Essex 11+ · CSSE · Scores
There is no pass mark. There is a floor of 303, below which no offer is made, and above it a last-offer score for every school that moves every year. Here is how the score is built, from the consortium's own formula, what the cut-offs have been for four years, and what that means for a child sitting it.
Updated 19 September 2026 · CSSE dates · The schools, places and priority areas · CSSE tuition
The short answer
Every number on this page comes from the CSSE's own published data: the standardisation report, the historical guidance sheets and the full list of standardised scores, all on csse.org.uk.
"CSSE secondary school offers are not made to any child who has scored under a total standardised score of 303." That is the only fixed line. Above it, every school fills its places from the top of its own list, and the score of the last child offered a place on National Offer Day is published afterwards as that school's cut-off.
The CSSE's own note under the table says it plainly: these figures fluctuate from year to year, and "not all schools have a pass mark".
In the September 2025 test, 5,115 children sat both papers. 2,900 of them, 57%, scored 303 or more. So 303 is not a pass mark in any useful sense: more than half the field clears it, and there are far fewer places than that.
The number that matters is the cut-off of the school you want, and how far above 303 it sits depends entirely on which school that is.
The cut-offs
The lowest total standardised score to receive an offer on National Offer Day, for the last four years of entry. "Inside" and "outside" are the school's priority area, which is its catchment: where you live changes the score you need, often by a lot. A blank means the school had no priority area that year.
| School | 2025 entry | 2024 entry | 2023 entry | 2022 entry | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In | Out | In | Out | In | Out | In | Out | |
| King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford (boys) | 355 | 372 | 340 | 376 | 347 | 366 | 345 | 366 |
| Colchester Royal Grammar School (boys) | 343 | 337 | 340 | 338 | ||||
| Colchester County High School for Girls | 322 | 333 | 330 | 333 | 328 | |||
| Westcliff High School for Boys | 309 | 351 | 303 | 355 | 303 | 349 | 303 | 349 |
| Westcliff High School for Girls | 306 | 345 | 303 | 347 | 303 | 342 | 303 | 327 |
| Southend High School for Boys | 305 | 342 | 303 | 336 | 303 | 342 | 303 | 337 |
| Southend High School for Girls | 303 | 321 | 304 | 327 | 303 | 324 | 303 | 311 |
| Shoeburyness High School (partially selective) | 304 | 304 | 305 | 303 | 303 | |||
| St Thomas More, Westcliff (partially selective, boys) | 303 | no selective offers | no selective offers | 303 | ||||
"2025 entry" is the test sat in September 2024 with offers on 1 March 2025, and so on. Colchester County High introduced a priority area for 2025 entry; before that neither Colchester school had one. St Bernard's, Westcliff, offered selective places at 303 in 2022 and 2023 and 307 in 2024, to catchment residents only. The scores for offers made on 1 March 2026 are published by the CSSE in mid October 2026, and this table will be updated then. Sources: the CSSE historical guidance sheets for 2025, 2024 and 2019 to 2023.
Read the table by school, not by county. The Southend and Westcliff schools take almost everyone above 303 from inside their priority areas and are very hard from outside them. The Colchester schools sit in the 330s and 340s with no priority area, or a new one. KEGS is in a league of its own: 372 from outside its area is a score that fewer than one child in twenty-five reached last year.
How the score is built
The CSSE publishes the method every October in its standardisation report. This is the 2025 one, worked through; the calculator does it for any marks.
A child born on 1 March 2015 scores 45 in English and 40 in Maths in the September 2025 test.
358 is inside the top 10% of the year. It clears KEGS from inside the priority area (355) and every other school, but not KEGS from outside (372).
What the numbers mean in practice
Because English marks bunch together (spread 7.6) and Maths marks spread wide (13.1), one extra raw mark in English moved the 2025 total by 3.0 points and one extra mark in Maths by 1.7 points. Ten more English marks were worth about 30 points on the total; ten more Maths marks, about 17.
That does not mean Maths matters less. It means the Maths paper is where children are spread out, so a strong Maths child gains a lot of ground, and a weak one loses a lot. English is where a careless mark is expensive.
From the full list of 5,115 scores in the September 2025 test:
The age adjustment is bigger than most parents expect. In 2025 a child born on 31 August received about 14 points more on the total than an otherwise identical child born on 1 September. That is the whole gap between Colchester County High's two cut-offs. A summer-born child should not be written off from a mock score that ignores it, and an autumn-born child should not be reassured by one.
What to do with this
Look up the cut-off for the school you actually want, on the correct side of its priority area (the schools article has every area and quota), and add ten for safety, because they move. A Southend family inside the area is aiming at 310; a Chelmsford family is aiming at 365 and should know that from the start, because it changes how much work the year needs.
A marked mock paper gives you the two raw marks out of 60; put them through the CSSE score calculator, with your child's birthday, and you have a score on the CSSE scale set against every school's cut-off.
The CSSE Maths paper is written-answer with method marks; the English paper is marked on lines, a mark a point. Multiple-choice practice does not prepare for either. The CSSE Maths guide and CSSE English guide are built to the papers, with mark schemes, and each has a free sample chapter.
The CSSE Maths paper and CSSE English paper pages explain what is in each.
Questions
No. It is the score below which no offer is made. More than half of the children who sit reach it, so it tells you almost nothing about whether an offer will come. The score that matters is the last-offer score at the school you want, in the table above.
No. The reserve day, for illness with medical evidence or religious observance, is standardised against the same year's candidates, and the published list of scores shows both days side by side so that families can see the spread.
Three usual reasons. The mock used its own marks rather than the CSSE's means and spreads for that year, so its standardised scores are not on the same scale. It left out the age adjustment. Or it was a multiple-choice paper, which is not what the CSSE sets. Compare like with like: raw marks out of 60, on written papers, against the CSSE's published averages.
By email from the CSSE, after the close of business on a Monday in mid October, about three weeks after the test. For the test sat on 19 September 2026 that is 12 October 2026. The result is a total standardised score with the two paper scores beside it; there is no rank and no offer at that stage. The offer comes from the Local Authority on 1 March.
You can appeal a refusal of a place, to an independent panel, after National Offer Day; the CSSE note says successful appeal places are awarded outside the published cut-offs. Appeals are about the school's decision, not a re-mark, and a score close to the cut-off is not on its own a ground. The schools' admissions policies set out the process.
All from the CSSE: the 11+ Standardisation Report (October 2025), the historical guidance sheets published each October, and the full list of standardised scores for 2026 entry, on the Freedom of Information page. The percentages were calculated from that list. If a figure here disagrees with the CSSE's, the CSSE is right and we will correct it.
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