Canterbury, Kent · Kent
Barton Court Grammar School
Its November 2024 Ofsted visit issued no grades at all — a secondary aggregator's '+0.38 Progress 8 for 2025' is actually stale 2024 data, since real Progress 8 doesn't exist for 2025 at any school.
Despite sharing a town with both Simon Langton schools, Barton Court's own admissions policy makes no mention of any shared consortium test — it uses the standard Kent Test alone. Its own policy confirms no score requirement above the county threshold, with oversubscription resolved purely by category and distance. One nuance worth getting right: the school's most recent Ofsted visit (November 2024) was an ungraded inspection that issued no ratings at all, simply confirming the standards from its last full graded inspection (Good, February 2020, itself a downgrade from Outstanding in 2014) had been maintained.
Key facts
- Gender
- co-ed
- Age range
- 11-18
- Region
- South East
- Local authority
- Kent
- Established
- 1945
- DfE URN
- 137474
- Website
- https://www.bartoncourt.org
Admissions
- Admissions authority
- The school sets its own test and criteria
- Entrance test board
- The Kent Test (PESE), commissioned county-wide by Kent County Council. GL Assessment is widely reported as the paper-setter but wasn't named on any KCC page checked during this research. No shared consortium test exists with the nearby Simon Langton schools — Barton Court's own policy references only the standard county-wide test.partly verified
GL Assessment is widely reported but wasn't named on any Kent County Council page checked during this research.
- Test format
- An English & Maths paper and a Reasoning paper (verbal and non-verbal), both multiple-choice/computer-marked, plus an unmarked 40-minute writing task used only for borderline or appeal decisions.
- Qualifying / pass mark
- Confirmed directly from Kent County Council's own page (2025 cycle, governing September 2026 entry): an aggregate of 332 or more, with no component below 108. Barton Court sets no additional threshold of its own — passing doesn't guarantee a place, since the school is usually oversubscribed and resolves that by category and distance, not score.
- Superselective?
- No
Confirmed directly from the school's own determined admissions policy (both the 2025-26 and current 2027-28 cycles, which are identical in structure): oversubscription runs through care status, Pupil Premium, sibling link, medical need, then straight-line distance — no score-banding or higher pass mark at any stage. Heavy oversubscription (PAN 150, usually oversubscribed) can still push up the effective distance cutoff in practice, but not a score cutoff.
Catchment & priority criteria
No defined catchment area. Straight-line distance is used only as the final tie-break within the lowest-priority oversubscription category.
- Children with an EHCP or Statement of SEN naming the school
- Looked-after and previously looked-after children
- Children in receipt of Pupil Premium
- Current family association — a sibling attending at time of admission
- Health and special access reasons, evidenced under the Equality Act 2010
- Nearness of home to school, by straight-line distance
Results
| Year | Attainment 8 | GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths | Progress 8 | A*–A | A*–B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 66.0 | 83.7% | +0.38 (136 of 141 pupils included) — a genuine, currently-calculable figure since this cohort's KS2 baseline predates COVID SATs disruption. At least one secondary aggregator wrongly pairs this figure with 2025 data instead. | — | — |
| For trend context, 2022/23 Progress 8 was +0.15. A-level (335 entries): 31.3% graded A*-A, 58% A*-B (calculated from the school's own published grade-count tables). | |||||
| 2025 | 66.4 (Kent LA average 46.7, England state-funded average 46.1) | 84.9% (Kent LA average 47.0%, England 45.4%) | Not calculated — no KS2 baseline data for this cohort nationally. A secondary aggregator currently pairs this year's Attainment 8 (correctly 66.4) with the +0.38 Progress 8 figure that actually belongs to 2024 — a stale-attachment error. | 27.3% (calculated from school's own grade tables) | 60% (calculated from school's own grade tables) |
| EBacc entry 91.4% (Kent LA 46.9%, England 40.5%), EBacc average point score 6.37. A-level (355 entries): 27.3% graded A*-A, 60% A*-B (calculated from the school's own published grade-count tables, not a DfE headline measure). | |||||
Ofsted
- Rating
- Good — the November 2024 visit was an ungraded Section 8 inspection that issued no ratings at all, simply confirming the school 'has taken effective action to maintain the standards' set at its last full graded inspection (Good, February 2020), which was itself a downgrade from Outstanding at the March 2014 inspection.
- Date
- 19-20 November 2024 (ungraded; last graded inspection 11-12 February 2020)
- Report
- Read the full report
Sources
- 1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/137474
- 2. Ofsted report, inspected 19-20 November 2024 (ungraded) — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50264739
- 3. School's own current admissions policy (September 2027 entry) — https://4905753ff3cea231a868-376d75cd2890937de6f542499f88a819.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/bartoncourt/uploads/document/2027-Barton-Court-Grammar-School-Academy-Admissions-Policy.pdf
- 4. Kent County Council — Kent Test qualifying threshold — https://www.kent.gov.uk/education-and-children/schools/school-places/kent-test/kent-test-results
- 5. DfE Compare School Performance — Progress 8, 2023 and 2024 — https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/137474/barton-court-grammar-school/secondary/progress-measures-for-2023-and-2024
- 6. School's own GCSE Results Summary 2025 — https://4905753ff3cea231a868-376d75cd2890937de6f542499f88a819.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/bartoncourt/uploads/document/GCSE-Results-Summary-2025.pdf
- 7. School's own Exam Results page — https://www.bartoncourt.org/232/exam-results
Last updated 2026-08-31. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.