Expert advice on the admissions process for some of the UK's top grammar schools.
Expert advice on the admissions process for some of the UK’s top grammar schools.
Essex Grammar Schools students will take an 11 plus exam for entrance. They Grammar schools in Essex are divided into those which are members of the Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex (the CSSE) and those which go their own way.
Chelmsford County High School for Girls and The King John School set their own test.
The CSSE schools set a standard selection exam which determines Year 7 entry. The same exam is used by all the schools in the Essex consortium. The CSEE Schools are:
The exam is designed to test:
There are two papers, English and Maths. The intent is that each has an equal weighting and that no student is disadvantaged because of their age in the school years. Two standardisations are applied to students’ raw score to achieve this.
The first is designed to make sure that the two tests have the same weighting even though students might have found one test on average easier than the other test. In general, this means that the English test tends to be given greater weight in the final result than would have been the case from the raw scores.
The test scores are further age-standardised to ensure that older pupils do not have an unfair advantage. Typically, there is a greater age adjustment made for English results than for Maths results.
There are different pass marks by school. Those pass marks vary each year but there is a rough guide.
The English paper tests comprehension, grammar and vocabulary, as well as creative writing, verbal reasoning and literacy.
The Essex consortium have a guide for the long form continuous writing question
Examples of past topics for the Essex Grammar School test include –
We also have the following past and familiarisation papers available for you to download in pdf format:
The Maths paper test students on topics contained within the KS2 National Curriculum.
We also have the following past maths papers here:
We have expert tutors with extensive experience in preparation. As with other school entrance tests we recommend a twelve month journey in which the child builds and consolidates learning. Typically the journey starts with an 11 Plus assessment. This can be especially useful for helping decide whether your child is performing at the level required for the different Grammar schools in Essex, given the different pass marks needed. Contact our dedicated school entrance co-ordinator who can advise further.
Contact us for expert advice about tuition, Academic Assessments and the next steps for your child.