Essex 11+ · CSSE · Results
The email has a number in it and nothing else. It is not an offer, and it does not say which school your child can have. What it does is tell you how to fill in the one form that decides that, which closes on 31 October.
Updated 3 October 2026 · Score calculator · Every school's last offer · All the dates
The short version
Three numbers: English, Maths and the total. The total is the one the schools use.
Against each school's last offer, and against the right one: inside or outside its priority area.
Essex or Southend, by 31 October 2026. The order decides which offer you get.
Step 1
The CSSE emails results on 12 October 2026, after the close of business, with a standardised score for each paper and a total. It does not offer a place. Places are offered by the council on 1 March 2027, using the schools' admission rules and the preferences on your application.
The total is each paper's standardised score added together and multiplied by 1.5, with any adjustment for age already inside it. How it is built is in the pass mark article.
The CSSE makes no offer below a total of 303. Above it there is no pass mark: each school fills its places from the top of its own list, and where the last offer lands moves every year.
So 303 or more means a grammar school place is possible somewhere, not that one will come. Below 303, a CSSE school will not be offered, and the application form should be filled in around the schools that can.
Step 2
Each school publishes the score of the last child it offered a place to. The CSSE puts all of them on one guidance sheet. Four years of them are in the pass mark article, and each school's priority area is on the schools page.
Most of the schools give priority to children in a defined area first, and the gap is large: in the most recent published offers (March 2025) the Southend and Westcliff schools went down to 303 to 309 inside their priority areas but only 321 to 351 outside. Check which side of the line your address is on before you compare.
Last year's figure is last year's. Treat a score a few points either side of it as uncertain, not as in or out, and look at more than one year to see how much a school moves.
If you want to see what the score would have meant against each school's recent cut-offs, the score calculator shows it beside every school at once.
This year's figures. The CSSE publishes its updated guidance sheet and standardisation report in October. When they appear, the calculator and the schools page are updated from them, and this page will say so here.
Step 3
The CSSE does not allocate places. Your council does, from the form you send it, and it closes on 31 October 2026. You apply to the council you pay council tax to, even for a school in the other area.
Essex County Council's own booklet for 2027 entry says it "will process your application in line with the order of your preferences and offer the highest of your preferences that can be met". It spells out what that means for grammar schools: even if your child scores high enough for your grammar preference, if you have named another school higher and that one can be offered, the higher one is what you get.
So put schools in the order you genuinely want them. A grammar school you would choose over everything else goes first; a school you would rather have than the grammar school goes above it.
A preference that cannot be met is simply passed over and the next one considered. So naming a grammar school whose last offer is above your child's score does not spoil the rest of the form, as long as it sits where you would really want it and the list goes on to schools that can be met.
Schools are not told where you ranked them while places are being allocated (Essex says the order may come out later at an appeal), and no school may insist on being named first.
Essex allows six preferences and Southend five, and both councils recommend using all of them. Naming a school twice does not help.
Essex also advises naming your local school: if none of your preferences can be met, it offers the nearest Essex school with a vacancy, which can be several miles away. For September 2026 entry, 2.96% of Essex families were offered none of their preferences, and 92.32% got their first or second.
31 October 2026: closing date, Essex and Southend. In Essex you can change your preferences online until then by amending and resubmitting; an application left unsubmitted is not processed.
20 November 2026: in Essex, anything received after this is held until after offer day, whatever the reason.
1 March 2027: offers, by email for online applicants.
Sources: Essex County Council, Secondary Education in Essex 2027 to 2028, pages 11, 12 and 18; Southend City Council, A short guide to secondary school admissions 2027; the CSSE's results and score rules as set out on the dates page and the pass mark article.
Questions
No. It is a score. Places are offered by the council on 1 March 2027, from the application form, using each school's admission rules.
Only if it is the school you want most. The council offers the highest preference it can meet, so whatever you put first and can be met is what you get. If you would rather have a particular comprehensive than the grammar school, it belongs above it.
Usually yes, if you would want it. Cut-offs move each year, and a preference that cannot be met is passed over without harming the rest of the form. Make sure the preferences below it are ones that can realistically be met.
A CSSE school will not be offered below 303, so build the form around the schools that can be: your local school and the others you would be happy with, in order. A score is one morning's work at ten years old, and it says nothing about what your child will do at secondary school.
You apply to the council you pay council tax to, and name schools in either area on that one form. Southend residents name up to five schools, Essex residents up to six.
The free Starting Point paper shows where a Year 4 or Year 5 child is now, marked the moment it is handed in, with the weak topics named.
The free Starting Point paper →