Open Day Sessions for Entry into Year 7 in September 2026 - Tuesday 29^th and Wednesday 30^th April 2025

Kendrick School is a selective academy for girls aged 11-18 and is acknowledged as one of the best state schools in the country. In all its OFSTED inspections, Kendrick was judged outstanding. Kendrick is proud of its superb reputation and the opportunities it affords its students to participate in an all-round education where their thirst for knowledge and love of learning is nurtured in a secure and caring environment. If your daughter is in Year 5 and showing academic potential at her primary school and has an enquiring mind and a love of learning, we invite you to attend one of our Open Day sessions.

The sessions will take place in either the morning or afternoon and will last approximately 1½ hours. There will be a tour of the school with our students, and a talk by the Headteacher, Ms Kattirtzi and our Student Leader Team.

BOOKING IS ESSENTIAL. Car parking is not available on the school site. For safeguarding reasons, you must bring your Year 5 child to the session with you. Adults without a child will not be admitted to the school. Where possible, please do not bring younger children to the event. However, if this is unavoidable, please note that we cannot accommodate pushchairs around the school.

Tickets will be available here on Eventbrite from Friday 4th April at midday. If you are unable to obtain a ticket for your chosen session, please add your name to the waiting list for that session. Please note there will be plenty of availability to attend one of the sessions. Tickets go very quickly in the first instance, but there are always slots available for another session. Please do not obtain multiple tickets. We will check the attendee list and delete additional tickets for those people that have booked more than one ticket. You only need one ticket - this will give access to up to 2 adults and 2 children. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. 

TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE HERE 

The online application form will open on 1st May 2025 and will close at midnight on 1st July 2025. The link to the application form will be available below on 1st May 2025

The admission test will take place at Kendrick School on Friday 19th September 2025. Applicants will be sent the test day arrangements and session time by email no later than Friday 18th July 2025.

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 the 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 individuals 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 to make a decision about which grammar school tests their child sits.  

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 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 tests will take place on Friday 19th September 2025 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 and you cannot select a morning or afternoon session. 

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.   

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

Non-Verbal Reasoning

Parent Guide

Maths

Parent Guide

English

Parent Guide

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