Admission into Year 7 in September 2025

The following information is applicable to students joining Year 7 in September 2025.

The application form process has now opened and the online application form can be found under the Applying to Take the Admission Test section below. The deadline for completing the form is midnight on 1st July 2024.

Open Events 

The Open Events for entry into Year 7 in September 2025 have now taken place. We are unable to accommodate individual visits to the school.

Applying to take the Admission Test
 

The online application form opened on 1st May 2024 and will close at midnight on 1st July 2024. The link to the application form is below.

APPLICATION FORM TO TAKE THE ADMISSION TESTS FOR ENTRY INTO YEAR 7 IN SEPTEMBER 2025

Please read the document below before applying to take the admission tests and completing the application form:

Guidelines for Applying to take the Kendrick School Admission Tests for Entry into Year 7 in September 2025

The admission test will take place at Kendrick School on Friday 20th September 2024. Applicants will be sent the test day arrangements and session time by email no later than Friday 19th July 2024.

Please read the following carefully:

  • We strongly advise parents who live outside of the designated area NOT to register their child to sit our test - no candidate, whatever the score they attain, who lives outside of our designated area has been offered a place at Kendrick School since the introduction of the designated area in 2013.
  • The postcodes that are within our designated area can be found here.
  • By registering your child for Kendrick School admission test, we will be unable to accommodate any non-attendance on the test date due to your child's participation in other entrance tests held on the same day. 
  •  The vast majority of individual and groups of grammar schools set their tests in the first two or three weeks of September. There is no liaison between any of them with regard to the day that is selected. It is ultimately for parents to decide which schools they wish to name as a preference for their child, and this may require them making a decision about which grammar school tests their child sits. 

Widening Horizons 

The aim of our Widening Horizons Project is to work with local primary schools to raise the aspirations of local children and to raise awareness of Kendrick School.

For those students who are in Year 5 and are pupil premium, service premium or children in care and live in the school’s designated area and are interested in taking our admission tests, we provide a free familiarisation programme.  The programme starts as soon as you register your child for the admission tests, and includes access to online familiarisation material, face to face and/or online sessions, and workbooks.

We also run hold a virtual Inspire Club on a Tuesday after school for girls in Years 3, 4 and 5 who meet the Widening Horizons criteria.  We have had such positive feedback for the Inspire Club! ‘It wasn’t boring and I had fun!’ and ‘It gave my daughter confidence that she could sit the exam because the familiarisation sessions built on her confidence’. Every Tuesday our students work online with the primary school children on a variety of topics, and once a term we invite Years 3-5 students into Kendrick for face-to-face activities.

For more information on how to register your child for the familiarisation programme and/or Inspire Club please email admissions@kendrick.reading.sch.uk 

The Admission Tests 

The tests will take place on Friday 20th September 2024 at Kendrick School, in either the morning or the afternoon. No alternative test date will be offered to candidates who wish to sit a test for another grammar school on the same day.

Candidates will sit two test papers, each approximately one hour, with questions covering a combination of verbal and non-verbal reasoning, English and mathematics. All marking and standardisation will be carried out by GL Assessment.

There is no creative writing element to the admission tests.

Please note that Kendrick School does not support or promote tutoring for the admissions tests as the test outcomes should be an indicator of the child’s natural academic ability and their potential to benefit from the kind of academic education provided at Kendrick School.

Familiarisation material is provided by GL Assessment and can be found below.  

Familiarisation Material 

The following information and material is provided by GL Assessment.


We recommend children familiarise themselves with the multiple-choice layout of the test, content and examples of some types of questions they will face. To give all children the opportunity to experience sample questions across a range of question types in advance of the test, we provide 10 hours of free familiarisation materials. These are particularly useful for verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning tests as children may not have encountered these types of questions before. The exact timings for, and number of questions in, your local 11+ test may differ from those in our familiarisation and practice materials.

Familiarisation papers and practice papers each provide useful support when preparing for an 11+ test. They differ in the following aspects: Firstly, while familiarisation papers are freely available for download, practice papers are only accessible for purchase. Familiarisation papers are in PDF format for home printing, whereas practice papers come in printed booklet format. Each set has its own exclusive content, ensuring a unique testing experience. Familiarisation papers aim for general familiarity with test styles, while practice papers offer comprehensive preparation, including timed test conditions.

Verbal Reasoning

Parent Guide

Booklet Answer Sheet

Booklet 1

Answer 1
Booklet 2 Answer 2
Booklet 3 Answer 3

Non-Verbal Reasoning

Parent Guide

Booklet Answer Sheet
Booklet 1 Answer 1
Booklet 2 Answer 2
Booklet 3 Answer 3

Maths

Parent Guide

Booklet Answer Sheet
Booklet 1 Answer 1
Booklet 2 Answer 2

English

Parent Guide

Booklet Answer Sheet
Booklet 1 Answer 1
Booklet 2 Answer 2

More information can be found on GL Assessment's website here.