Kent Test results, explained.

What the result tells you.

Three age-standardised scores — English, Maths and Reasoning — and a total. Standardising takes a child’s age into account, so the youngest in the year are not at a disadvantage. Alongside the scores comes the decision that matters: whether your child has been assessed suitable for grammar school.

Kent sets the score needed each year and publishes it with the results. For the 2025 test it was a total of 332 or more, with no single score below 108.

If your child was assessed suitable.

Any Kent grammar school can now consider your child — but an assessment is not a place. Many grammar schools are oversubscribed, and each then ranks applicants by its own admission criteria: distance, scores or priority areas, depending on the school.

1. Read the admission criteria of the schools you’re considering — Kent County Council publishes them, and our guide to all 32 grammar schools lists who each takes and where.
2. Name the schools you want, in order, on your local authority’s secondary application by Saturday 31 October 2026.
3. Hear which school has offered a place on Monday 1 March 2027.

If your child wasn’t.

It is a hard email to open, and one morning’s test is not the measure of a child. It helps to know how the decision was made. Before results day, primary schools refer children whose scores were close to the threshold, or may not reflect their ability, to a panel of headteachers. The panel looks at their school work and the writing task from test day, and a child it finds suitable is treated exactly as if they had reached the threshold. Parents aren’t involved at that stage, so the decision you receive already includes that review.

You still apply for secondary school by Saturday 31 October 2026, naming the schools that suit your child best. If your child isn’t offered a place at a school you named, you can appeal to an Independent Appeal Panel, and may be able to join the school’s waiting list.

A younger child to think about?

The same steps run a year later: registration opens in the summer term of Year 5, and the test is sat at the start of Year 6. See how the Kent Test works, or try a question of each type.

Common questions.