Frequently Asked Questions
KEGS is a state grammar school for boys and has academy status. We are NOT an independent, fee paying school. Year 7 entry is by the 11+ examination and we also admit a number of new students into Year 12 each year, many of whom are girls (please see the Admissions Policy for full details of Sixth Form entry requirements).
The 11+ for entry to Year 7 in September 2026 was Saturday 20 September 2025.
To apply for your son to take the 11+ you will need to register him with the Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex (CSSE) by completing the online registration form. Registration open on their website in mid May each year. You will also need to list KEGS as one of your options when you apply for a secondary school place via your Local Authority (see How do I then apply for a place a KEGS? section below).
The whole 11+ process is administered on behalf of the school by the CSSE. They administer the 11+ test and process all applicants’ details of behalf of the school.
You will need to apply via your Local Authority’s secondary schools admissions process. Each Local Authority co-ordinates this process for residents living in their area. For those living within the Essex County Council area, their online secondary school application process opens in the September of Year 6 and closes on 31 October. If you live outside of the Essex County Council area you will need to check your own local authority’s arrangements.
If you son sits the 11+ you will receive his results in mid October. If you then would like to apply for a place at KEGS you will need to follow the instructions as detailed in your local authority’s admission process. Once you have made your school choices and completed the form you will submit this to your Local Authority by the stated deadline. Your Local Authority will then inform you of your son’s allocated school on National Offer Day in early March.
Put the schools in the order of preference you wish your son to attend – there is no advantage in ranking schools on any other basis. Decide which school you would most like your son to attend and place that first. There is no school in Essex or Southend where application depends on the order in which you place them.
If you do not get your first choice school, then your subsequent choices are considered in turn on an equal footing with all those who had applied to that school irrespective of the rankings used.
You cannot change your order of preference after the offers have been made. You will be offered a place at just one school and must either take the first school offered to you, or make alternative provision.
Tours of the school for current Year 5 students take place each year in March and July. Places are by booking only via this website. March tour bookings will open in mid January, and in mid May for July tours.
Open Day events in March 2026 for Year 5 boys who are interested in joining the school in September 2027 are now live. For more details about this event please go to the Year 5 Student & Parent Open Days – March 2026 – King Edward VI Grammar School page.
It is recommended that parents speak to their son’s class teacher at junior school to gain their opinion of his suitability for grammar school. Preparation should be undertaken in small doses, beginning prior to the Easter holiday.
A child who is excessively coached or tutored may well struggle and become unhappy at the school because the pace of the work, from Year 7 onwards, is high, and there simply won’t be the time for a child to receive that same level of support once they are at the school.
Yes, from the CSSE (www.csse.org.uk).
Boys will be tested in Mathematics and English. The papers are challenging, but the content is in line with the expectations of Level 5 Key Stage 2 National Curriculum for both Mathematics and English. There will be no separate Verbal Reasoning paper.
The English paper comprises:-
- Comprehension, grammar and vocabulary questions
- Two pieces of creative writing
- Applied reasoning (literacy/verbal)
The paper will last one hour, with some additional reading time, and will be worth 60 marks
The mathematics paper comprises:-
- Questions consistent with Key Stage 2 of the National Curriculum
- Applied reasoning (mathematical/non verbal)
The paper will last one hour and will be worth 60 marks
By a team of independent professional markers and each paper is double marked and checked. There is some standardisation of scores to allow for the fact that there is a second test date with different papers. Results are rank ordered for each individual school by the CSSE and sent to the Local Authority who in turn make the offers.
This varies from year to year, and the school itself will not know the cut-off scores for next year until places are offered to applicants in the second half of the Spring Term. Furthermore, the school does not have a list of the scores of all applicants, including unsuccessful ones, who list KEGS as one of their preferences, and this is also the case for previous years. It is not possible, therefore, to give a clear answer to this question. We have supplied the information below to help give applicants an indication as to how their score will compare to the rest of the cohort. Any such comparisons are obviously provisional. The school will publish data from the Autumn 2025 tests in Autumn 2026.
September 2025 admission
The scores listed below come from the year group that started at KEGS in September 2025. This cohort, along with all others since 2019, had age standardisation applied to their scores. The net effect of age standardisation was to increase the average score obtained by all applicants and this is because no negative score adjustments were made as a result of the age standardisation process. Scores from before September 2019, therefore, are likely to be less reliable as a guide for the future compared to the scores from September 2019 onwards.
The four bullet-points below will give you an indication of how the ‘cut-off’ score changed between 1st March 2025 and 1st September 2025. If a student, for example, is offered a place on 1st March but then declines the place, it is offered to the next person on the waiting list. The ‘cut-off’ score on 1st September, therefore, is not exactly the same as the ‘cut-off’ score on 1st March.
- On 1st March 2025, out of all the candidates offered a place for September 2025, the lowest score obtained by an ‘in area‘ applicant, who was neither in receipt of the Pupil Premium payment nor classified as a looked after child, was 354.4.
- On 1st March 2025, out of all the candidates offered a place for September 2025, the lowest score obtained by an ‘out of area‘ applicant, who was neither in receipt of the Pupil Premium payment nor classified as a looked after child, was 371.2.
- For the students starting Year 7 at KEGS in September 2025, the lowest score obtained by an ‘in area‘ applicant, who was neither in receipt of the Pupil Premium payment nor classified as a looked after child, was 354 (rounded to nearest whole number).
- For the students starting Year 7 at KEGS in September 2025, the lowest score obtained by an ‘out of area‘ applicant, who was neither in receipt of the Pupil Premium payment nor classified as a looked after child, was 367 (rounded to nearest whole number).
We have rounded the scores of the students at KEGS to help protect their identity.
(To be considered an ‘in area’ applicant, an applicant needs to have been living continuously within the catchment area from 10 October of Year 6 right through until the start of Year 7.)
Out of the students applying for a place in September 2025, there were approximately 34 students living ‘in area’ who applied to KEGS, were not offered a place and who achieved a score that was within 5 marks of the lowest score achieved by a successful ‘in area’ candidate. Similarly, there were approximately 28 students living ‘out of area’ who applied to KEGS, were not offered a place and who achieved a score that was within 5 marks of the lowest score achieved by a successful ‘out of area’ candidate.
Previous years
A list of scores obtained by KEGS students starting at KEGS between 2017 and 2018 can be found here, but please note that there was no age standardisation applied in those years, so any comparisons made with scores from more recent years that have had age standardisation applied are inherently unsafe.
Parents should advise the CSSE of any medical circumstances or particular access arrangements that they believe are needed by their child. They must do so by completing this form on the CSSE’s website: NOTIFICATION OF MEDICAL CIRCUMSTANCES, STATEMENT OR ACCESS ARRANGEMENTS FORM.
It is the responsibility of parents and guardians to ensure that this form is completed by the CSSE’s deadline (this is usually printed on the form itself).
All requests for access arrangements are reviewed by the CSSE to ensure fairness and then any access arrangements that are agreed to by the CSSE are communicated to the school where the child will sit the 11+ test.
We admit 150 boys into Year 7.
Please see the school’s Admission Policy for details on how places are allocated.
Approximately 600 boys opt for KEGS as one of their choices.
The school, as an Admission authority, makes the decision as to whether or not an applicant is considered to be living in area. In order for an application to be considered as ‘in area’, families must be continuously resident at their permanent home address within the priority area continuously from 10 October during Year 6 and the date of commencing Year 7 at KEGS.
Any ‘in area’ applicant who is offered a place will need to affirm in writing and be able to demonstrate that they fully meet this criterion and, if they fail to do so, then the applicant will be redesignated as an ‘out of area’ applicant and the offer of a place will be withdrawn if this means that their score is no longer high enough to be offered a place as an ‘out of area’ applicant.
If they decline their place between National Offer Day and the start of the following academic year, their place will be offered to another student. Please see the school’s Admission Policy for details on how this happens.
Yes, a waiting list of the remaining pupils who took the selection test will be held for one year following admission to Year 7. If a pupil leaves KEGS during Year 7 then an offer of a place will be made according to the above procedure.
From Year 8 onwards, parents interested in a place at KEGS should download form (ECC11242) Mid-Year Application for a Secondary School Place from www.essex.gov.uk/admissions. This form should be completed and sent to us at the school address. If a place becomes available at the school, parents who have sent us a mid-year application for the relevant year group are contacted to see if they are still willing for their son to come to the school to be tested.
Application to the Sixth Form is a separate procedure – please see the school’s Admission Policy for further details.
Number of applicants on the waiting list as of 1st March in Year 6 who were eventually offered a place
| Sept. 2016 | Sept. 2017 | Sept. 2018 | Sept. 2019 | Sept. 2020 | Sept. 2021 | Sept. 2022 | Sept. 2023 | Sept. 2024 | Sept. 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| In Area | 8 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 10 | 9 | 2 | 8 | 6 | 4 |
| Out of Area | 14 | 10 | 10 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 6 |
Two students in Year 7 have left KEGS during Year 7 in the last five years.
The first step is for the new boys to attend the Induction Day in July at KEGS: an opportunity to meet with Form Tutors, Head of Year and Headteacher and make friends with other boys.
Then on the first day of the Autumn Term, KEGS is open only for Years 7 and 12: another day where new pupils are encouraged to get to know the school better.
Parents are encouraged to contact school staff at the earliest indication of any concern:
- Form Tutor – consulted on small day to day issues
- Head of Year – more important issues are referred
- Head of Lower School – complex issues and ensuring that transition between year groups is smooth
There is a welcome evening in September for new parents.
Boys are put into the four house groups: Holland, Mildmay, Strutt and Tindal. Houses are used to allow boys to mix across the year groups and older pupils will take the responsibility for organising events e.g. House Music, House Drama and Sports
In Year 7 the boys are taught all subjects in the same form group in classes of 30 (except for Art, Cookery, Music and Design & Technology where they are taught in smaller groups). In Year 8 the only change is that the process of streaming begins for Maths. Year 9 remains as for Year 8. In Year 10 the 5 form groups are redistributed into new 6 new groups and students are taught in these groups for English, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, RE and PE. For Maths they are taught in sets. Their remaining GCSE subjects are taught in option groups. Class sizes in Y10 & 11 tend to be smaller than 30.
School buses are organised through the CSSE Office. Visit www.csse.org.uk
For those wishing to travel by train please see our Transport to School section for a link to the Greater Anglia website where discounted train tickets are available to purchase online on a term-time basis.
Each year between 20 and 30 students secure Oxbridge places, and many others proceed to equally prestigious universities according to their choice of undergraduate studies. Out of the top 22 schools in the country for Oxbridge success rate, KEGS has the second best Oxbridge success rate (ie. number of offers v number of applicants) out of all the state schools that offer a full range of A Levels. Our success rate for Oxbridge applicants is higher than that of Eton, Brampton Manor Academy, The Perse School and St Paul’s School.
