A report on the way the 11-plus exam system works in Kent concluded that it is "akin to rolling a loaded dice".
Researchers found that children eligible for free school meals score particularly poorly in the reasoning element of Kent's 11-plus compared with other children, part of the test that can be affected by access to private education or tutoring.
Reasoning makes up a third of the test in Kent, but the researchers said that the fact that primary schools are explicitly asked not to prepare their pupils for the 11-plus puts children from poorer backgrounds at a disadvantage.
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