Kent Test 2027: dates, registration and preparing in Year 5

Who is the Kent Test 2027 for? Children born between 1 September 2016 and 31 August 2017. They are in Year 5 during the 2026/27 school year and sit the test at the start of Year 6.

Which school year does it lead to? Year 7 entry in September 2028.

When is the test? Expected Thursday 9 September 2027 for children at a Kent primary school. Not yet confirmed.

When does registration open? Expected Tuesday 1 June 2027, closing Thursday 1 July 2027. Not yet confirmed.

When are results out? Expected Thursday 14 October 2027. Not yet confirmed.

Is registration automatic? No. You have to register your child yourself, even if they attend a Kent primary school.

Does passing get you a place? No. It makes your child eligible to be considered. Each school then applies its own admissions criteria.

The Kent Test is the assessment Kent County Council uses to decide whether a child is suitable for a grammar school place in Kent. Parents usually call it the 11-plus. Kent's own paperwork calls the wider system PESE, which stands for the Procedure for Entrance to Secondary Education.

There are 32 grammar schools in the Kent County Council area, and one Kent Test result covers all of them. Your child sits it once.

Three things it is not:

It is not a guarantee of a place. A grammar assessment means your child can be considered. Every grammar school still applies its own oversubscription criteria, usually some mix of distance, siblings and pupil premium. KCC says this plainly on its own website.

It is not valid outside Kent. Medway runs the Medway Test, the London Borough of Bexley runs the Bexley selection test, and Bromley grammar schools have their own arrangements. If you are looking at schools in more than one area, you will need to track each set of deadlines separately.

It is not the school application. Registering for the test and applying for a school place are two completely different forms, months apart. Missing the second one is a far more common and far more costly mistake.

Around 16,000 to 17,000 children sit the Kent Test each year. In the September 2025 test, 16,876 children sat it, of whom 11,248 lived in Kent. Of those Kent children, 5,035 were assessed as suitable for grammar school, against 5,819 grammar places available in the county. KCC's stated aim is to identify children in roughly the top 25% of the ability range.

Why we expect these dates

The pattern is unusually stable, which is why we are reasonably confident. Here are the last three cycles as Kent County Council actually determined them.

Four patterns come out of that.

The test falls on the second Thursday of September. It has done so in every recent cycle: 12 September 2024, 11 September 2025 and 10 September 2026. The second Thursday of September 2027 is 9 September.

Results land exactly five weeks after the test. That has held for three cycles running, and it held back in 2019 too. Five weeks after Thursday 9 September 2027 is Thursday 14 October 2027.

Registration runs from 1 June to 1 July, moving to the next working day where those dates fall at a weekend. Both fall on weekdays in 2027, so we expect Tuesday 1 June to Thursday 1 July.

Children who do not attend a Kent primary school sit the test the weekend after. That points to Saturday 11 and Sunday 12 September 2027.

One date deserves extra care. The national deadline for secondary school applications is 31 October, but 31 October 2027 falls on a Sunday. When the deadline has landed at a weekend, KCC's determined scheme has moved the closing date to the next working day. For the current cycle, where 31 October 2026 is a Saturday, KCC's published scheme sets the closing date as Monday 2 November 2026. On that basis we expect Monday 1 November 2027 for the following year.

Our advice is to ignore the extra day entirely and treat 31 October as your deadline. There is nothing to gain from cutting it fine, and you do not want to be relying on a technicality with your child's secondary school place.

When will Kent County Council confirm the dates?

KCC has to determine its co-ordinated admissions scheme for each year by 28 February, roughly eighteen months before the children start. That means the confirmed dates for the September 2028 cycle, including the Kent Test 2027, should be settled by the end of February 2027.

Before that, KCC consults on the scheme. The consultation for the 2027/28 scheme ran from 25 November 2025 to 9 January 2026. The one before it ran from 10 December 2024 to 28 January 2025. So expect the 2028/29 consultation to open around late November or December 2026 and close in January 2027.

KCC normally updates its Kent Test pages in the spring, ahead of registration opening in June. We will update this guide as soon as the official dates appear.

Registration is not automatic. This is the single most important line on this page. Even if your child is at a Kent primary school, nobody registers them for you. If you do not fill in the form, your child does not sit the test.

You register online through Kent County Council's admissions portal at kent.gov.uk. The form is called the Kent Test Application Form, or KTAF. You need your child's name, date of birth, full home address and current school. You should get a confirmation email once it goes through.

A few practical points:

• Register in the first week the window opens. The July deadline has a habit of falling in the middle of family holidays. Doing it in early June removes the risk entirely.
• Register even if you live outside Kent, but only if you genuinely intend to apply to a Kent grammar school. KCC specifically asks people not to register speculatively, because unused test places waste time and money every year.
• Check your confirmation email arrived. If nothing lands within a week or so, chase it.
• Use an email address you will still have access to in October. Results are sent to the address you registered with, and KCC cannot redirect them to a different one afterwards.
• One registration per child. Do not submit twice.

If your child has special educational needs or a disability

If your child has a disability or a special educational need that would affect how they access the test, speak to your primary school's SENCO before you register. The school, not you, has to submit the request for access arrangements, and it has to reach KCC by the registration deadline. Requests received after that date are not processed.

A panel of educational psychologists and specialist teaching professionals decides which arrangements are granted. Their decision is final and there is no appeal against it. Access arrangements granted for the Kent Test do not carry over to any other school's own entrance test.

Do not leave this to the last week of June. Start the conversation with the SENCO in the spring term of Year 5. Our guide to SEND support in Kent schools covers the wider picture.

If you miss the registration deadline

There is a limited safety net, but it does not cover everyone.

KCC's scheme allows late registrations from children attending Kent County Council primary and junior schools, as far as is reasonably practicable, for around three weeks after the deadline. In the last two cycles that late window closed on 22 July 2025 and 21 July 2026. Late forms cannot be submitted online, so you have to contact the admissions team directly to request one. The window can sometimes be extended for children with an EHC plan, looked after and previously looked after children, and children receiving pupil premium.

That safety net does not apply to children at schools outside Kent, because test centre places are booked in advance and cannot be expanded. If your child is at an independent school or a school in another county, the July deadline is genuinely final.

The Kent Test is made up of two multiple-choice papers plus a writing exercise. Those two papers produce three separate scores, because the first paper is split into an English section and a maths section that are timed and marked separately. The papers are set by GL Assessment on behalf of Kent County Council. Answers go on a separate sheet and are marked by computer.

Children at a Kent primary school normally sit the test at their own school, during a normal school day. Children at schools outside Kent, and children educated at home, are allocated a test centre inside Kent and sit it at the weekend. KCC confirms test centre arrangements by email once it knows how many children need places, usually before the end of August.

About the writing exercise

Parents worry about this one more than they need to. It is not marked and it does not contribute to your child's score. It only comes into play if a head teacher panel is reviewing your child's assessment, and even then it sits alongside their classwork and test scores rather than deciding anything on its own.

The task changes from year to year. It might be a story, a letter, a report, a speech or an article. What is being looked for is clear, well-organised writing with sensible spelling, punctuation and grammar, in whatever style has been asked for. Regular writing across Year 5, of any kind, is worth far more than drilling one format.

Free official practice material

Kent County Council publishes a free familiarisation booklet showing the kinds of questions that come up and how to fill in the answer sheet. It is worth working through, mainly so the format holds no surprises on the day. GL Assessment also publishes free familiarisation materials. Both are linked at the foot of this guide.

Your child gets four numbers: a standardised score for English, one for maths, one for reasoning, and a total, sometimes called the aggregate.

Standardisation compares your child's raw performance against other children who sat the same test, and adjusts for age in months so that summer-born children are not penalised for being younger. Individual scores run from 69 to 141, which makes the highest possible total 423.

To be assessed as suitable for grammar school, a child has to clear two bars at the same time: a minimum total, and a minimum in every individual score. Doing brilliantly in maths does not rescue a low reasoning score.

The threshold is set after the papers are marked, so it moves each year and is published alongside the results. Kent County Council's published figures for the last two tests were:

Two things follow from that. First, the total has been stable at 332 for several years, so it is a fair benchmark to plan against. Second, do not treat last year's numbers as this year's pass mark. The minimum individual score has already moved once. The threshold for the September 2027 test will not be known until results are issued in October 2027.

There is a review stage built into the process, and it happens before you ever see the result.

Once the papers are marked, your child's primary school head teacher can refer any assessment decision they disagree with to a panel of local primary and secondary head teachers. The panel looks at the test scores, recent classwork, the writing exercise from test day, and comments from your child's current school. If the panel is confident the child would cope with a grammar school education, it can change the assessment. A decision changed this way carries exactly the same weight as one earned directly on the test.

This is usually called the head teacher assessment, or HTA. Two things parents should know about it:

You cannot apply for it yourself. The referral comes from your child's school. If you think your child's classwork tells a different story from a borderline test score, the conversation to have is with their class teacher and head teacher, not with KCC.

There is no appeal against the assessment decision itself. The result is final. What you can appeal, later, is a refusal of a school place on National Offer Day. Our Kent school appeals guide walks through that process.

Most Kent grammar schools use the Kent Test and nothing else. A handful offer a second route in, and passing either one qualifies your child for that particular school. The two results carry equal weight, and passing both gives no extra advantage.

As at the current cycle, the schools with their own alternative assessment are Borden Grammar School, Dover Grammar School for Boys, Dover Grammar School for Girls, Folkestone School for Girls, The Harvey Grammar School, Highsted Grammar School, Mayfield Grammar School in Gravesend, and Weald of Kent Grammar School.

Weald of Kent is the newest addition. It introduced the Weald Grammar Assessment for September 2027 entry, deliberately limited to content covered up to the end of Year 5, with the stated aim of reducing the advantage that heavy tutoring gives. Registration is made directly with the school, on a different form with a different deadline from the Kent Test, and the assessment is sat at the school on the Saturday after the Kent Test.

Two warnings. These arrangements change from year to year, and other schools may add their own tests for September 2028 entry. And a school's own test always needs a separate registration with the school itself, often with an earlier or different deadline than the Kent Test.

Check the admissions page of every grammar school on your shortlist in the spring of Year 5, not in June. You can look up any Kent school on our school search.

You have a full school year before the test. Used well, that is more than enough, and it means nobody has to spend Year 5 in a state of low-level panic.

Autumn term 2026. Talk honestly to your child's Year 5 teacher about how they are getting on. Start visiting schools. Open evenings for the current admissions round run through September and October, and they are open to anyone, so you can go a full year early and get a proper look without the pressure of an imminent form. Visit non-selective schools as well as grammars. Our guide on what to look for on a school open day is a useful checklist to take with you.

Spring term 2027. If your child may need access arrangements, speak to the SENCO now. Work through KCC's free familiarisation booklet together so the question types are familiar. Check the admissions criteria for the grammar schools you are considering, especially the distance element, using our Kent catchment areas guide. Some schools' criteria will rule your address in or out before your child sits a single paper, and it is far better to know that now than in March 2028.

Summer term 2027. Register in the first week of June. Confirm the email arrived. Then largely leave it alone. Some light timed practice towards the end of term is useful for pacing. Six weeks of holiday cramming in August is not.

September 2027. Confirm the test arrangements. A normal night's sleep and a normal breakfast genuinely matter more on the day than one last practice paper.

October 2027. Results, then the application form. Do not wait for the result before deciding your list of schools. Many parents do, and it leaves them making the biggest decision of the year in a fortnight.

Preparation without turning the year into a slog

The most useful preparation for the Kent Test does not look much like test preparation.

Reading is the biggest single lever. Wide, regular reading builds the vocabulary and comprehension that the English and verbal reasoning sections depend on. Unlike drilling, it keeps paying off long after Year 6. Fiction, non-fiction, comics, match reports, anything.

Solid mental arithmetic and times tables make the maths section far less rushed. That section is 25 minutes. Time spent on basic calculation is time not spent on the actual question.

Familiarity with question formats is worth real marks, particularly in non-verbal reasoning, where the format is unlike anything in normal school work. That is a few short sessions, not months of grind.

Short timed practice close to the test helps with pacing. Keep it to twenty or thirty minutes at a time.

And protect the rest of it. Clubs, sport, friends, downtime and family weekends are not obstacles to Year 5. A child who arrives at the test rested and reasonably confident does better than one who arrives exhausted and dreading it. If tutoring is on your mind, our guide comparing the grammar and independent routes sets out the wider costs and trade-offs honestly.

Most children who sit the Kent Test are not assessed as suitable for grammar school. That is arithmetic, not a verdict on your child, and it is worth saying plainly now rather than in October 2027.

You can still name a grammar school on your application form, but if your child has not been assessed as suitable, that application will be refused on National Offer Day. You then have the right to appeal to an independent panel.

The more useful preparation is the other one: knowing which non-selective schools you would genuinely be happy with, before the result lands. Kent has a great many strong non-selective secondaries, and the parents who come through results week best are the ones who had already visited three or four of them. You can compare any schools side by side using our compare tool, or browse by town.

Since September 2024, state schools in England no longer receive a single-word Ofsted grade, so headline labels tell you even less than they used to. Read the full inspection report, and more importantly go and stand in the building. Our guide on reading Ofsted reports properly explains what to look for.

Results day is not the finish line. The application is.

The application form. Every family has to submit a Secondary Common Application Form, whatever the test result says. Kent parents can name up to four schools in order of preference. It is in your interest to use all four. Naming only one school does not improve your chances and can leave you allocated somewhere you did not choose. The form opens on 1 September 2027 and closes at the end of October 2027. Our secondary admissions guide explains how allocation works in detail.

Supplementary forms. Some schools need a separate Supplementary Information Form on top of the main application, most often faith schools and some grammar schools using pupil premium criteria. These go straight to the school and have their own deadlines. A supplementary form on its own is never a valid application.

National Offer Day. Expected Wednesday 1 March 2028. Offers go out by email after 4pm to the address on your application, and by first class post otherwise. You will be told which school your child has been offered and why the others were refused.

Appeals and waiting lists. If you are refused a place at a school you named, you can appeal to an independent panel and ask to join the waiting list. Note that a grammar school can only put a child on its waiting list if that child has been assessed as suitable for grammar school. The exact appeal deadline is set out in your offer letter. For reference, the deadline for the current cycle is 13 April 2027, and the cycle before it was 30 March 2026, so expect something in that window.

This is the part almost nobody knows about, and it is worth five minutes of your time.

Kent County Council has to consult on its admissions scheme before it determines it. The consultation for the September 2028 cycle, which covers the Kent Test 2027, is expected to open around late November or December 2026 and close in January 2027.

Individual grammar schools consult separately on their own oversubscription criteria over roughly the same period, and that is where changes to distance rules, pupil premium places or new school tests get proposed. Weald of Kent's new assessment came through exactly this route.

If a school on your shortlist is planning to change how it ranks applicants, the consultation window is the only point at which you get a say, and it happens a full year before your child sits the test. Consultations are published at kent.gov.uk/admissionscriteria.

• Kent Test, Kent County Council
• Register for the Kent Test
• Prepare for the Kent Test, including the free familiarisation booklet
• Kent Test results and score thresholds
• Apply for a Kent grammar school place
• Secondary school places in Kent
• Appeal a school offer, Kent County Council
• GL Assessment free 11-plus familiarisation materials
• Ofsted inspection reports
• Apply for a secondary school place, GOV.UK