Kent Test score calculator

Turn practice paper marks into an estimated Kent Test score, adjusted for your child’s age, and check it against the threshold actually published for that year.

Why this gives a range and not a number

The Kent Test is marked by GL Assessment. GL does not publish the cohort average, the spread of marks, or the age-adjustment tables for any year, and they are recalculated annually. Without those three things an exact conversion from marks to a standardised score is not difficult from outside the exam board — it is impossible.

So any calculator that hands you a confident single number for the Kent Test has invented the missing constants. We show a range instead, and list every assumption underneath the result. If your practice paper provider tells you the cohort average and spread, enter them — the range tightens considerably.

How the Kent Test is actually scored

There are two marked papers, not three. Paper 1 covers English and Maths in one hour, split into two 25-minute sections. Paper 2 is Reasoning, roughly an hour, with verbal and non-verbal sections combined into a single reasoning score. There is also a 40-minute writing exercise, and it is not marked — it is only seen by a local headteacher panel. Both marked papers are multiple choice on a separate answer sheet.

Your child gets three standardised scores — English, Maths, Reasoning — each between 69 and 141, giving a maximum aggregate of 423. Kent County Council publishes no weightings, but 3 × 141 = 423, so the three scores are simply added with equal weight. That also rules out the “reasoning counts double” claim you will find on plenty of tutoring sites: if it did, the maximum would not be 423.

Published thresholds

Note the minimum per paper: it has run between 106 and 108, not the 121 that circulates widely. A child can clear 332 overall and still miss out by dropping one paper below the floor — a strong reasoning score cannot rescue a weak English paper.

The threshold for the next cycle is published by Kent County Council in the October after the test is sat, so it is deliberately absent here until then rather than carried over from last year.

A pass is not a place

Kent County Council is explicit that meeting the threshold earns a “grammar assessment”, not an offer. Around 45% of children who sit the test are assessed as suitable for grammar, and the schools are then oversubscribed. At the super-selectives the score needed for an actual offer has run well above 332 — The Judd School, one of the very few Kent grammars that publishes its figures, needed 389 for its inner area and 403 for its outer area for 2026 entry.