Families targeting Dartford Grammar School for Girls ask the same first question: what exactly should we practise? The honest answer is that good preparation is not generic 11+ cramming — it fits how this school actually selects its intake. Dartford Grammar School for Girls admits on the Kent Test, so everything below is shaped around that specific paper: the subjects it covers, the format your daughter will meet, and a free, week-by-week plan that builds the right skills at the right time.
About Dartford Grammar School for Girls
Dartford Grammar School for Girls is the girls' grammar in Dartford, Kent — the sister school to Dartford Grammar. It is a long-established selective school with a strong academic tradition, and like every grammar in the Kent system, entry is decided by performance in the Kent Test rather than by catchment alone. Here are the key facts at a glance:
- Location: Dartford, Kent
- Intake: Girls
- Founded: 1904
- Type: Academy grammar school
- Admissions test: Kent Test (GL Assessment)
For this year's admissions policy, published pass arrangements, open evenings and the definitive registration deadlines, always treat the school's own website as the authority: dartfordgrammargirls.org.uk. You can also see our full school profile, and browse the wider grammar school directory to compare it with nearby Kent schools your family may also be considering.
How selection works at Dartford Grammar School for Girls
Admission is decided by the Kent Test, the county-wide selection assessment supplied by GL Assessment and sat in early September of Year 6. Kent runs England's largest fully-selective system — 32 state grammar schools — and the Kent Test is the shared gateway to almost all of them, including Dartford Grammar School for Girls. Because it is a single county test, your daughter does not sit a separate paper for this school; she sits the Kent Test once, and her standardised result is used across the Kent grammars she has named.
The Kent Test assesses three areas across its papers:
- English — comprehension, spelling, punctuation and grammar in a timed, multiple-choice format.
- Maths — Key Stage 2 arithmetic and problem-solving, again tightly timed with no calculator.
- Reasoning — a combined paper covering Verbal Reasoning (VR) and Non-Verbal Reasoning (NVR).
As with all GL papers, answers are multiple-choice, marked from a separate answer sheet, and each section is separately and firmly timed at roughly a minute a question. Results are reported as standardised scores, which are age-adjusted so that a summer-born child is not disadvantaged against an autumn-born classmate of the same raw mark. Kent applies an aggregate threshold across the subjects with a minimum in each area, and there is a head-teacher assessment and appeal route for children who narrowly miss. Exact qualifying scores vary by year and are set by the county, so we never quote a fixed pass mark — confirm the current figures on the school and Kent County Council pages before you rely on them. You can read more about the paper on our GL Assessment papers guide.
What to practise for this test
Because the Kent Test is a GL paper, it is one of the most learnable assessments of any board: the question types are published and stable, so systematic, type-by-type practice pays off directly. Focus your daughter's effort on the four skill areas the test rewards:
- Comprehension and vocabulary — the single best predictor of both English and Verbal Reasoning scores. Build it through wide reading plus targeted drills in our free worksheet library.
- Maths fluency — quick, accurate KS2 arithmetic, fractions, percentages and word problems, all under time pressure.
- Verbal Reasoning — the roughly 21 GL question types: codes, letter sequences, hidden words, analogies, odd-one-out, closest-meaning and opposites, compound words, move-a-letter and number series. Drill each until it is automatic.
- Non-Verbal Reasoning — series, matrices, analogies, odd-one-out, reflections, rotations and cube nets.
Start with a first full timed mock paper to expose whichever subject is weakest, then use the worksheets to shore it up before drilling everything to speed. In the final weeks, switch to centre-specific mocks that mirror the Kent Test format so the layout and pacing feel familiar.
A realistic preparation timeline
Preparation works best as a slow build over two to three years, not a panicked sprint. There are no invented dates here — check the exact registration window each year on the school's site and our key dates page.
- Year 4: daily reading for pleasure, and secure times tables to 12×12. No formal papers yet — the aim is broad vocabulary and number confidence.
- Year 5 autumn: begin 15–20 minutes of daily topic practice using the free worksheets, introducing one reasoning question type at a time.
- Year 5 spring/summer (register!): Kent registration typically opens around late spring and closes before the summer holidays. Register in good time and confirm the deadline on the school's own website.
- Summer before Year 6: one full timed mock paper a week; review the errors far more carefully than the score.
- First weeks of Year 6: the test itself falls in early September, so the final push happens over the summer — taper to short, calm sessions in the last days.
On the day and after
By test day the academic work is done; the job now is composure. A child who has sat ten timed mocks at the kitchen table walks into the real hall treating it as the eleventh. Practical points that help:
- Rehearse the mechanics: filling a separate multiple-choice answer sheet, keeping their place, and moving on when a question stalls rather than losing two minutes on it.
- Teach a simple rule — attempt every question, because there is no penalty for a wrong guess on GL papers, so never leave a bubble blank.
- Sleep, breakfast and a calm morning matter more than one last worksheet. Keep the tone light.
- Afterwards, resist the urge to interrogate. Results arrive by mid-October; the appeal and head-teacher assessment route exists for near misses, so a single test is rarely the final word.
For more on pacing and error review, our revision hub pulls the strategy pieces together.
Frequently asked questions
Is Dartford Grammar School for Girls a GL or CEM school?
It selects through the Kent Test, which is provided by GL Assessment. CEM's separate paper 11+ was discontinued around 2023, so preparation should be built entirely around GL-style multiple-choice question types.
When is the Kent Test sat?
In early September of Year 6, with results usually released in mid-October. Registration opens the previous spring — confirm the exact dates on the school's website and our key dates page each year.
What score does my daughter need to pass?
Kent uses age-standardised scores with an aggregate threshold and a minimum in each subject, but the exact figures are set by the county and vary year to year. We never quote a fixed pass mark — check the current numbers with the school and Kent County Council.