11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi all,

I am new to this. I have a daughter in year 4 planning to prepare for kent test.

I would like to know which is best school in kent among these

1. Folkestone grammar
2. Invincta grammar
3. Tune bridge wells grammar
4. Tonbridge grammar
5. Maidstone grammar
6. Queen Elizabeth grammar


Thanks
Deepti

If you mean best exam results then you need to look at dfe school performance tables and also get subject by subject results for each grade at gcse / a level / ibac from the schools themselves.

My advice would be to look for a school that suits your DC and the whole family- location, atmosphere, subjects (eg languages/sciences avilable) extra curricular etc. Just because a school is the "best" school, based on rather dodgy criteria, doesn't make it the right school for an individual.

They are very far apart,so I presume you are planning to move. If so, there is so much more to consider e.g. primary schools, price of houses, commuting distance , uprooting family etc.

'Best' is subjective, so it is difficult to say.

Thanks mystery,scary mum and yoyo.


U r all right indeed. we r planning to move to kent from Basingstoke as there are no good grammar schools in bsg.

So confused to decide among Maidstone, Folkestone n tune bridge .


Thanks anyways for ur time n tips.

Folkestone is by the sea

Do you have other children to consider too? Are there no good schools in Basingstoke? It is a lot to uproot your family. I would visit them all and research them & see what suits, but don't choose one simply because it is a) a grammar school and b) the best one in Kent. There may be other options that suit your family better. Good luck, I'm sure if you have specific questions about the pros and cons specific schools the Kent EPE members will more more than happy to answer them.

You make tune bridge sound so much more vibrant than it is!

I must tell u that u r very helpful.

I have only one daughter and want to give best for her. So we have to sacrifice some things for her.

When I have researched , kent does have good number and best grammar schools in south east region .

But I should say 11 plus looks like a ocean to me. Lot of planning,preparation is needed.

Those are some very different places in terms of where to live! Using a very broad brush you can divide Kent into two parts West Kent and East Kent.

West Kent which includes Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Maidstone and Sevenoaks tends to be more expensive to live in (it's much closer to London and has a lot of commuters). East Kent which includes Folkestone, Dover, Thanet, Canterbury tends to much less expensive as there are far fewer commuters.

The West Kent grammar schools all tend to be very oversubscribed and much harder to get in to (either by score or distance) than the East Kent grammar schools.

If you only care about academics (not that I would recommend that as a way of picking a school) I would be wary of the dfe tables, even grammar schools aren't above pushing children towards 'easy' GCSE's in order to boost themselves up the tables. You could look at leavers destinations which might give a better idea of the academic standards however there is quite a lot of movement at sixth form in some schools so again you should be very wary. Also the subjects and exams offered are different (e.g. TOGS is IB) so it may well depend what your daughter's strengths are.


Personally I think Sir Roger Manwood's School in Sandwich would be my own pick of East Kent - I liked the relaxed atmosphere. In west Kent it's more a question of taking whatever you can get rather than picking imho!

The Kent Test (11+ exam) is changing this year (and may well change again next year) so it's all a bit of an unknown but whatever happens the aim is to pick the top 25% of children so as long as your daughter is in the top 25% and works hard you should be fine to get a pass. In case you weren't aware that isn't good enough for many West Kent grammar schools which are 'super-selective'. The super-selectives rank by 11+ score irrespective of distance so in order to get into those your daughter may need to score significantly above the pass mark for the 11+ test.


dyths