for Schools, and formal government approval was announced on 5 November 2024. Holcombe Grammar School, Fort Pitt Grammar School and Chatham Grammar School will all admit co-educational Year 7 cohorts for the first time from September 2026.

The practical implication for applicants is straightforward: for the first time in Holcombe's history, girls sitting the Medway Test may include Holcombe on their Common Application Form as a preference, alongside boys. Holcombe's oversubscription criteria and admissions process are otherwise unchanged — only eligibility has widened. Pupils already in Years 8 to 11 continue in single-sex classes; the transition affects new Year 7 intakes only, and the school's co-educational Sixth Form is unaffected since it has long admitted both boys and girls. For the equivalent story at Holcombe's sister schools, see our guides to Fort Pitt Grammar School and Chatham Grammar School, both making the reverse transition from girls-only to co-educational in the same reform.

How Does Admission to Holcombe Grammar School Work?

Holcombe Grammar School admissions run in two distinct stages, and both must be completed correctly for a child to be considered. The first stage is the Medway Test. Every child who wants to be considered for any Medway grammar school — including Holcombe — must register for and sit this test. Only children subsequently assessed as being of selective ability are eligible to be considered for a place at Holcombe or any other Medway grammar school. The second stage is the Common Application Form (CAF), the standard secondary transfer application submitted to your home local authority, naming Holcombe among your preferences.

These two stages run on entirely separate timelines, and missing either one means a child cannot be offered a place at Holcombe, however strong their test performance. Registration for the Medway Test for September 2027 entry follows the same council-wide calendar as all Medway grammar schools: it opens in mid-May 2026 and closes in mid-June 2026, well ahead of the test itself. Once a child has an assessed result, families then submit their CAF, listing Holcombe among their secondary school preferences, by the national closing date of 31 October 2026.

Holcombe's own admissions arrangements, determined for entry in September 2027, confirm the school's Published Admission Number (PAN) as 180 places for Year 7 — a substantial increase from the 150 places offered before the co-educational transition, reflecting the wider pool of eligible applicants once both boys and girls can apply. Only applications from children who have achieved the required standard in the Medway Test are considered; meeting that standard does not guarantee a place, since Holcombe then ranks all qualifying applicants under its own published oversubscription criteria.

What Are the Key 2026 Dates for Holcombe Grammar School 11+ Entry?

For children seeking September 2027 Year 7 entry to Holcombe Grammar School, the following Medway-wide timetable applies. All six Medway grammar schools, including Holcombe, use the same Medway Test and the same council calendar, so these dates apply equally whichever Medway grammar schools a family is considering.

Registration itself is completed through Medway Council's Parent Portal rather than directly with Holcombe. See our 11+ exam dates 2026–2027 timetable for the equivalent Kent Test and independent school dates alongside Medway's own calendar.

What Does the Medway Test Involve for Holcombe Grammar School?

The Medway Test is set and administered by GL Assessment on behalf of Medway Council. It is a single, standardised admissions test used by all six Medway grammar schools — there is no separate Holcombe-specific paper. Children sit the test once, receive one assessed result, and may then name Holcombe alongside any other Medway grammar schools on their Common Application Form.

The test comprises three compulsory papers. The English paper (30 minutes) covers reading comprehension, punctuation and grammar. The Mathematics paper (50 minutes) covers the full Key Stage 2 curriculum, including number, fractions, ratio, geometry, statistics and algebra at the top end. The Reasoning paper (45 minutes) combines both verbal and non-verbal reasoning in a single paper. All three papers use multiple-choice questions recorded on an optical mark reading (OMR) answer sheet, so children practise transferring answers onto a separate bubble sheet rather than writing directly in the test booklet.

Raw scores are age-standardised, then combined using these weightings: English and Mathematics each contribute 40% of the total, with Reasoning contributing the remaining 20%. Unlike the neighbouring Kent Test, which publishes a fixed qualifying score every year, the Medway Test has no published pass mark. Instead, the required standard is set annually to select approximately the top 25% of the whole Medway year group by ability — a relative threshold across roughly 6,000 children each year, rather than a fixed score a family can look up in advance.

Does Holcombe Use the Kent Test or Medway's Own System?

This is a genuinely important distinction, and one that trips up families researching grammar schools across the Kent and Medway border. Medway is not part of Kent County Council. Medway became a unitary authority in its own right on 1 April 1998, when the former districts of Rochester-upon-Medway and Gillingham merged, taking over responsibilities — including education and school admissions — that would otherwise sit with a county council. Medway remains part of the ceremonial county of Kent for purposes such as the Lord-Lieutenancy, but administratively it is entirely independent of Kent County Council, and has been for over a quarter of a century.

Because of this, Holcombe Grammar School does not use the Kent Test, the separate 11+ examination set by Kent County Council for its own grammar schools such as those in Maidstone, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and the rest of Kent. Holcombe uses the Medway Test instead, a test written and administered specifically for Medway's own six grammar schools. The two tests share a common historical origin and a broadly similar purpose — identifying children suited to a grammar school education — but they are not the same paper, are set independently, and are marked differently. The Kent Test uses two compulsory papers plus an optional writing task considered only for borderline candidates, and publishes a fixed annual qualifying score. The Medway Test uses three compulsory papers (English, Mathematics and Reasoning) and does not publish a fixed pass mark, instead selecting broadly the highest-scoring quarter of that year's Medway cohort.

For families living near the Kent/Medway boundary — for example around Rochester, Strood or the Hoo Peninsula — this matters practically: a child may need to register separately for both the Kent Test and the Medway Test if the family wants to keep options open across both selective systems, since passing one does not automatically confer selective status for the other. Families weighing up schools on both sides of the boundary may also find our guides to Rochester Grammar School (Medway Test) useful alongside broader coverage of the Kent grammar schools system for comparison.

What Are the Oversubscription Criteria for Holcombe Grammar School, and Is There a Catchment Area?

Holcombe Grammar School has no designated catchment area or priority parishes in its published admissions arrangements — unlike some neighbouring Medway grammar schools, which do reserve priority for specified parishes on the Hoo Peninsula. When more grammar-assessed applicants apply for Holcombe than there are places, the school's published oversubscription criteria, determined for September 2027 entry, rank applicants strictly in this order:

1. Looked-after children and previously looked-after children, including those who became subject to an adoption, child arrangements or special guardianship order
2. Siblings — children who will have a brother or sister attending Holcombe Grammar School at the time they start
3. Children attending specified Thinking Schools Academy Trust primary academies in Medway — namely The Gordon Children's Academy, New Horizons Children's Academy, All Faiths Children's Academy and Cedar Children's Academy
4. Children of staff employed at Holcombe for two or more years, or recruited to fill a demonstrable skills-shortage post
5. Children with specific medical or health reasons, supported by evidence from a GP or consultant explaining why Holcombe is the most suitable school
6. All remaining qualifying children, ranked by distance — the shortest straight-line distance from home to school, measured using Medway Council's Co-ordinated Admissions Scheme Geographical Information System

If two or more applicants at the final distance cut-off have exactly identical distances and cannot otherwise be separated, Holcombe's policy allows for places to be allocated to all such applicants, even where this takes the intake marginally above the published 180-place PAN. Because there is no fixed catchment area, the practical determinant of who receives a place, once the first five priority groups are satisfied, is almost always straight-line proximity to the Maidstone Road site — a criterion that will be watched closely over the school's first co-educational admissions cycles as the applicant pool broadens to include girls for the first time.

What Academic Results Does Holcombe Grammar School Achieve?

Holcombe Grammar School's academic outcomes are strong and consistent with its selective intake. In the 2025 GCSE cohort, 84.7% of pupils achieved grade 5 or above in both English and Mathematics — comfortably above the England-wide average of around 45.4% across all schools. The school's Attainment 8 score of 62.40 sits well above the England average of 46.10, reflecting consistently solid performance across a broad range of GCSE subjects. Holcombe's Progress 8 score of 0.00 for 2025 indicates that pupils make progress broadly in line with the national average given their starting points — a fair, if unspectacular, outcome for a selective school, and one families should weigh alongside the school's strong raw attainment figures.

At A-level, Holcombe achieves an average points score of 33.62 per entry, with 9.7% of students achieving AAB or better including at least two facilitating subjects. The school reports strong subject performance in mathematics, the sciences and humanities, with a meaningful proportion of the Sixth Form progressing to Russell Group universities. Ofsted's most recent inspection, published 1 May 2024 following a visit on 12 March 2024, rated Holcombe Good overall; the school's previous full inspection in 2014 also rated leadership, management and Sixth Form provision as Good.

What Is Holcombe Grammar School's History and Character?

Holcombe Grammar School's story begins in 1913, when Chatham Junior Technical School opened to prepare boys aged 13 to 16 for careers in the Royal Navy and the Royal Dockyard at Chatham — a direct reflection of the town's identity as a naval and dockyard community. The school relocated to its current site at Holcombe Manor on Maidstone Road during the 1920s, and its buildings today still combine this historic core with more modern additions. After 1945 the school operated as a technical school before being granted full grammar school status in 1982, at which point it became known as Chatham Grammar School for Boys.

The school converted to academy status in 2012 and joined the Thinking Schools Academy Trust (TSAT), a Medway-based multi-academy trust whose distinctive educational philosophy is reflected in Holcombe's own stated values: Develop Mastery, Show Endeavour, Become a Thinking Community. The school describes itself as “an ambitious and supportive Grammar School where life chances are transformed,” and organises pupils into six houses, each named after a ship built at Chatham Dockyard — a lasting link to the naval heritage from which the school first emerged.

In 2016 the school rebranded from Chatham Grammar School for Boys to Holcombe Grammar School, in preparation for an earlier co-education proposal that was ultimately delayed; the transition that is now going ahead, for September 2026 entry, follows a fresh and more formal consultation and approval process explained above. Notable former pupils include the Manchester United, Roma and England footballer Chris Smalling, and the author and screenwriter Stel Pavlou. Holcombe's current headteacher is Mr L. Preston, leading a school of just over 1,000 pupils across Years 7 to 13, with capacity for around 1,000 on roll under its Ofsted registration.

How Should My Child Prepare for the Holcombe Grammar School 11+?

Preparation for the Medway Test — and therefore for Holcombe Grammar School entry — needs to start well before the September test date. Most families begin structured practice in Year 4 or early Year 5 at the latest. The Medway Test is genuinely competitive: it is designed to identify roughly the top 25% of the entire Medway year group, and all six Medway grammar schools draw from the same qualified pool, so the real competition each September is not just for a place at Holcombe but for grammar school entry across Medway as a whole.

Because English and Mathematics each carry 40% of the total weighted score, neither should be neglected in favour of reasoning-only preparation — a common mistake among families who assume 11+ preparation means verbal and non-verbal reasoning alone. For English, children should practise reading comprehension at real speed and precision, working with unfamiliar passages under timed conditions, alongside explicit study of punctuation and grammar terminology, since these questions are often where otherwise strong readers lose marks. For Mathematics, the full Key Stage 2 curriculum needs to be genuinely secure — fractions, ratio and proportion, percentages, geometry and KS2-level algebra all appear regularly, usually embedded in multi-step, context-based questions rather than bare calculations.

Reasoning, carrying 20% of the total score, covers verbal reasoning question types such as letter series, word connections, number codes, analogies and hidden words, alongside non-verbal reasoning question types such as shape series, matrices and spatial rotation. Because it is weighted less heavily than English or Mathematics, reasoning should generally receive proportionately less preparation time — but children unfamiliar with these formats still need dedicated practice on each question type well before test day. OMR (optical mark reading) technique also deserves specific rehearsal: children who have only ever written answers directly onto a test paper can lose time or make transcription errors when filling in a separate bubble sheet under exam pressure for the first time.

A personalised, one-to-one approach allows a tutor to identify exactly which of the three tested areas — English, Mathematics or Reasoning — is weakest for an individual child, and to weight preparation time accordingly rather than applying a generic, evenly-split study plan. At Leading Tuition, our specialist 11+ tutors work with families across Medway and North Kent preparing for Holcombe and the other Medway grammar schools, with structured mock papers and OMR-technique practice built in from the start. For general background on how 11+ testing works across England's different selective regions, see our guide to what the 11+ exam involves.

What About Sixth Form Entry at Holcombe Grammar School?

Holcombe Grammar School's Sixth Form has long been co-educational, admitting both boys and girls regardless of the historical single-sex status of Years 7 to 11, and continues unaffected by the 2026 Year 7 co-education change. The school's published admissions arrangements set an external Year 12 admission number of 50 places annually, within an overall Year 12 capacity of around 200 students once internal Year 11 leavers are included. External applicants transferring from other schools must meet the academic entry requirements published in Holcombe's own Sixth Form prospectus, which sets out the specific GCSE grade profile expected for entry to particular subject combinations; families should check the current prospectus directly for the exact thresholds in force for their entry year, since these can be revised between admissions cycles.

For families weighing up grammar school Sixth Form options more broadly across Kent and Medway, our overview of 2026 grammar school league tables provides useful context on how schools like Holcombe compare on outcomes at both GCSE and A-level.

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