Medway Grammar Schools: The Medway Test and How Entry Works

Medway operates one of the largest selective school systems outside Kent, with six state grammar schools sharing a single entrance assessment known as the Medway Test. The local authority runs the test through GL Assessment, applying to every school in the area, and it determines whether a child is assessed as suitable for grammar school education, though passing it does not by itself guarantee a place at any particular school once oversubscription criteria are applied.

Families researching Medway grammar schools often arrive already familiar with the Kent Test, since the two areas border one another and some families in west Kent, Maidstone or Swale consider both routes. The two tests are entirely separate, run by different authorities on different dates with different question papers, and a pass in one does not carry over to the other, so this guide sets out how the Medway system works in its own right: which schools it covers, what the test involves, the registration and results timetable, how places are allocated once a child has been assessed as suitable, and what preparation for the test typically involves.

The six Medway grammar schools

Medway's selective provision is concentrated in Chatham and Rochester, with a sixth school in Gillingham. All six use the Medway Test as their entrance assessment, and a child needs to sit it only once to be considered by any or all of them, listing preferences on the secondary school application form in the normal way.

Chatham Grammar School, Fort Pitt Grammar School and Holcombe Grammar School admit both boys and girls at Year 7; guides that describe them as single-sex are out of date, so check each school's own admissions page for its intake.

• Chatham Grammar School, Chatham: co-educational at Year 7
• Fort Pitt Grammar School, Chatham: co-educational at Year 7
• Holcombe Grammar School, Chatham: co-educational at Year 7
• Rainham Mark Grammar School, Gillingham: mixed, and the largest of the six by intake
• Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School, Rochester: a boys' school at Year 7, admitting girls into the sixth form
• The Rochester Grammar School, Rochester: a girls' school

Who runs the Medway Test and what it covers

The Medway Test is set and administered by GL Assessment, working to a specification written specifically for Medway Council instead of using a generic off-the-shelf paper, and it is separate from any test written by an individual school. Children sitting the test in a Medway primary or junior school do so in their own school; children who do not attend a Medway primary or junior school sit it at a designated Medway test centre, with a minimum break of twenty minutes between papers.

The assessment is made up of three compulsory papers, each age-standardised and then weighted before the results are combined into an overall score used to rank candidates. There is no fixed pass mark published in advance; instead, results are ranked once all papers have been marked, and a qualifying standard is set for that year's cohort, so the score needed to be assessed as suitable for grammar school varies slightly from one year to the next.

• English: covering comprehension, punctuation and grammar
• Mathematics
• Reasoning: covering verbal and non-verbal/spatial reasoning
• No resits and no remarking of individual papers are offered once a child has sat the test

Registration and the yearly timetable

Registration for the Medway Test is made online through Medway Council's Parent Portal during Year 5, before a closing date the council publishes each year, and the council does not accept late registrations. Requests for special arrangements are handled on a similarly time-limited basis alongside general registration.

Invitations confirming the test date and venue are sent out towards the end of the summer holidays, by email or post, and families are advised to check spam or junk folders and to contact the council directly if nothing has arrived by the start of the new school year. Test dates, venues and the day allocated to each child are set by the council and cannot be swapped or rearranged.

• Registration: during Year 5, on the Medway Council Parent Portal, by the council's published closing date
• Test: sat in mid-September of Year 6, in school for Medway primary/junior pupils, at a test centre over a weekend for other children
• Results: issued in October of Year 6, before the secondary application deadline, by email or by post
• Secondary school application deadline: 31 October of Year 6, submitted through the family's home local authority
• National offer day: 1 March of Year 6, with a short window to accept or decline the place offered

How results work and what they mean

The results letter or email confirms a child's total score, a breakdown by paper, and whether the child has been assessed as suitable for grammar school or for a non-grammar secondary place. Medway Council treats detailed raw scores, percentages and the exact qualifying threshold for that year as commercially sensitive and does not publish them, so families receive an outcome without a full mark breakdown.

Being assessed as suitable for grammar school is a necessary step towards a place but is not sufficient on its own: each grammar school then applies its own oversubscription criteria to rank suitable applicants against the number of places available, so a child assessed as suitable is not automatically offered a place at every, or indeed any, grammar school named on the application.

Priority rules and how places are allocated

Most Medway grammar schools do not operate a defined catchment area in the way many community schools do; instead, once a child has been assessed as suitable for grammar school, oversubscription criteria typically move through looked-after children first, then factors such as siblings already on roll, staff children, medical or social need, and finally distance from home to school, with distance measured using the shortest safe walking route on the council's geographical information system. The exact order and detail differ between schools, so the individual school's own published admissions policy is the definitive source for a given year.

Applications are made through the family's home local authority's common application form, listing schools in genuine order of preference; Medway Council then compiles each school's ranked list according to its own oversubscription criteria and offers each child a single place, working down preference order to the highest-ranked school with a vacancy. If a school is undersubscribed relative to suitable applicants, distance and the other criteria become largely academic; where a school is heavily oversubscribed, such as Rainham Mark Grammar School, a supplementary information form may be required for certain criteria, for example free-school-meal eligibility.

• Chatham Grammar School: looked-after children, then siblings, then staff children, then distance
• Rainham Mark Grammar School: looked-after children, then free-school-meal eligibility (supplementary form required), then siblings, then medical/health need, then staff children, then distance
• Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School: looked-after children, then siblings, then staff children, then distance, with no defined catchment area
• Waiting lists are held in oversubscription-criteria order, not by date joined, and a child can only join a grammar school waiting list once assessed as suitable

The Medway Test, the Kent Test, and applicants from Kent

A child does not need to live in Medway to sit the Medway Test, though Medway residents are generally given priority once oversubscription criteria are applied, and children from neighbouring parts of Kent do sit it for consideration at Medway grammar schools. The Medway Test and the Kent Test are set by different authorities, held on different dates, and a result in one is not accepted in place of the other by most schools; a family wanting both a Kent and a Medway grammar school on the same application would normally need to register for and sit both tests. Chatham Grammar School is the stated exception among the six, accepting a child assessed as suitable through either the Medway Test or the Kent Test.

There is no remarking of Medway Test papers and no resit. Where a child is not assessed as suitable, the route for families who believe the result does not reflect their child's ability is through the secondary school appeals process after national offer day, in front of an independent panel with no connection to the school; an assessment appeal is heard on the evidence presented, such as school reports, and the test itself is not remarked.

Preparing for the Medway Test

Because the Medway Test is set specifically for Medway Council by GL Assessment, generic Kent Test or CEM-style practice material does not map directly onto its format, and the council warns that materials sold as official Medway Test papers outside GL's own channels are not endorsed or supported by GL or the council. Preparation is best aligned to the three papers actually sat: English (comprehension, punctuation and grammar), mathematics, and reasoning covering both verbal and non-verbal/spatial questions, all delivered in a multiple-choice, computer-marked format under timed conditions.

Since the test ranks children against the rest of that year's cohort instead of against a fixed pass mark, preparation that builds genuine fluency and pace across all three papers, instead of narrow drilling on one, tends to matter more than chasing a particular target score. Practising under the timings used on the day, including the short practice-question sections that precede each timed paper, helps a child manage an unfamiliar test format calmly.

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