Colchester Royal Grammar School Sixth Form 2027

Colchester Royal Grammar School is a selective state grammar school in Colchester, Essex, that is boys-only at 11 and co-educational in Year 12. Its published minimum for sixth form entry is 38 points across the best five GCSE subjects, with a grade 7 in each subject to be taken at A level. The published admission number for Year 12 is 200, including pupils moving up from its own Year 11; 30 boarding places sit alongside it.

None of that appears on the school's sixth form admissions page. That page sets out six steps, an open evening and a closing date, and stops. The entry requirement lives in a PDF of determined admission arrangements linked at the bottom of it — and the version linked there is a year behind the one the school publishes on its own Admissions Policy page. Everything below is taken from those documents, the sixth form prospectus, the boarding page and the Department for Education's register, with the wording quoted so you can check it.

Can a girl apply to Colchester Royal Grammar School?

Yes, at 16 and only at 16. The Department for Education's register records the school's gender of entry as Boys, under URN 149899, with 1,073 pupils on roll. That single field is why most families stop looking. It describes the point of entry at 11, not the sixth form.

The school's own determined admission arrangements are explicit: "In addition to those who progress from the Colchester Royal Grammar School Year 11 cohort, a number of external students, both boys and girls, are admitted into Year 12 each year." The boarding pages describe "the co-ed Sixth Form". The prospectus describes the school as "a selective day school for boys aged 11 – 18 years and co-educational in the Sixth Form".

How many girls that produces is answered by the Headmaster, John Russell, writing for Absolutely Education: "At Colchester Royal Grammar School (CRGS) we have single entry in Year 12 to our Sixth Form and welcome around 50% of new students, joining from both local and international schools. A third of all Sixth Former students here at the school are female."

Two things follow from that sentence, and they matter more than anything else on this page. A third of the sixth form is female, so this is not a token arrangement. And because entry to Year 12 is the school's only intake after 11, sixth form entry is the sole route into CRGS for a girl. There is no earlier point to try, no waiting list to join at 13, and no in-year route for girls into Years 7 to 11 — those years take boys.

What "38 points across the best five subjects" means in grades

The requirement is a points total, not a grade profile, and the school states it in one sentence: "The minimum requirement for entry into the Sixth Form is at least 38 points across the best five subjects."

Reformed GCSEs score their own number. A grade 9 is 9 points, a grade 6 is 6 points. So 38 points over five subjects is an average of 7.6 — five grade 7s fall three points short of it, and five grade 8s clear it with two points to spare. A candidate landing exactly on 38 has, for example, 9-8-7-7-7, or 9-9-8-6-6, or 8-8-8-7-7.

Older, unreformed qualifications and AS levels convert on a published scale, which matters for applicants from schools abroad and for anyone presenting legacy certificates:

Three further conditions sit on top of the points total, and each of them can end an application on its own.

A grade 7 in every subject you intend to take at A level. The arrangements say so without qualification: "A grade 7 (or above) is required in the subjects to be studied at A level." A candidate comfortably over the bar on English, History, Geography, Religious Studies and Art who wants to take Chemistry has not met the requirement for Chemistry, because there is no grade 7 in Chemistry to point at.

A grade 5 in GCSE English Language and in GCSE Mathematics. This applies "regardless of whether or not these subjects are being followed at A level".

A grade 8 in GCSE Mathematics for Further Mathematics. Not a 7, and not a 7 with a strong Maths grade elsewhere: "A reformed grade 8 in GCSE Mathematics is required for anyone wishing to study Further Mathematics at A level." For a candidate aiming at a Maths-heavy degree, that one grade decides whether the intended A-level programme is available at all.

The school publishes two different English and Maths requirements

This is worth setting out carefully, because a reader who lands on the boarding page and applies on what it says will be working to the wrong figure.

The boarding information page says: "As a state funded school, students must have English and Maths GCSE (or equivalent) at level 4. Applicants without GCSE English and Maths will need to study for these qualifications whilst at school. If the student is studying English or Maths at A level the GCSE qualification is not required."

The determined admission arrangements say: "A reformed grade 5 or above must be achieved in GCSE (or GCSE equivalent, as defined by the DfE) English Language and Mathematics, regardless of whether or not these subjects are being followed at A level."

Those two sentences disagree twice over: on the grade, 4 against 5, and on whether taking the subject at A level excuses you, which one says it does and the other says it does not.

The admission arrangements govern. They are the document the admission authority determines and publishes each year, they are what an appeal panel reads, and the same wording appears in both the 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 generations of the policy and again inside the sixth form prospectus. The boarding page is a description written for prospective boarders, not an admissions document.

The reconciliation is in the prospectus, and it is a genuine distinction rather than an error: "For international students who have not studied the UK GCSE curriculum, as a state-funded school it is a requirement that students must obtain English Language and Maths GCSE (or equivalent) at grade 4. Therefore, during their time at CRGS, international students will study for these GCSE level qualifications alongside their A level subjects."

So the grade 4 is a post-16 funding condition placed on students who arrive without UK GCSEs and who will sit English and Maths GCSE while they are at the school. It is not an alternative entry standard for a candidate who has taken GCSEs in England. If you have UK GCSEs, plan for the grade 5, in both subjects, whatever your A-level choices.

Clearing 38 points does not get you a place — the best-eight average does

The 38 points is a threshold. It admits you to the pool. A different and stricter calculation then decides who is offered a place out of that pool, and no competing page mentions it.

"Conditional places will then be offered to those students with the highest average points score, based on predicted grades, in their best 8 GCSEs or equivalents, including English and Mathematics. If students have an equal average points score, the number of grade 9s (or A* grades for unreformed GCSEs), predicted or achieved will be used to differentiate between candidates if necessary."

Four practical consequences follow.

The ranking runs on eight subjects, not five. A candidate who has five outstanding grades and three weak ones clears the minimum comfortably and then ranks poorly. Breadth is worth more here than a narrow peak, which is the opposite of how most entry requirements behave.

English and Mathematics are compulsory members of the best eight. They cannot be dropped in favour of two stronger subjects, so a weaker grade in either is carried into the ranking whether or not it would have made the natural top eight.

Predicted grades do most of the work. The school requests them from your current school. Where a school will not supply them, "performance in trial examinations will be considered instead of the predicted grades, and the professional judgement of the CRGS staff will be used to make an assessment of the data provided". A cautious referee costs you rank in a way no amount of later performance can recover before offers go out.

Grade 9s break ties. Two applicants on the same average are separated by how many 9s they hold or are predicted, which quietly rewards the top of the range over consistency once the averages match.

There is one more clause that cuts across all of it. Subject capacity can override rank in both directions: applications are "declined or placed on a waiting list where the school considers the size of teaching sets to be detrimental to the education of the group", and, conversely, "where an individual subject's capacity is deemed to be 'full' but there are still places available in the Sixth Form, places may be offered to lower ranked students who wish to study subjects where there is capacity in order to maximise the viability of pre-published courses". A strong applicant asking for four oversubscribed subjects can lose to a weaker one asking for a viable combination.

Is there a test or an interview at 16+?

The honest answer is that it depends which applicant you are, and the school's admissions page is misleading on the point by omission. There are three cases.

A day applicant with UK GCSEs: grades only. There is no written test and no selective interview. The admissions page says the strongest applicants are invited to discuss their A level options with a member of the senior leadership team, which reads like an interview stage. The arrangements say the opposite in as many words: applicants predicted high grades "will be invited to the school to discuss their subject choices, although this meeting will not form part of the selection process". Take the meeting seriously as a chance to get your subject combination right. Do not prepare for it as an assessment, because it is not one.

A boarding applicant: an interview, in addition to the grades. "In the case of boarding applicants, an interview will be held to seek to establish whether the applicant is suitable for a boarding place." It tests suitability for boarding, not academic merit — the academic bar has already been cleared by then.

An overseas applicant outside the National Curriculum: possibly a test. Such students "are admitted on the basis of their academic performance in their current school and, where appropriate, their performance in the school's entrance tests". The school does not publish the format or the subjects, so ask the admissions office directly rather than preparing on assumption.

Two hundred places, and how few of them are actually open

The published admission number is stated once, at the end of the sixth form section: "The school's PAN, including existing CRGS students transferring from Year 11, is 200."

The qualifying clause is the whole story. A published admission number for a sixth form usually describes external capacity. This one does not. It counts the school's own Year 11 moving up, and those pupils have priority: "Priority will be given to existing CRGS students transferring from Year 11 who meet the admissions criteria stated above."

Set that against the Headmaster's statement that around 50% of the sixth form are new students, and the external intake is on the order of half of 200 rather than 200. Anyone quoting the PAN as the number of places you are competing for has doubled your apparent odds.

The school does not say anywhere that it will admit over the number. What it says instead is that it may admit fewer than a subject can technically hold, where teaching-set sizes or staffing make it undesirable — which is a stated willingness to leave places unfilled rather than to exceed them.

One correction while the two numbers are side by side. Prep4All, which ranks on the first page for this school, lists "YEAR 7 PLACES ~124". The school's own arrangements for both 2026-2027 and 2027-2028 state: "The published admission number for Year 7 is 128." Use the school's figure. If you are weighing the 11+ route as well, our page on Colchester Royal Grammar School at 11+ covers the CSSE side in detail.

Boarding: 30 sixth-form places at £6,350 a term

A state grammar school with boarders is unusual, and at CRGS boarding exists only in the sixth form. There is no boarding at 11, so a boarding place and a 16+ place are the same application.

The prospectus states the capacity and the conditions together: "There are 30 boarding places available to Sixth Form students: Boarders must hold a British passport or be able to demonstrate their right to a British education; There are no tuition fees; Boarding at CRGS attracts a number of motivated students from the UK and overseas; Students must satisfy the school's academic entry requirements before applying to board."

Thirty places is the total across both year groups and both houses, not an annual intake. The boarding page describes "Housing 30 boarders across two beautiful and characterful houses", with Year 13 boarders typically in single rooms and Year 12 boarders sharing.

The fee is published identically in two places. The boarding page: "CRGS is a state funded school and there are no tuition fees, only boarding fees. Boarding fees for September 2026 entry are fixed for 2 years and are £6,350 per term; £19,050 pa." The prospectus: "The fees for September 2026 are £6,350 per term, £19,050 per annum, fixed for two years."

Read the fixing clause precisely. The rate is quoted for September 2026 entry and fixed for two years, so a boarder entering in September 2026 pays the same figure through Year 13. It is not a statement about what a later cohort will pay.

Are boarding places allocated separately from day places? Partly, and in a specific order. The arrangements say "A number of additional places are reserved for boarders", so boarding places sit alongside the day allocation rather than being drawn from it. But the academic gate comes first: the prospectus requires that "students must satisfy the school's academic entry requirements before applying to board". A boarding applicant therefore has to clear the same 38 points and the same subject grades as a day applicant, and then passes an additional boarding suitability interview. Boarding is a second gate, not a lower one.

Two further conditions apply to boarders and to overseas applicants generally. Boarders must hold a British passport or demonstrate a right to a British education. And post-16 funding eligibility applies to all overseas applicants, who "must be considered to be, at the time of starting their schooling, residing legally in the UK" as British or Irish citizens, or with a passport endorsement showing right of abode or no restriction on working in the UK, or meeting one of the other published funding conditions.

On cost at the other end of the scale, the school runs a 16-19 Bursary Fund. Group 1 students — those in care, care leavers and certain disabled students — may receive up to £1,200 per year. Group 2 covers students eligible for free school meals or from households with an income below £32,000 a year, allocated according to need from what remains.

Neither entry point has a catchment area

Families assume an Essex grammar school runs on geography. This one does not, at either age.

At 11, the arrangements state that "the selection procedure is open equally to pupils in Essex and those who live outside the county". Places go in descending rank order of CSSE score until the admission number of 128 is reached, with up to 12 places reserved above a score of 320 for looked-after children and Pupil Premium candidates.

At 16, there is no priority area and no distance criterion in the ranking. Distance appears once, as the last tie-break after everything else has failed to separate two candidates: "In cases of oversubscription, and if further discrimination is necessary, first preference will be given to a 'looked after child' or a child who was previously looked after who meets the grade requirements. Following this, preference will be given to the applicant living closest to the school by straight line distance as defined by the LA."

In practice, with the ranking running on an average across eight subjects to one decimal place and grade 9s breaking ties before distance is reached, exact ties are rare. A family in Suffolk or north Essex should treat distance as close to irrelevant to the outcome and should weigh the commute on its own merits instead. Boarding exists partly because that commute defeats some families.

The dates the CRGS sixth form cycle turns on

Offers here are conditional, so the calendar has two ends: an application deadline in the autumn and a confirmation in August against real grades.

For entry in September 2026 — the most recently published cycle, and one that has now closed — the school held its Sixth Form Open Evening on Tuesday 21st October 2025, opened the online form the same evening, and closed it on 1 December 2025. Those dates are useful now only as a guide to the shape of the next cycle; the school had not published equivalent dates for September 2027 entry when this page was written.

The deadline itself is stable across policy generations: "External students must complete and submit the school's official application form by 1st December." Decisions follow: "Decisions will be made and communicated to applicants by the end of February Half Term." Late applications are not refused outright but are handled behind the queue — "Applications received after 1st December will be considered after the first tranche of offers have been made."

Then the second end of the calendar. AQA gives 20 August 2026 as results day for the June 2026 GCSE series, with AS and A-level results released on 13 August 2026. That GCSE date is when a conditional CRGS offer becomes a place, and it is also when any remaining capacity is filled: "Any vacancies arising in the Summer Term will be filled in August on the basis of the actual GCSE results achieved, following the same criteria as detailed above."

That last sentence is the one worth acting on. A candidate who missed the December deadline, or who was predicted below the bar and then outperformed the prediction, has a real if narrow opening in the days after GCSE results, judged on the same 38-point minimum and the same best-eight ranking. It is worth a phone call to the school office on the day rather than a week later. Our guide to what to do if a sixth form withdraws a place after GCSE results covers the reverse situation, where a conditional offer does not convert.

One administrative condition is easy to overlook: "All students must be under 17 years of age on 31st August of the calendar year of proposed admission, or be progressing directly from Year 11 to Year 12." A student who has repeated a year, or who is applying from a school system with a different starting age, needs to check this before anything else. Overseas applicants outside the National Curriculum whose age falls outside the limit for that reason "will be considered on an individual basis".

Colchester Royal Grammar School is not Colchester County High School for Girls

Colchester has two highly selective state schools and their names are close enough to merge in search results and in conversation. Colchester County High School for Girls is a separate school with its own governing body, its own determined admission arrangements and its own sixth form. Nothing on this page — the 38 points, the 200 PAN, the £6,350 boarding fee, the December deadline — describes that school, and its published criteria should be read from its own documents rather than inferred from these. We cover it separately at Colchester County High School for Girls.

The practical point for a girl in or near Colchester is that these are two distinct applications with two distinct deadlines and two distinct standards, and the sensible move is to make both rather than to choose between them on reputation. For families comparing selective sixth forms more widely, our 16+ and sixth form entry guides cover the same ground school by school.

Questions families ask about CRGS sixth form entry

Every quotation above is taken from documents the school publishes itself. The determined arrangements are the ones to read in full before applying: Colchester Royal Grammar School Admissions Policy.