Grammar School Index

Chatham, Kent · Medway

Holcombe Grammar School

Admits its first girls this September — one of three Medway grammar schools converting to co-education at exactly the same time.

Another Medway school, not a Kent County Council one: Holcombe sits under Medway's separate Medway Test system, run by Medway Council rather than Kent, with its own annually-recalibrated qualifying score. Right now is a genuinely pivotal moment for the school — after DfE approval in November 2024, Holcombe admits girls into Year 7 for the first time this September (2026), alongside Fort Pitt Grammar School and Chatham Grammar School, which are converting on exactly the same timetable. Existing boys already in the school aren't affected; the co-ed cohort will simply age up year by year until the whole school is mixed.

Key facts

Gender
boys
Age range
11-18
Region
South East
Local authority
Medway
DfE URN
136594
Website
https://www.holcombegrammar.org.uk

Admissions

Admissions authority
The school sets its own test and criteria
Entrance test board
The Medway Test, a separate 11+ system from the Kent Test used elsewhere in the county, commissioned by Medway Council. Medway Council states directly: 'these tests are written specifically for Medway Council. Our test provider is GL Assessment.'
Test format
Three separate multiple-choice, computer-marked papers: English (30 minutes: comprehension, punctuation, grammar), Mathematics (50 minutes), and Reasoning (45 minutes: spatial/non-verbal plus verbal reasoning). Combined as English×2 + Maths×2 + Reasoning×1 for a maximum weighted score of 700 (this weighting formula is reported consistently by tutoring sites but not found verbatim on Medway Council's own pages). Some tutoring sources describe an additional unmarked writing task used only for borderline cases, though this isn't confirmed on Medway Council's own primary pages.
Qualifying / pass mark
481 out of 700 for the test sat autumn 2025 (governing Sept 2026 entry), recalibrated annually to target roughly the top 23-26% of the Medway cohort — 482 for Sept 2025 entry, 492 for Sept 2024 entry. The school applies no higher bar of its own above this Medway-wide threshold.
Superselective?
No

Confirmed directly from the school's own determined Admissions Policy 2025/26: a single pass/fail standard set by the Medway Test, with no higher scoring band or score-ranked priority tier. Oversubscription above the 150-place PAN is resolved entirely through categorical criteria — care status, siblings, named partner primary schools, staff children, medical need, then distance — never by ranking applicants' scores against each other.

Catchment & priority criteria

No defined catchment area. Distance from home to school is used only as the final tie-break criterion among an already test-qualified applicant pool, not as an eligibility boundary.

  1. Looked-after and previously looked-after children
  2. Siblings currently attending Holcombe Grammar School
  3. Children attending one of four named Thinking Schools Academy Trust Medway primary schools (The Gordon, New Horizons, All Faiths, Cedar Children's Academies)
  4. Children of staff (employed 2+ years, or filling a skill-shortage vacancy)
  5. Health or medical reasons, evidenced by a GP or consultant
  6. Proximity — shortest home-to-school distance

Results

YearAttainment 8GCSE 5+ Eng & MathsProgress 8A*–AA*–B
202460.11 (school's own unvalidated data)87%+0.1814.6%41.5%
Grade 4+ in English & Maths ('Good Pass') was 99%.
202562.33 (school's own unvalidated data)85%Not calculated — the school's own June 2025 data omits the line entirely, consistent with the nationwide DfE inability to calculate Progress 8 for the 2024/25 cohort (COVID-cancelled KS2 baseline)20.0%46.2%
Grade 4+ in English & Maths ('Good Pass') was 97%. Could not cross-check DfE's own compare-school-performance service, which blocked automated access throughout this research.

Ofsted

Rating
Good — an ungraded Section 8 visit in March 2024 confirmed the school 'continues to be a good school,' carrying forward the Good judgement from the last full graded inspection in September 2014.
Date
12-13 March 2024
Report
Read the full report

Sources

  1. 1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, Medway local authority — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/136594
  2. 2. School's own Admissions Policy 2025/26 — https://www.holcombegrammar.org.uk/site-hgs/assets/files/4711/hgs-admissions_2025-26-1.pdf
  3. 3. School's own co-educational provision statement — https://www.holcombegrammar.org.uk/our-school/co-educational-provision/
  4. 4. Medway Council — About the Medway Test — https://www.medway.gov.uk/info/200137/schools_and_learning/1049/medway_test_11
  5. 5. Medway Council news — 2025 Medway Test results (qualifying score 481) — https://www.medway.gov.uk/news/article/1974/children_get_their_medway_test_results
  6. 6. Medway Council news — DfE approves co-education for Holcombe, Fort Pitt and Chatham Grammar — https://www.medway.gov.uk/news/article/1794/department_for_education_gives_green_light_for_three_medway_grammar_schools_to_go_co-ed
  7. 7. Ofsted report, inspected 12-13 March 2024 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50245604
  8. 8. School's own Key Stage 4 results, summer 2025 — https://www.holcombegrammar.org.uk/site-hgs/assets/files/7285/key-stage_4_data_for_website_summer_2025.pdf

Last updated 2026-08-31. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.