Grammar School Index

Faversham, Kent · Kent

Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School

Fully co-educational since a 1967 merger, tracing its roots back to 1420 — one of the oldest schools in this index.

Named for Elizabeth I's 1576 re-founding charter, Queen Elizabeth's traces an even longer institutional history back to 1420, becoming fully co-educational in 1967 through a merger with a local girls' school. It sets no score requirement above Kent's standard threshold, and its own admissions policy confirms a plain priority-order system — though the school describes itself as consistently oversubscribed with waiting lists from Year 7 through Year 11, so realistic prospects for a place may run above the baseline for latecomers even without a formally higher bar.

Key facts

Gender
co-ed
Age range
11-18
Region
South East
Local authority
Kent
Established
1576
DfE URN
136570
Website
https://www.queenelizabeths.kent.sch.uk

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, though not named directly in KCC's own PESE Threshold Statement.partly verified

GL Assessment is widely reported by secondary sources but wasn't named in KCC's own PESE Threshold Statement or found on kent.gov.uk during this research.

Test format
Confirmed directly from KCC's own PESE 2026 Threshold Statement: three components — English, Maths, and a combined verbal/non-verbal Reasoning score. An unmarked writing task for borderline cases is standard Kent-wide practice, though not independently re-confirmed for this specific school.
Qualifying / pass mark
Confirmed directly from KCC's own PESE 2026 Threshold Statement (test sat autumn 2025, governing September 2026 entry): aggregate score of 332 or more, with no single component below 108. The school sets no additional requirement of its own.
Superselective?
No

Confirmed directly from the school's own determined Admissions Policy 2026-27: no banding, tiering, or higher-than-standard threshold appears anywhere in the document. It requires only a standard Kent Test pass, then ranks eligible applicants by ordinary priority criteria. The school describes itself as 'full and oversubscribed... with waiting lists for entry to Year 7 through to Year 11' — implying realised cutoffs for latecomers may run above the baseline, though no specific figure is published.

Catchment & priority criteria

No catchment area is defined. Distance is used only as the lowest-priority (6th of 6) oversubscription criterion and final tie-break, measured as straight-line distance via National Land and Property Gazetteer address points.

  1. Children with a Statement of SEN or EHCP naming the school
  2. Looked-after and previously looked-after children
  3. Children in receipt of Free School Meals or designated Pupil Premium
  4. Current family association — a sibling attending at time of admission
  5. Children of staff (2+ years' permanent employment, or filling a skill-shortage post)
  6. Medical, health, social and special access reasons
  7. Nearness of home to school, by straight-line distance; independently-supervised random allocation as final tie-break

Results

YearAttainment 8GCSE 5+ Eng & MathsProgress 8A*–AA*–B
202565.1 (England state-funded average 46.1, Kent LA average 46.7)87.2% (England 45.4%, Kent LA 47.0%)Not calculated — no KS2 baseline data for this cohort nationally~33.6% (indicative, self-calculated from school's own grade tables)~60.6% (indicative, self-calculated from school's own grade tables)
EBacc entry 70.5%, EBacc average point score 6.07. 125 students completed A-level study. DfE's current tables no longer publish a simple A*-A/A*-B breakdown; a self-calculated estimate from the school's own published subject grade-count table (counted per exam entry, not DfE's per-student methodology) suggests roughly 33.6% A*-A and 60.6% A*-B — indicative only, not an official DfE statistic.
2024verify with schoolverify with schoolThis cohort should have a calculable Progress 8 figure (predates the COVID-era gap), but a specific number couldn't be independently retrieved during this research——
Raw subject-level grade-count tables for this year exist on the school's own site but don't provide a pre-aggregated headline percentage.

Ofsted

Rating
Good overall, under the pre-September-2024 single-headline-grade framework. Sub-judgements: quality of education Good, behaviour and attitudes Outstanding, personal development Outstanding, leadership and management Good, sixth-form provision Good. The previous inspection (2015) rated the school Outstanding across all categories.
Date
28 February 2023
Report
Read the full report

Sources

  1. 1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/136570
  2. 2. School's own Admissions Policy 2026-27 including Sixth Form — https://www.queenelizabeths.kent.sch.uk/assets/Documents/Policies/Admissions-Policy-2026-27-including-Sixth-Form.pdf
  3. 3. Kent County Council — PESE 2026 Kent Test Threshold Statement — https://www.manwoods.co.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=543&type=pdf
  4. 4. Ofsted report page, inspected 28 February 2023 — https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/136570
  5. 5. School's own history page — https://www.queenelizabeths.kent.sch.uk/about-us/history/
  6. 6. School's own 3-Year GCSE Results 2023-2025 — https://www.queenelizabeths.kent.sch.uk/assets/Documents/Assessment-and-Reporting/3-Year-GCSE-RESULTS-2025-GCSE-2023-25.pdf
  7. 7. School's own 3-Year A-level Results 2023-2025 — https://www.queenelizabeths.kent.sch.uk/assets/Documents/Assessment-and-Reporting/3-Year-A-Level-Results-2025.pdf
  8. 8. DfE Compare School Performance — secondary results — https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/136570/queen-elizabeth-s-grammar-school/secondary

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