Southend High School for Girls 11 Plus Tuition

Southend High School for Girls (SHSG) 11+ tuition from Leading Tuition is one-to-one English and Maths preparation for the CSSE test, planned around the two scores that decided SHSG's last places for 2026 entry: 303 inside the priority area and 318 outside it. Programmes begin with a diagnostic session, and the two CSSE papers are the only content taught.

Our recommended plan then runs week by week, weighted towards whichever paper sits furthest from the line she is aiming at.

Which score line is a girl preparing for at Southend High School for Girls?

CSSE, the Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex that sets the test, publishes a sheet each October showing the score of the last selective place offered at each of its schools on National Offer Day, separately for applicants living inside and outside the school's priority area. The sheets for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 entries give SHSG these lines.

Source: CSSE historical guidance sheets, score of the last selective place offered at Southend High School for Girls; the points-between column is our subtraction. Sheets are published on CSSE's Freedom of Information page, which files each sheet under the following year's name: the sheet carrying the 303 and 318 lines is listed there as Historical Guidance Sheet 2027 Entry, dated 12.10.2026, but is headed 2026 ENTRY.

Three points stand out. First, 303 is the consortium-wide minimum: CSSE says its schools make no offer to a child with a total standardised score under 303, and appeal places are awarded outside that criterion. SHSG's own arrangements add that a pass mark is set and that no pupil in any priority category is admitted below it. SHSG's last inside-area offer sat exactly on 303 in the 2025 and 2026 entries, and one point above it in 2024. Second, the outside line fell nine points from 2024 entry to 2026 entry, from 327 to 318, while the inside line moved by one point, so the gap between them closed from 23 points to 15. Third, the sheets record history. CSSE states that they guarantee nothing and that it may be worthwhile applying even below the lowest score of earlier years.

The two lines exist because of how SHSG allocates places. Its admission arrangements for September 2027 set a quota of up to 179 for applicants living in postcode areas SS0 to SS9 and a minimum of 41 for applicants living outside them, with places in each group offered in order of the mark achieved. Registration, dates and catchment detail are covered in our Southend High School for Girls 11+ guide; this page deals with what the scores mean for preparation.

So the first planning question is which line applies to the girl. Our recommendation is to read her diagnostic against that line and to keep the other line on the plan as the stretch.

How many girls actually reach 303 and 318?

CSSE publishes the standardised total of every candidate on its Freedom of Information page, which allows a count of how many girls sat at or above SHSG's lines in each year. One caution before the table: the files cover every girl who sat the CSSE test for any of its schools, not only those who applied to SHSG, so the shares describe the whole field of girls and are nobody's odds of a place.

Source: our counts from CSSE's published standardised-score files for 2024, 2025 and 2026 entry, with each total rounded to the nearest whole number as CSSE's sheets do. The files cover every girl who sat, whichever CSSE schools she applied to.

The number of girls on or above the inside line barely moved between the 2025 and 2026 entries, at 1,225 and 1,237. The outside line behaved differently between the 2024 and 2026 entries: it fell from 327 to 318 while the number of girls reaching it rose from 674 to 903, and the band of girls who cleared the inside line but not the outside one narrowed from 555 to 334. The median girl scored 306, 304 and 307 across the three years. In the 2026 entry that put her 4 points above the inside line and 11 below the outside line.

For planning, that gives two working targets. A girl inside the priority area needs a margin over 303 on both papers that survives one poor paper on the day, because the typical girl cleared it by only 4 points in 2026 entry. A girl outside the area is working towards a score that 39.4% of girls reached that year and that the median girl did not. These are the shape of the task, not a prediction for any individual child.

What does a total of 303 mean across the two papers?

CSSE standardises each paper to a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15, then weights the two equally; its information guide says each paper is worth 50% of the marks. The anchor is written into CSSE's standardisation report for 2027 entry: a candidate born on 1 September 2015 with average marks on each paper obtains a total of 300. CSSE adds an age adjustment for younger candidates, so 300 is not the middle of the whole field. The average total of all candidates in CSSE's published files was 304.8 for 2024 entry, 304.2 for 2025 and 306.6 for 2026, with medians of 304.8, 305.8 and 309.8, and 52.6%, 53.6% and 57.0% of all candidates scored 303 or more. A total of 303 therefore sits just below the middle of the field, and the median girl scored between 304 and 307 in each of the three entries.

The 2027-entry test was held on 19 September 2026, with a sitting on 29 September 2026 for religious, illness or exceptional circumstances. The standardisation report for that entry gives n = 4,994, and the table sets it beside the two earlier reports.

Source: CSSE standardisation reports for 2025, 2026 and 2027 entry (October 2024, October 2025 and October 2026). The 2025 and 2026 reports are scanned documents.

The raw-mark scale is reset every year. The mean English raw mark fell from 34.99 for 2026 entry to 33.39 for 2027 entry, and the mean Maths raw mark from 27.30 to 25.80, so one raw mark converts to a different total depending on the year. CSSE's own preparation guidance says the difficulty of papers can vary and that entry requirements depend on the performance of the cohort. Its information guide adds that the results email gives raw scores for each subject plus the overall standardised score, with the formula published afterwards. No mock paper can tell a family in advance what total it would have earned. Our recommendation is to read a diagnostic's raw marks beside the published mean and spread of earlier years and to follow the trend between mocks, instead of expecting a converted total. Our explanation of standardised 11+ scores walks through the arithmetic.

For 2027 entry CSSE's test for an age effect was statistically significant in both English and Maths, so age-adjustment factors were calculated, counted in days younger than 1 September 2015. The adjustment is CSSE's and is applied after the papers are marked, so nothing in preparation changes it.

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Do girls score differently on the English and Maths papers?

CSSE also publishes raw marks by gender and birth month, which lets girls' average English and Maths marks be set beside the whole field's in the same file.

Source: our means from CSSE's raw-score files for 2024, 2025 and 2026 entry. The files exclude candidates outside the normal age range, so the number of girls differs slightly from the standardised-score files, and we also excluded 13 rows in the 2026 file (3 of them girls) that score 0 on both papers and do not appear in the standardised-score file. Gaps quoted in the text are computed from unrounded means and can differ by a tenth from subtracting the rounded figures here; standard deviations are population standard deviations.

The pattern repeats in all three years. Girls average about one raw mark above the field in English (by 1.1, 1.1 and 0.9 marks) and between 1.7 and 2.7 marks below it in Maths (1.7, 2.6 and 2.7). The Maths paper also spreads girls further apart than the English paper does: the standard deviation of girls' Maths marks was 10.8, 10.9 and 12.3, against 7.5, 7.4 and 7.3 in English. The two papers are on different raw scales and CSSE standardises each before adding, so these gaps describe girls as a group and set no target for any one of them.

What we take from that is where to look first, not what we will find. A wide Maths spread means two girls with identical English marks can finish far apart, so a useful diagnostic breaks Maths down by Key Stage 2 topic and English into comprehension and continuous writing, and puts time where marks are actually being lost.

What does preparation for the English and Maths papers involve?

English. The paper lasts 60 minutes, with 10 minutes of additional reading time. CSSE publishes a sample mark scheme for English continuous writing that grades writing in four bands, Band 4 being the highest, across five strands: ideas, vocabulary including spelling, grammar, structure and punctuation. Marking a girl's own writing strand by strand against those five headings shows which band each strand sits in, which is more useful than one overall impression. Comprehension practice works best from timed reading, with the reading time treated as part of the paper's pacing.

Maths. The paper lasts 60 minutes and CSSE says the tests are based on Key Stage 2 of the National Curriculum. Electronic calculators of any description are not permitted, so practice should rest on written and mental methods. The sensible order is to map marks lost by topic, close the largest gaps first, and use timed sets to rehearse the pacing of a single hour.

Practice and the limits of tuition. CSSE's information guide says children only need a limited amount of practice to familiarise themselves with the types of questions and the timing, and that commercial practice papers are at a similar level but not in the same format as the real papers. Its "Preparing for the 11+" guidance, listed on the CSSE website with the date 7 April 2020, says it is advisable for children to spend a few hours familiarising themselves with the style of the papers, which can be done at home, and records the headteachers' concern that extensive coaching is inappropriate and counterproductive. CSSE's free English and Maths familiarisation papers are the right starting point for timing, and tuition does not replace them. That is why Leading Tuition's programmes start with a diagnostic session: tuition should teach the Key Stage 2 content a girl has not yet secured and the writing and problem-solving skills the two papers reward, and should not repeat papers for their own sake.

No reasoning papers. CSSE sets two tests, one in English and one in Mathematics, so preparation for SHSG needs no verbal or non-verbal reasoning, and ours contains none. The same test is used by ten CSSE selective schools, which means the work carries across to any others a family names; our complete guide to the CSSE exam lists them.

How should preparation differ between a 303 target and a 318 target?

Planning against 303. The inside line was 304 for 2024 entry, then 303 in 2025 and 2026. Because it is the consortium minimum, the job is reliability. We recommend looking for any Maths topic or writing strand where one bad paper could pull a total under 303, and securing those before anything else is extended. Both papers carry equal weight after standardisation, so neither can be treated as the one that matters less.

Planning against 318. This line was 327, 321 and 318 across the three entries, and 39.4% of girls reached it in 2026 entry. The recommended plan keeps all of the 303 work and adds the stretch: the final marks on each paper, where questions separate girls who are already secure. In Maths, where girls' marks spread widest, that means the harder problem-solving questions. In English it means the upper bands of continuous writing, such as ambitious vocabulary used appropriately and a structure with a clear sense of direction, which are Band 4 descriptors in CSSE's sample scheme.

Either way a family should plan against a range and not a single point. The outside line fell from 327 to 321 to 318 across the 2024, 2025 and 2026 entries, and CSSE rounds the scores to the nearest whole number. CSSE published the 2026-entry sheet on 12 October 2026. Leading Tuition's 11+ programmes begin with a diagnostic session and a week-by-week preparation plan aligned to the target school's format, with progress tracked through timed mock exams. For the CSSE papers we would shape that as follows:

1. A diagnostic session on English and Maths papers in CSSE format, marked by topic and writing strand.
2. A week-by-week plan weighted to the paper and the line that apply to her.
3. One-to-one sessions that close the largest gaps first.
4. Timed mixed sets as the test approaches, with raw marks tracked against the published means.

How long that takes depends on what the diagnostic finds. CSSE expects only limited familiarisation, so the time tuition needs is the time the gaps need.

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