Best Grammar Schools in Medway: GCSE and A Level Results Ranked

Ranked on average Attainment 8 score, the best grammar schools in Medway begin with Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester on 69.5, followed by The Rochester Grammar School on 68.4, Fort Pitt Grammar School in Chatham on 65.9 and Rainham Mark Grammar School in Gillingham on 62.7.

Six state grammar schools are ranked, all on a single measure: the average Attainment 8 score in the latest DfE key stage 4 performance tables, which totals each pupil's grades across eight GCSE-level qualifications with English and maths double-weighted, out of a maximum of 90. Schools on the same figure share a rank, and the A level grade is shown alongside where the DfE publishes one.

Which grammar schools in Medway have the best GCSE results?

Average Attainment 8 scores run from 69.5 at Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School (rank 1) to 61.8 at Chatham Grammar (rank 6), and the percentage of pupils achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths runs from 93.5 to 75.5 across the same two schools. The top two sit close together, with The Rochester Grammar School on 68.4 and 92.4% at grade 5 or above, whilst Fort Pitt Grammar School on 65.9 stands on its own in third.

The clearest cluster is at the bottom, where Rainham Mark Grammar School (62.7), Holcombe Grammar School (62.4) and Chatham Grammar (61.8) fall within a narrow band of average scores. Within that group the English and maths figures separate them more visibly, with Rainham Mark on 87.3%, Holcombe on 84.7% and Chatham Grammar on 75.5%. Rainham Mark's 87.3% is also higher than the 85% recorded at Fort Pitt, which ranks one place above it on Attainment 8.

By intake as listed in the table, the two highest-ranked schools are single-sex, a boys' school at rank 1 and a girls' school at rank 2, with the co-educational Rainham Mark Grammar School at rank 4 and Chatham Grammar at rank 6. The A level grades follow the GCSE order where they are published: B+ at Sir Joseph Williamson's, B- at both Fort Pitt and Rainham Mark, C+ at Holcombe and C at Chatham Grammar. The Rochester Grammar School has no published A level grade.

How does entry to Medway grammar schools work?

All six Medway grammar schools use one entrance assessment, the Medway Test, which a child sits once to be considered by any or all of them. The local authority runs it through GL Assessment, and it decides whether a child is assessed as suitable for grammar school education, with preferences then listed on the secondary school application form in the normal way.

Being assessed as suitable does not by itself secure a place at a particular school, because oversubscription criteria are applied once a child has been assessed. Families in west Kent, Maidstone or Swale who know the Kent Test should note that the two tests are separate, run by different authorities on different dates with different question papers, and a pass in one does not carry over to the other.

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What does the Medway Test involve?

The Medway Test consists of three compulsory papers: English (comprehension, punctuation and grammar), Mathematics, and Reasoning (verbal and non-verbal or spatial). Each paper is age-standardised and weighted before the results are combined into an overall score used to rank candidates.

No pass mark is published in advance. Results are ranked once all papers are marked and a qualifying standard is set for that year's cohort, so the score needed to be assessed as suitable varies slightly between cohorts. Children at a Medway primary or junior school sit the test in their own school, whilst others use a designated Medway test centre with a minimum break of twenty minutes between papers. Neither resits nor remarking of individual papers are offered, which is why familiarity with all three papers before the day tends to matter.

Which Medway grammar schools take boys, girls or both?

Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School in Rochester is a boys' school at Year 7 that admits girls into the sixth form, The Rochester Grammar School is a girls' school, and Rainham Mark Grammar School in Gillingham is mixed and the largest of the six by intake. The county guide also states that Chatham Grammar School, Fort Pitt Grammar School and Holcombe Grammar School all admit both boys and girls at Year 7.

The pupil type shown in the ranking table lists Fort Pitt as girls and Holcombe as boys, which differs from that description, so each school's own admissions page is the reliable check on who it admits at Year 7. According to the county guide, descriptions of these schools as single-sex are out of date.

What do the Medway grammar school results show?

The results show how each school's pupils performed on average across eight GCSE-level qualifications, together with the share achieving grade 5 or above in English and maths and the average A level grade where the DfE publishes one. All six schools admit through the Medway Test, so the table compares schools that select their intake in the same way.

The figures do not show which school suits an individual child, nor whether a place will be offered, since places are allocated through oversubscription criteria after the Medway Test. The Rochester Grammar School's A level grade is not published, so its rank of 2 rests on its Attainment 8 score of 68.4 alone.

How the schools are ranked

The ranking covers every state grammar school in Medway with a published Attainment 8 score in the Department for Education's key stage 4 performance data, ordered from highest to lowest, with schools on the same figure sharing a rank. Every school in the table selects by ability at eleven, so the figures reflect a selective intake as well as the teaching; Progress 8 was not calculated for this cohort.

The data is the Department for Education's own download from Compare school and college performance, so anyone can reproduce the order from the same file; the data year and source are listed in the key facts above.

Admissions guides for the ranked schools

• Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School (ranked 1)
• The Rochester Grammar School (ranked 2)
• Fort Pitt Grammar School (ranked 3)
• Rainham Mark Grammar School (ranked 4)
• Holcombe Grammar School (ranked 5)
• Chatham Grammar (ranked 6)

Related guides

• Medway Test Pass Mark
• Best grammar schools in the UK by GCSE results
• Grammar schools in England: the full directory
• The 11+ entrance exam explained

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