Kent 11+ Format Guide 2026: The Kent Test Explained

The Kent Test is Kent County Council's selective entrance assessment for Kent's grammar schools, sat each September by children who start secondary school the following year. It has two scored papers — an English and maths paper, and a reasoning paper covering verbal and non-verbal reasoning — plus an unmarked writing exercise. For the September 2026 sitting (September 2027 entry) the qualifying aggregate was 345 out of a maximum 423, with no single score below 111.

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Overview: Two Papers, Three Standardised Scores

Kent County Council's Kent Test has two scored test papers and one unscored exercise. The first paper covers English and maths together and takes about one hour, split into two sections — each pairing a 5-minute practice exercise with a 25-minute test, one for English and one for maths. The second paper is a reasoning paper, also about one hour, containing 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 administered and timed individually. Children then complete a separate 40-minute writing exercise, including 10 minutes of planning time. Kent County Council has appointed Quest Assessments as the Kent Test provider from 2027, and says the test's purpose, format, timing and role in grammar school admissions will remain the same.

The writing exercise is not marked and does not contribute to a child's score. Kent County Council says it may instead be used by a local headteacher panel as part of the headteacher-assessment stage of the process; a headteacher panel can also assess a child with a severe visual impairment who cannot access the test papers, looking at their classwork and academic achievement. From the two scored papers, each child receives three standardised scores — one for English, one for maths, one for reasoning — and a total. For the September 2026 sitting (September 2027 entry), the published threshold was a total of 345 or more, with no single score below 111; scores range from 69 to 141 and the highest possible total is 423. That is a threshold of about 82% of the maximum possible score (345 of 423).

The Reasoning Paper: Verbal and Non-Verbal

The reasoning paper is one of the Kent Test's two scored papers, worth a single standardised “reasoning” score that counts toward the aggregate (345 or more at the September 2026 sitting) alongside the English and maths scores. Kent County Council describes it as taking about one hour, including the practice sections, and splits it into a verbal reasoning section and a non-verbal reasoning section of roughly equal length — the non-verbal reasoning is further broken into short, individually timed sections rather than one continuous block. Families who prepare only for the verbal half are preparing for half a paper.

Kent County Council's familiarisation booklet (previous years' material) says that not all the question types it shows will necessarily be in the test, and that the test will also include types not shown there. Children who have practised every major format recognise the question type immediately and apply the right method without working it out from scratch under time pressure.

Verbal Reasoning Question Types

• Letter series: complete a sequence of letters by identifying the rule (e.g., A, C, E, G — next is I).
• Number series: identify the numerical pattern and find the missing number.
• Word analogies: A is to B as C is to ? (e.g., hot is to cold as fast is to slow).
• Coded words / letter codes: letters are swapped for numbers or other letters by a fixed rule — work out the rule from one example word, then apply it consistently to a new word.
• Odd one out: which word does not belong to the same category as the others?
• Synonyms and antonyms: which word is closest in meaning, or most opposite, to the given word?
• Compound words: what word completes both compounds (e.g., SOME___ and ___WORK → BODY: SOMEBODY/BODYWORK).
Missing letter: find the one letter that completes the word before the brackets and begins the word after them.
• Word connections: choose the word that goes equally well with both of two pairs of words (the booklet's example is (fall, stumble) and (journey, outing)).

Kent County Council's own description puts non-verbal reasoning in the same paper, at roughly the same length, as verbal reasoning, so a preparation plan that skips it is only covering half the paper. Common non-verbal formats include:

Non-Verbal Reasoning Question Types

• Sequences: complete a sequence of shapes by identifying how they change from one to the next.
• Rotations and reflections: identify how a shape has been rotated or reflected, or find the shape that would result.
• Odd one out (shapes): which shape does not share the property the others share?
• Analogies (shape to shape): shape A is to shape B as shape C is to which shape?
• Codes and matrices: apply a pattern seen in one grid of shapes to complete another.
• Similarity and matching: find the shape among several options that matches a given shape or rule.

One risk in reasoning preparation is drilling only the two or three formats — verbal or non-verbal — a child already finds easy. The correct approach is to work systematically through every format in both halves of the paper until the weakest ones become as secure as the strongest, since the reasoning score is a single combined figure and a strong verbal half cannot be seen separately from a weak non-verbal half.

Paper One: English and Maths

Paper One combines English and maths into a single one-hour paper, timed as two separate sections — each a 5-minute practice exercise followed by a 25-minute test. Kent County Council describes the English section as involving a comprehension exercise, together with further questions drawn from a set designed to test literacy skills — a component of Paper One that produces its own standardised English score, distinct from the maths score, within the same hour.

The English Section

Because Kent County Council describes the English section as a comprehension exercise plus literacy-skills questions, and its familiarisation booklet (previous years' material) shows sentence-completion, spot-the-mistake and passage questions, the most reliable preparation is broad reading comprehension practice under timed conditions: unseen passages, inference and vocabulary-in-context questions, and the technical literacy skills (spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence construction) a “literacy skills” question set is likely to test. Timed practice matters here as much as content: a child who reads well but has never worked through a comprehension exercise against the clock will lose time re-reading rather than answering.

Key Mathematical Topics in the Kent Test

According to Kent County Council's familiarisation booklet (previous years' material), the maths test covers a variety of topics taught in most schools up to the start of Year 6, and a small number of questions may be harder than children are used to, to show how they apply the maths skills they already have to new kinds of problem. Children who are fluent in arithmetic but have not practised problems requiring two or three steps, unit conversion, or proportional reasoning may find the pacing more demanding than expected.

• Place value and large numbers: reading, writing, comparing, and ordering numbers up to millions.
• Four operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division — including long multiplication and long division — applied in context.
• Fractions: equivalent fractions, simplifying, adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators, mixed numbers and improper fractions.
• Decimals: ordering decimals, adding and subtracting decimals, converting between fractions and decimals.
• Percentages and ratio: finding percentages of amounts, percentage increase and decrease, understanding ratio and proportion.
• Geometry: area and perimeter of rectangles, triangles, and composite shapes; volume of cuboids; angles in triangles, on straight lines, and at a point; coordinates and transformations.
• Measures: time calculations; converting between units; reading scales; money problems.
• Data handling: reading and interpreting bar charts, line graphs, pie charts, and tables; calculating mean, identifying median and mode.

The most reliable lever for improving maths performance is timed practice under exam conditions. A child who knows the content but has never worked through a timed paper will underperform relative to their actual knowledge — spending too long on early questions, running out of time, and failing to attempt questions they know how to answer. Start with lightly timed practice from Year 4, progressively tightening toward the real 25-minute test by Year 5.

The Writing Exercise: Unmarked, But Not Unimportant

The writing exercise runs for 40 minutes, including 10 minutes of planning time. Unlike the English-and-maths paper and the reasoning paper, Kent County Council is explicit that this exercise is not marked and does not produce a standardised score — it plays no part in the aggregate (345 or more at the September 2026 sitting). It may instead be used by a local headteacher panel as part of the headteacher assessment stage of the process. Families should not read “unmarked” as “unimportant”: a child who cannot plan and write coherently within the 40 minutes allowed may be at a disadvantage if their case ever reaches that stage.

What the Writing Exercise Asks For

Kent County Council says the writing exercise will not be marked, so there is no marking scheme to prepare against. Families preparing for it are working from general good practice rather than an official scheme: a piece that engages clearly with its prompt, has a recognisable beginning, middle and end, uses a varied and precise vocabulary, controls a mix of sentence structures, and is accurate in spelling and punctuation is a reasonable target for the planning and writing time available.

Common Writing Weaknesses and How to Address Them

Weak opening and closing. Many children write a generic, flat opening (“One day, I was walking along when…”) and either run out of time for the ending or produce a sudden, unconvincing close. Strong openings hook the reader immediately: a striking image, a moment of action, or a question. Practising openings and endings separately — generating three or four options for the same prompt — improves both quickly.

Vocabulary repetition. Children who rely on a small set of common adjectives and verbs (nice, big, said, went) produce pieces that feel monotonous. Building an active vocabulary store — strong verbs, precise nouns, and varied sentence openers — transforms the quality of written work, but it builds through sustained reading over months, not a single revision session.

No sentence variety, and punctuation errors under pressure. Pieces written entirely in short simple sentences, or entirely in long complex ones, read as monotone; deliberately mixing sentence lengths is a skill that improves with guided practice. Children whose punctuation is secure in low-stakes writing often make errors in timed conditions — missing capital letters mid-sentence, confusing its/it's, omitting paragraph breaks — so timed practice followed by a punctuation-only review trains accuracy under the same pressure the real 40 minutes will bring.

How Age Standardisation Works in the Kent Test

Children sit the Kent Test in September (10, 12 and 13 September 2026 this cycle), but birth months span the full year, so the oldest children in the cohort are close to twelve months older than the youngest. A child born on 1 September 2015 and a child born on 31 August 2016 were both eligible for the 2026 test, but the younger child is almost a full academic year younger.

Kent County Council describes standardisation as a statistical process that compares a child's performance with the average performance of other children in each test, with a slight adjustment made to take account of each child's age so that the youngest are not at a disadvantage. Each child ends up with three standardised scores — English, maths and reasoning — and a total aggregate score.

For the September 2026 sitting (September 2027 entry), the published threshold was a total score of 345 or more, with no single score lower than 111; Kent County Council states that test scores range from 69 to 141, and that the highest possible total score is 423. A threshold of 345 out of 423 is about 82% of the maximum available score. Families whose children sat the test in September 2026 can compare each of their child's three scores with the 111 minimum and their total with 345 (the maximum is 423); these figures belong to the September 2026 sitting and are not a guarantee of the threshold at a later sitting.

In practice, Kent County Council says a slight adjustment is made to take account of each child's age so that the youngest are not at a disadvantage. Preparation strategy and timeline, not birth month, is the factor within a family's control.

Kent Test Registration, Test and Results Dates for September 2027 Entry

The key dates for the Kent Test governing September 2027 entry, as published by Kent County Council, are:

Registration closed on Wednesday 1 July 2026, more than two months before the first test date, and Kent County Council did not accept special educational needs access-arrangement requests after 1 July 2026. A family that did not register a child for September 2027 entry can email kent.admissions@kent.gov.uk, and Kent County Council says it will then let them know the next steps. Where an email address was given at registration, the result was emailed on Thursday 15 October 2026; where none was given, Kent County Council said it would post the result by first-class post on results day.

Registering for the test is separate from applying for a school place. Families must also make the online secondary school application: for September 2027 entry, Kent County Council states that applications are open and close on Monday 2 November 2026. If a child was not tested, or was not assessed as suitable for a Kent grammar school, the family can still apply; Kent County Council says the application to that school will be refused when school places are offered on Monday 1 March 2027, after which there is a right of appeal.

What to Expect on Kent Test Day

Children at a Kent primary school sat the Kent Test on Thursday 10 September 2026; children who do not attend a Kent primary school sat it over the weekend of 12 and 13 September 2026. Any child with a severe visual impairment who cannot access the test papers can instead be assessed by a headteacher panel, which looks at their classwork and academic achievement.

Children should be prepared for the structure: the three parts add up to roughly two hours and forty minutes of test time, and managing attention and stamina across both papers and the writing exercise is part of the challenge. Practising full mock test mornings from around Easter before the September test — working through both papers and the writing exercise together — is one of the most effective ways to build test-day stamina.

Results were released on Thursday 15 October 2026. The result gives the English, maths and reasoning scores and a total score; the writing exercise is not marked, so it contributes no score. Families then complete the online secondary school application, due by Monday 2 November 2026.

Which Kent Test Skills Need the Most Practice, Paper by Paper

English: start regular comprehension practice in Year 4 or 5, working with unseen passages under increasing time pressure. Build technical literacy skills — spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence construction — alongside reading, since Kent County Council describes the section as comprehension plus a set of literacy-skills questions, not comprehension alone. Introduce the real 25-minute timing by Year 5.

Maths: audit KS2 content by Year 4. Close any arithmetic gaps (times tables, long division, fractions) before Year 5. From Year 5, shift to problem-solving practice with multi-step word problems. Introduce timed practice by late Year 5, and over the summer before the September test practise full papers under the real 25-minute test conditions, targeting the specific weak topics identified from practice-paper analysis.

Reasoning (verbal and non-verbal): start in Year 4 or 5, and work through every question type in both halves of the paper systematically — never skip an unfamiliar format because the reasoning score is one combined figure. Once every format is covered, practise under timed conditions and track accuracy format by format to identify remaining gaps, aiming for consistently high accuracy rather than strength in only one half.

Writing exercise: start writing to prompts in Year 4, practising narrative and descriptive formats. Build active vocabulary through sustained reading, and practise openings and endings separately. Introduce the real 40-minute, 10-minutes-planning timing from Year 5. By the summer before the September test, practise full timed pieces and review each one specifically for vocabulary variety, sentence structure and punctuation accuracy — even though it is unmarked, a strong piece still matters if a case reaches headteacher assessment.

For an overview of all Kent grammar schools and their locations, see our Kent grammar schools guide 2026. We publish individual admissions guides for grammar schools across the county, including Tonbridge Grammar School and Weald of Kent Grammar School, alongside Simon Langton Grammar for Boys, Simon Langton Girls' Grammar School, and Sir Roger Manwood's School. For specialist Kent Test preparation, see our Kent 11+ tuition page. Our complete grammar school preparation guide covers preparation timelines from Year 4 to offer day.

For a school-specific breakdown, see our Rainham Mark Grammar School 11+ guide 2026.

Reviewed October 2026: dates, figures and rules checked against Kent County Council's Kent Test, Prepare for the Kent Test, Register for the Kent Test, Kent Test results and Secondary school places pages, and its Kent Test familiarisation booklet.

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