Tunbridge Wells, Kent · Kent

Tunbridge Wells Girls' Grammar School

Almost all of its places go by home-to-school distance, not score — the opposite mechanism from Kent's recognised superselectives.

TWGGS sits within Kent's county-wide 11+ system, sharing the same GL Assessment-administered Kent Test as every other Kent grammar school. What sets its admissions apart from Kent's best-known superselectives — Judd, The Skinners' School, Tonbridge Grammar, Weald of Kent — is the allocation mechanism once you clear the county-wide bar: 157 of TWGGS's 174 places go by home-to-school distance, not by test score. Only a small Governors' Places allocation (17 places) is score-ranked.

Key facts

Gender: girls
Age range: 11-18
Region: South East
Local authority: Kent
DfE URN: 118789
Website: https://www.twggs.kent.sch.uk/

Admissions

Admissions authority: The school sets its own test and criteria
Entrance test board: GL Assessment administers the Kent Test under contract to Kent County Council, which runs it county-wide for all Kent grammar schools as part of the 'PESE' (Procedure for Entry to Secondary Education) process.partly verified
Kent County Council's own site doesn't explicitly name GL Assessment, but links directly to GL's dedicated Kent 11+ portal; corroborated by numerous independent tutoring/guide sites, with no source naming a different provider.
Test format: Three components sat county-wide: (1) an English & maths paper, 1 hour total; (2) a reasoning paper combining verbal and non-verbal reasoning, about 1 hour; (3) an unmarked 40-minute creative writing exercise, which may be used by a headteacher panel at the borderline 'headteacher assessment' stage. Papers 1-2 are multiple-choice and computer-marked.
Qualifying / pass mark: Kent publishes one county-wide grammar-eligibility threshold rather than a TWGGS-specific score — for the most recently completed cycle (September 2026 entry), a total of 332 or more with no single component below 108 (out of a maximum possible 423); the September 2027 threshold isn't published until October 2026. TWGGS applies no additional cut-off of its own for its 157 standard places, which are decided by home-to-school distance once the county threshold is met — only the school's 17 Governors' Places (of 174 total) are allocated by ranking catchment-eligible applicants on their 11+ score.
Superselective?: Nopartly verified
Reasoned from the published admissions mechanism plus consistent omission from independent lists of Kent's superselective schools, rather than a single study scoring TWGGS directly. A Freedom-of-Information dataset that may contain the school's actual last-score/last-distance-offered figures exists but couldn't be retrieved (CAPTCHA-blocked).

Catchment & priority criteria

A priority area covering roughly 39 named parishes (Royal Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge, Sevenoaks and surrounding villages toward the Kent/East Sussex border) or a 4-mile straight-line radius from the school. After looked-after children, Pupil Premium, sibling, medical and staff-daughter priorities, the large majority of standard places go by straight-line distance from home to school. Ties are broken by random ballot.sources conflict

The determined admissions arrangements (primary source) define the priority area as a 4-mile radius or named parishes. The Good Schools Guide instead describes the catchment as tighter, 'two to three miles' — possibly reflecting the distance actually offered in practice rather than the legal boundary. The primary document is treated as authoritative above.

Looked-after and previously looked-after children
Pupil Premium-eligible girls (within the priority area)
Sisters currently attending the school (within the priority area)
Documented medical/special access needs
Daughters of permanent staff (0.5+ FTE, 2+ years' service)
Girls in the named parishes or 4-mile radius, by distance
Governors' Places (17 of 174): the highest-scoring 11+ applicants from within the priority area

Results

Year	Attainment 8	GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths	Progress 8	A*–A	A*–B
2025	73.40 (local authority average 46.70)	97.9%	—	46%	75%
67% of grades were 7-9. Progress 8 of +0.77 reported by a school-ranking aggregator; exact year attribution not independently confirmed against DfE data.
2024	—	—	—	—	—
63% of all GCSE exam entries at grades 9-7; 20% of pupils achieved at least one grade 9.

Ofsted

Rating: Outstanding
Date: 19-20 September 2023
Report: Read the full report

Sources

1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, capacity, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/118789
2. Determined admissions arrangements for September 2027 entry — https://www.kent.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/232724/Tunbridge-Wells-Girls-Grammar-School-admissions-criteria-2027-2028.pdf
3. Kent County Council — Kent Test overview and preparation — https://www.kent.gov.uk/education-and-children/schools/school-places/kent-test/prepare-for-the-kent-test
4. Kent County Council — grammar-eligibility threshold, September 2026 entry — https://www.kent.gov.uk/education-and-children/schools/school-places/kent-test/kent-test-results
5. Kent County Council procurement notice — confirms 'top 25% of ability range' design target — https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/079694-2025
6. Ofsted report, inspected 19-20 September 2023 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50232579
7. Good Schools Guide review — 2025 results, oversubscription ratio — https://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/uk-schools/review/tunbridge-wells-girls-grammar-school
8. KentOnline — 2024 GCSE results — https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/thousands-of-kent-students-to-receive-gcse-results-311728/

Last updated 2026-08-30. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.