Kent's Year 7 form closes at midnight on Monday 2 November. Missed it? A late form by 7 December can still count. Trinity's faith form runs to 15 November.
Applications for Sevenoaks secondary school places starting in September 2027 close at midnight on Monday 2 November 2026, Kent County Council’s one closing date. For a family in Sevenoaks that date was never the whole story. Knole Academy shut its expressive arts register on 7 October, and Weald of Kent Grammar School’s pupil premium and medical forms were due on Saturday 31 October; both have now passed. Trinity School still takes its faith form for a fortnight after the county deadline. And a family that misses midnight on Monday has one more route: the council treats a form sent by 7 December as on time if there is a good reason. This page sets out every date, what last year’s offers actually looked like at each local school, and the thing most parents here get wrong: you cannot ask for the Sevenoaks campus.
The quick answer
The county form closes at midnight on Monday 2 November 2026, and you can name four schools on it. Missed it? Email kentonlineadmissions@kent.gov.uk for a paper form: one sent by Monday 7 December for a good reason is treated as on time where the council can practicably accept it; after that it will not get a 1 March offer. Kent Test results were emailed on Thursday 15 October, and this year’s grammar pass mark is a total of 345 with no single score below 111, up from 332 and 108 last year. Knole Academy’s expressive arts registration, for 24 of its 240 places, closed on Wednesday 7 October; a late entry is only possible in exceptional circumstances, at the head’s discretion. Weald of Kent Grammar School’s pupil premium form and any medical claim were due by 31 October, and 40 of its 270 places are held for pupil premium applicants. Trinity School’s faith form runs to midnight on Sunday 15 November, two weeks after everything else. Both Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys and Weald of Kent teach in Sevenoaks on Seal Hollow Road, but neither lets you choose the campus: TWGSB splits its 300 places 210 at Tunbridge Wells and 90 at Sevenoaks after offer day, Weald measures every applicant’s distance to its Tonbridge site, and Weald’s policy says outright that there is no parental right of appeal against the campus allocated. Offers are emailed on Monday 1 March 2027 and you must accept or refuse by 15 March.
Midnight on Monday, and what happens if you miss it
The national closing date for secondary applications is 31 October every year. In 2026 that fell on a Saturday, so Kent County Council moved its deadline to the next working day. Its admissions booklet puts the time on it: applications “close at midnight on Monday 2 November 2026”. Two of the schools Sevenoaks families apply to, Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys and Weald of Kent, printed 31 October on their own pages, but the county form is the council’s, and the council’s date is the one that counts. If you have not submitted yet, you have until midnight on Monday.
If you miss it, the booklet’s section headed “If you missed the deadline” sets out a second chance. An application submitted no later than Monday 7 December 2026 for a good reason “will be treated as ‘on time’ if it is reasonably practicable to accept them”. It cannot go through the online form: you email kentonlineadmissions@kent.gov.uk and ask for a paper application form (SCAF), and the council will not accept the information in any other format. The same 7 December cut-off applies to a change of address after a house move, provided you have exchanged contracts with a completion date or signed a rental agreement.
After 7 December the position changes. Applications received between then and 15 March 2027 “will not receive a school offer on Monday 1 March 2027”; the council considers them alongside the waiting lists on the reallocation date of Tuesday 27 April 2027, by which time the popular Sevenoaks schools are already full.
You cannot apply for the Sevenoaks campus
This is the part that catches people out, and it catches them out after they have already applied.
There is no grammar school in Sevenoaks district with its own admission number. What there is, on Seal Hollow Road, is a campus of Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys and a campus of Weald of Kent Grammar School, both at TN13 3SN, on the same road as Trinity School.
Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys is explicit about how it works. Its published admission number is 300, “210 places at the Tunbridge Wells campus and 90 at Sevenoaks”. You name the school once on the county form, and the school says “we are one school and parents are unable to specify the campus they would prefer on the SCAF”. Kent County Council allocates 300 boys on 1 March; the school then assigns them to a campus using a distance calculation the council supplies for both sites, and emails parents the campus within a week of offer day. If your son is not put at the campus you wanted, you can ask to go on a waiting list for the other one.
Weald of Kent Grammar School goes further. Its 2027 policy sets the admission number at 270 girls and measures every applicant’s distance to a single Ordnance Survey point, TQ 59489 45217, on the Tonbridge campus. The policy then says the split between the two campuses “is an internal decision and not included in this policy”, decided each year by the school’s admissions committee, and that a campus form is sent out with the welcome letter once a place has already been offered. Its appeals section is blunt: “There is no parental right of appeal against the Campus allocated.”
So a girl in Sevenoaks town is ranked on how close she lives to Tonbridge, not to the school building at the end of Seal Hollow Road.
Weald’s parish list, and the part of the district it leaves out
Weald’s sixth oversubscription criterion, the distance one, applies to children living in named Tonbridge postcodes and parishes and in a specific list of Sevenoaks district parishes: Brasted, Chevening, Chiddingstone, Cowden, Dunton Green, Edenbridge, Godden Green, Halstead, Hever, Kemsing, Knockholt, Leigh, Otford, Penshurst, Riverhead, Seal, Sevenoaks town, Sevenoaks Weald and Underriver, Shoreham, Sundridge and Ide Hill, Westerham and Crockham Hill.
Criterion seven is “All other Postcodes”. Read the two together and the north of the district is not on the list: Swanley, Hextable, Crockenhill, New Ash Green, West Kingsdown, Horton Kirby, Eynsford and Farningham all fall into the lower band. If you live in one of those places, Weald is not the near-automatic option the Seal Hollow Road building makes it look.
The four Sevenoaks district deadlines that are not 2 November
Knole Academy, expressive arts: closed Wednesday 7 October
Knole Academy is an expressive arts school, and its admissions policy sets aside 10% of the Year 7 intake, 24 places out of 240, for children who show a particular aptitude for the performing or visual arts. Registration for that assessment closed on Wednesday 7 October 2026, nearly four weeks before the county form, and the school’s own admissions timetable was the only place the date appeared. Knole also asks for a supplementary information form.
If you missed it, the policy is strict but not absolute. A child who misses the deadline “will not be considered for a specialist place unless there are exceptional circumstances”, in which case the headteacher can allow an extended deadline, and the evidence “would normally have to be submitted in writing at least 24 hours before the deadline”. Missing the arts route does not affect the ordinary application: the other 216 places are filled on the county form by the usual criteria, and naming Knole by 2 November is all that needs.
Weald of Kent, pupil premium and medical: 31 October
Weald holds 40 of its 270 places for children eligible for pupil premium, ranked among themselves by distance. Eligibility means registered for free school meals at any point in the last six years, which is a much wider group than families currently claiming, and it does not include infant free school meals that every child receives. The form goes to the school, not the council, and the policy gives the deadline as 31 October in the year of application. Any claim on exceptional medical grounds, which needs a written statement from a hospital consultant, is due to the school by the same date.
If those 40 places are not filled by pupil premium applicants on offer day, they pass down to the next criterion. Only a form sent in by 31 October put you in the running for them, so if you missed it, ask the school directly rather than assume the place is gone.
Trinity School, faith places: midnight, Sunday 15 November
Trinity School takes 180 into Year 7 and is the local school where faith counts for most: its 2027 policy allocates up to 50% of the remaining places, after looked-after children and up to four staff children, to families attached to a Christian church. That is a far bigger share than any other local route, and it is the reason Trinity is worth a careful read rather than a glance.
The bar is higher than “we go to church”. The policy defines a Christian family as one where at least one parent or carer has attended a Christian church at least twice a month for at least two years up to the date of application, with the church minister confirming it on the form. Starting in October does not qualify you. The church must belong to Churches Together in Britain or Ireland or to the Evangelical Alliance, or otherwise show that its basis of faith accords with Trinitarian Christianity.
The form is completed online through the school’s own portal, not the county’s, and the deadline is midnight on Sunday 15 November 2026, a fortnight after the main closing date. The school warns that “any completed forms received after the deadline will not be considered for the first round of offers on National Offer Day”. Faith places and the open places that follow are both ranked on siblings first and then distance from the school, so a family that does not qualify on faith is not shut out; it is simply competing on how close it lives.
The school also makes a point worth repeating, because it changes how people fill the form in: the council coordinates the applications and individual schools are never told where they were ranked. Name your four schools in genuine order of preference. Putting a school first does not tell it anything, and putting a likely school second costs you nothing.
Kent Test results: out Thursday 15 October, pass mark 345
The test was sat on 10 September by children at Kent primary schools and over the weekend of 12 and 13 September by everyone else. Results were emailed on Thursday 15 October 2026 to the address used at registration, and only to that address. Where no email address was given, the result went by first class post the same day, and the council says you can ask your child’s primary school for the scores from the day after.
Your child gets three standardised scores, for English, maths and reasoning, plus a total. Each score runs from 69 to 141, so the highest possible total is 423. To be assessed suitable for grammar school this year a child needed a total of 345 or more, with no single score below 111. That is 13 marks higher on the total and 3 higher on each paper than last year’s 332 and 108, and the 2024 threshold was 332 with a floor of 106. Kent’s own guidance describes grammar schools as providing for roughly the top 25% of the ability range.
Two things follow for a family in Sevenoaks. A child with, say, 340 and every paper above 111 would have passed last year and has not this year, and should not read the letter as a near miss that the county form can fix. And a result that is not a grammar assessment does not stop you naming a grammar school: you can still put Weald of Kent or TWGSB on the form by 2 November, but that preference will be refused on 1 March, at which point you get a right of appeal. Whether to use one of your four preferences that way is a judgement about how strong an appeal you could make; the council’s advice is to fill all four, so do not let a grammar school you expect to lose crowd out a school you could actually be offered.
How hard is it? Last year’s offers, school by school
These are the figures from Kent County Council’s 2027 admissions guide for offer day in September 2026, the most recent full year. The applications column counts every preference of any rank, first to fourth, plus children with an education, health and care plan, so it is a measure of demand rather than of children competing for the place. The last column is the number of children the council had to place at the school because they got none of their four preferences.
| School | Intake | Preferences received | Offers made | Placed by the council |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Knole Academy, Sevenoaks | 240 | 934 | 240 | 0 |
| Trinity School, Sevenoaks | 180 | 799 | 180 | 0 |
| Orchards Academy, Swanley | 150 | 197 | 150 | 17 |
| Weald of Kent Grammar School | 300 | 994 | 300 | 0 |
| Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys | 300 | 1,179 | 300 | 0 |
| Wrotham School | 210 | 557 | 210 | 0 |
| Tonbridge Grammar School | 180 | 975 | 180 | 0 |
| Judd School, Tonbridge | 180 | 995 | 180 | 0 |
| Skinners' School, Tunbridge Wells | 160 | 885 | 160 | 0 |
Two things stand out. Every one of these schools filled its intake exactly, with no spare places and no shortfall, which is what a full district looks like. And Orchards Academy in Swanley is the only one where the council had to place children who had not named it: 17 of its 150, against 197 preferences in total. Everywhere else, the school was full on preferences alone.
Across Kent as a whole, 18,636 children were seeking a Year 7 place. 96.27% were offered one of the schools they had named and 78.96% got their first preference, which leaves about 695 children in the county offered a school they had not asked for. Naming all four preferences is the single cheapest thing you can do to stay out of that group.
After you apply
Applications are processed between 3 November 2026 and 28 February 2027. Offers are emailed on Monday 1 March 2027 to the address on the application, and can be viewed online. If you have changed email address since applying, keep access to the old one, because the council will not redirect an offer without approval from the original account.
You then have until Monday 15 March 2027 to accept or refuse. Refusing a place does not improve your position anywhere else; it just leaves you without one. Waiting lists and appeals both run from offer day, and for a grammar school you must have named it on the original form to appeal or join its list at all.
If your circumstances change after you have applied, the council asks you to email kentonlineadmissions@kent.gov.uk rather than start again.
Primary and junior places: the next round opens 6 November
If your child is due to start reception, or to move from an infant school to a junior school in Year 3, that is a separate application on a separate calendar. It opens on Friday 6 November 2026 and closes on Friday 15 January 2027, with three preferences rather than four, and offers on Friday 16 April 2027 after 4pm. Kent says there are no new free schools opening anywhere in the county in 2027, at either phase.
Frequently asked questions
What is the deadline for secondary school applications in Kent for 2027 entry?
Midnight on Monday 2 November 2026, because the national date of 31 October fell on a Saturday. A paper form sent to the council by Monday 7 December for a good reason can still be treated as on time; later than that, there is no 1 March offer and the application waits until 27 April 2027.
Can I ask for the Sevenoaks campus of Weald of Kent or TWGSB?
No. Both schools are one school for admissions and the campus is decided after places are offered. TWGSB assigns campuses on distance to both sites and emails parents within a week of 1 March. Weald of Kent’s policy says there is no parental right of appeal against the campus allocated.
How many schools can I name on the Kent form?
Four for secondary, three for primary and junior. It is in your interest to use all of them. Naming one school does not give your child priority for it, and schools are never told what order you used.
What score did a child need to pass the Kent Test in 2026?
A total of 345 or more out of 423, with no single score (English, maths or reasoning) below 111. Last year it was 332 with no score below 108. Results were emailed on 15 October 2026.
My child did not take the Kent Test, or did not pass. Can we still apply to a grammar school?
Yes, but the application to that school will be refused on 1 March 2027. You then have the right to appeal and argue that grammar school is suitable for your child. If you move into Kent after the test, the council runs a separate assessment.
Which secondary schools are actually in Sevenoaks district?
Three mainstream state secondaries: Knole Academy on Bradbourne Vale Road and Trinity School on Seal Hollow Road, both in Sevenoaks town, and Orchards Academy in Swanley. Weald of Kent Grammar School and Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys both teach on Seal Hollow Road but are Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells schools for admissions.
Do I need a supplementary form?
Only for particular routes. Knole Academy asks for one, and its separate expressive arts registration closed on 7 October. Trinity School needs one, countersigned by your church minister, for a faith place by 15 November. Weald of Kent needs one for a pupil premium or medical place by 31 October. None of them replaces the county application, and sending one without the county form gets your child nothing.
Sources
- Kent County Council, secondary school places (opening and closing dates, four preferences, processing window, offer day)
- Kent County Council, Admission to secondary school in Kent 2027 (PDF: the midnight closing time, the 7 December late-application rule, school details, and the September 2026 intake, preference, offer and allocation figures)
- Kent County Council, Kent Test results (results day, score ranges, the 2026 threshold of 345 and 111, the 2025 threshold of 332 and 108)
- Kent County Council, register for the Kent Test (test dates, the top 25% description)
- Kent County Council, primary school places (6 November to 15 January, three preferences, 16 April offers)
- Knole Academy, admissions (the 7 October expressive arts deadline and the 24 aptitude places)
- Knole Academy, admissions policy 2027 to 2028 (PDF: the exceptional-circumstances rule for a missed aptitude deadline)
- Trinity School, admission process Year 7 (the 15 November faith form deadline and the note on genuine preference order)
- Trinity School, admissions policy Years 7 to 11, 2027 intake (PDF: the 180 admission number, the 50% faith share and the two-year attendance definition)
- Weald of Kent Grammar School, admissions policy 2027 (PDF: 270 places, 40 pupil premium places, the parish list, the Tonbridge measuring point, campus allocation and appeal)
- Weald of Kent Grammar School, Year 7 2027 how to apply (the school’s 31 October date)
- Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Boys, Year 7 admissions (210 and 90 campus split, no campus preference, the school’s 31 October date)
Every date and figure here was read from the council’s pages or the school’s own admissions page on 24 September 2026; Knole Academy’s admissions page and policy, were checked again on 7 October 2026, the council’s Kent Test results page, with this year’s threshold, on 15 October 2026, and the council’s application page, admissions booklet and Trinity’s faith form deadline on 1 November 2026. Schools occasionally move supplementary deadlines, so confirm with the school before you rely on one. Related: Kent school term dates and October half term in Sevenoaks.
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