The Medway Test: A Complete Parent Guide

In short

• Medway runs its own selection test administered by Medway Council — it is separate from the Kent Test and the two are not interchangeable.
• The Medway Test has historically covered extended writing alongside reasoning and maths content, giving it a different profile from Kent's multiple-choice papers.
• Children living in Medway and wishing to be considered for Medway grammars register with Medway Council, typically in the summer term of Year 5.
• Families near the boundary can register for both the Medway Test and the Kent Test, but that means two registrations, two sittings and two sets of dates.
• Medway Council publishes the confirmed format, dates and arrangements each year — always check the current guidance rather than relying on older accounts.

The short answer

Medway is a unitary authority covering Chatham, Gillingham, Rochester, Strood and Rainham, and it runs its own 11+ arrangements entirely separately from Kent County Council. That single fact resolves most of the confusion families encounter: sitting the Kent Test does not put a child in the running for a Medway grammar school, and sitting the Medway Test does not put them in the running for a Kent one. Each has its own registration, its own test and its own timetable. Families living near the boundary — and there are many, since the two areas interlock geographically — often register for both, which is permitted but means running two campaigns. If you take one thing from this guide, make it this: confirm which authority administers each school on your shortlist before you plan anything else, because that determines which test your child needs to sit.

What does the Medway Test involve?

Medway's test has historically had a distinctive shape compared with its larger neighbour. Where the Kent Test is built around multiple-choice papers in English, maths and a combined reasoning element, the Medway Test has included an extended writing component alongside its reasoning and mathematics content — meaning written expression carries weight in a way it does not in Kent's qualifying papers. Scores are age-standardised, so younger children in the cohort are compared fairly against others of their exact age, as our standardised age scores guide explains. Because Medway reviews and occasionally revises its arrangements, the specific paper structure, timings and weighting for any given year should be read from Medway Council's published admissions information rather than from older summaries — including this one. What has remained stable is the general profile: a test that rewards solid maths, strong reading and the ability to write clearly under time pressure.

Which grammar schools does the Medway Test cover?

Medway has six selective schools, a substantial concentration for an authority of its size. They include the long-established Rochester and Chatham grammar schools alongside the other Medway selectives, spanning single-sex and co-educational provision. Each admits using the Medway Test outcome in combination with its own published oversubscription criteria, which typically weigh factors such as distance, siblings and other local priorities once a child has been assessed as suitable for selective education. As everywhere, being assessed suitable and being offered a place at a specific school are different events: an oversubscribed Medway grammar can turn away children who cleared the standard comfortably. Read each target school's admissions policy — not just the council's test information — because the criteria that decide allocation live there, and they differ school to school.

How and when do we register for the Medway Test?

Registration runs through Medway Council and typically opens in the summer term of Year 5, with the test sat in the autumn term of Year 6 and results issued in time to inform the secondary school application. Medway publishes the exact windows each year on its admissions pages, and those dates are the only ones worth planning around. Two points catch families out. First, registering for the test is entirely separate from applying for a school place: the Common Application Form, submitted to your home local authority by 31 October of Year 6, is what actually allocates places, and completing one does not do the job of the other. Second, if you are also considering Kent grammars, the Kent Test has its own registration with its own deadline — commonly opening in June and closing in early July — and neither authority will remind you about the other. Diary both sets of dates as soon as they are published.

Should we sit both the Medway and Kent tests?

It is a reasonable strategy for boundary families, and a poor one for families with no realistic geographic claim to both. The case for sitting both is straightforward: more selective options, and the two authorities' schools are genuinely different propositions in location and character. The costs are equally real — two registrations to track, two test sittings for a ten-year-old in the same autumn, and preparation that has to cover Medway's written element as well as Kent's multiple-choice reasoning papers. Because those formats differ, a child prepared only for Kent-style papers can be caught out by Medway's writing demands, and vice versa. If you are doing both, build the shared academic core once — maths, comprehension, vocabulary, reasoning question families — then add format-specific practice for each test in the final months, including timed written pieces for Medway. Our applying to multiple schools guide covers running a multi-test campaign without doubling the workload on the child.

How should we prepare for the Medway Test?

Build the durable core first and add Medway's distinctive element deliberately. The core is the same as any GL-style selective region: upper-Key-Stage-2 maths fluency with confident multi-step problem solving, reading comprehension supported by genuinely wide daily reading, and familiarity with verbal and non-verbal reasoning question families. On top of that, treat extended writing as a first-class part of preparation rather than an afterthought, because it is where Medway differs most from Kent and where an unprepared child loses most. One timed written piece a week of around 25-30 minutes, reviewed with a single improvement target rather than a blanket correction, builds the skill steadily — our creative writing guide covers what examiners actually reward. Keep the rhythm short and consistent through Year 5, add full timed papers from the summer, and taper deliberately in the final week. For the surrounding regional picture, our Kent region guide and Medway region page hold the local detail.

Where GrammarPrep fits

GrammarPrep configures practice around the test a child is actually sitting, so a Medway family works the content Medway examines rather than a generic four-subject syllabus, and the adaptive engine targets whichever areas are currently costing marks. The writing strand gives structured practice with feedback on the elements that carry weight in a written paper, and the parent dashboard shows readiness as a trend rather than a single number. If you are weighing Medway against Kent, or planning both, the free 15-minute diagnostic gives an honest baseline across the core subjects in one sitting, which is the right starting point for deciding how ambitious the shortlist should be.