Essex 11+ · Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex
Standardised Score Calculator
Enter two raw marks and a date of birth. This applies the CSSE method — standardise each paper against its own cohort, add the age adjustment, then weight the papers equally — and shows every step of the working.
Your child's result
Raw marksType in the three boxes below. They're pre-filled with an example — replace the numbers with your child's marks and date of birth. The score updates as you type.
Paper totals are fixed at 60 marks each — change them under Standardisation settings below if a cohort used different totals.
Day zero is taken as 1 September of that academic year, so the age adjustment applies whichever cohort's figures are loaded.
Every figure below comes from CSSE's published standardisation report for the selected entry year. Where that year's report applied no age adjustment to a paper, its toggle is switched off.
English paper
Maths paper
Scale and thresholds
Enter a date of birth
Taken as 1 September of the academic year the date of birth falls in, so the age adjustment works for any cohort. The standardisation figures above stay as you set them.
How the day count is reached
| To | Running total |
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Each row is a whole calendar month, so the totals follow the real length of each month rather than an average.
Total standardised score
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Enter marks to calculate
Clearing the minimum makes a child eligible, not placed. Individual schools set their own qualifying scores, some higher, and actual cut-offs are only known after National Offer Day in March.
Read the full explainer: How the CSSE standardised score is actually calculated
The exact formula
Spaper = ((raw − mean) ÷ SD) × 15 + 100
Apaper = Spaper + (days younger × age uplift per day)
Total = 1.5 × (AEnglish + AMaths)
Mean, spread (SD), scale figures, multiplier and age uplifts are the cohort settings above — change them and the formula updates.
1 — Standardise each paper
2 — Add the age adjustment
3 — Weight and combine
Common questions
Each curve shows the whole cohort for that paper, with the average in the middle. The shaded area is everyone this result is ahead of.
English
—Enter marks to see the distribution.
Maths
—Enter marks to see the distribution.
Both curves assume marks were normally distributed, which real papers only approximate — 11+ papers in particular tend to bunch at the top, so the estimate is least reliable for the highest scorers.
It isn't a percentage, and it isn't out of anything. It answers a different question: how did this result compare with everyone else who sat the same paper?
Each paper is placed on a scale where 100 is exactly average. Above 100 is above the average candidate that year; below 100 is below it. The two papers are then added and multiplied by 1.5, which is why an average candidate lands on roughly 300 in total.
This matters because papers vary in difficulty. A hard Maths paper one year and an easy one the next would produce very different raw marks for the same ability. Standardising removes that.
Candidates can be almost a full year apart in age. At ten years old that is a meaningful gap, so a small allowance is added for younger children.
Nothing is ever deducted from older children. The oldest candidate in the year group receives no allowance, and everyone younger receives a little more for each day younger they are.
In some years there is no allowance on one of the papers at all, because the results showed no age effect. That is why each paper's adjustment can be switched off in the settings.
Not quite. 303 is a floor rather than a pass mark: no CSSE offer is made below it, but clearing it does not secure a place.
Individual schools set their own qualifying scores, some considerably higher. An offer also depends on distance, sibling priority, and how many higher-scoring candidates named that school. The real cut-offs only become clear after National Offer Day in March.
Each paper is standardised on its own first:
standardised = (((raw − mean) ÷ SD) × 15) + 100
Then the age uplift is added to each paper, and the two are combined:
total = 1.5 × [(Maths + Maths uplift) + (English + English uplift)]
The age uplift is added, never deducted: the oldest candidate in the cohort receives nothing, and no child loses marks for being older. Both papers carry equal weight, and the 1.5 multiplier is what places the cohort average at roughly 300.
Treat it as an estimate. The calculation needs the average mark and the spread of marks for that year's paper, and those figures only exist once every candidate has sat it. CSSE publishes them each October, after results.
This page is loaded with a past year's published figures. If the paper in question was a different year, the shape of the answer is right but the exact number will not be. Current figures can be entered in the standardisation settings as soon as they are released.