Chelmsford County High School for Girls 11 Plus (11+) Exam Guide

About Chelmsford County High School for Girls

Chelmsford County High School for Girls (CCHS) is a selective state grammar school for girls in Chelmsford, Essex, with academy status. The school sits on Broomfield Road and offers 180 places into Year 7 each year.

CCHS is unusual among Essex grammar schools: it is not part of the Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex (CSSE) and does not sit the CSSE test used by Colchester County High School for Girls, Westcliff High School for Girls, Southend High School for Girls, Colchester Royal Grammar School and King Edward VI Grammar School in Chelmsford. Instead, CCHS sets its own entrance test, built by FSCE (Future Stories Community Enterprise), the same test provider used by Reading School in Berkshire.

CCHS is one of the most oversubscribed schools in Essex. In the most recent published year, 586 girls named CCHS as a preference for its 180 places, out of 1,225 girls who sat the test that year.

Key information for 2027: Chelmsford County High School for Girls at 11 Plus (11+)

• School type: State grammar school (girls), Academy Trust
• Registration deadline: June 2026
• Exam date: early September 2026
• CAF deadline: end of October 2026
• National school offer day: March 2027
• Contact details: www.cchs.co.uk/admissions

Admissions information for 2027 entry: Chelmsford County High School for Girls at 11 Plus (11+)

Registration for Year 7 entry into Chelmsford County High School for Girls opens in April and closes in early June 2026. The entrance test, the CCHS Entrance Test, is held in early September 2026, and results are sent by email in mid-October.

You will also need to submit your Common Application Form (CAF) to your home local authority by the end of October, listing Chelmsford County High School for Girls in your order of preference.

Reaching the ‘eligible score’, a threshold set each year by the Admissions Committee rather than a fixed pass mark, does not guarantee a place. Places are allocated in a fixed order of priority: first to looked-after and previously looked-after children within 5 marks of the eligible score, then to children with an Education, Health and Care Plan who reach the eligible score, then the majority of remaining places to eligible-scoring girls within the school’s 12.5-mile priority area (with some priority for Pupil or Service Premium children in that area), and finally a smaller number of places to any eligible girl regardless of where she lives. National school offer day is in March 2027.

How can I register my child for the 11 Plus (11+) exam at Chelmsford County High School for Girls?

To register your daughter for the CCHS entrance test, you as her parent or legal guardian need to complete the school’s own online registration, which opens in April and closes in early June 2026. Full details and the exact registration window for the current admissions cycle are published on the CCHS admissions page.

You will also need to list Chelmsford County High School for Girls on your Common Application Form (CAF) through your home local authority, in your true order of preference, by the end of October 2026.

What is the 11 Plus (11+) entrance exam format for Chelmsford County High School for Girls?

Chelmsford County High School for Girls does not use the CSSE test that most other Essex grammar schools share. Instead, girls sit the CCHS Entrance Test, built by FSCE (Future Stories Community Enterprise), on a single test day.

The test may draw on knowledge and skills from any National Curriculum subject taught up to the end of Year 5, not only English and maths, including science, geography, history, computing, art and design, design and technology, music, PE and languages. Questions mix multiple-choice and written-response formats. There is a separate Creativity task, assessing the ability to think of new and imaginative ideas and to solve problems in original ways; this is marked by a trained CCHS staff panel, and only girls who reach the eligible score on the computer-marked papers are considered for it. There is no verbal reasoning or non-verbal reasoning paper.

FSCE deliberately does not release past papers and changes its content every year, so that no child has an information advantage from prior tutoring or practice on a fixed format.

How to prepare your child for the 11 Plus (11+) Chelmsford County High School for Girls exam

Because the CCHS test spans the whole Key Stage 2 curriculum, alongside a Creativity task, rather than a fixed reasoning format, the most useful preparation looks a little different to a standard 11+ run-up. Keep your daughter reading widely across fiction and non-fiction, work steadily through the breadth of the KS2 curriculum rather than one subject, and build her confidence with timed written and multiple-choice questions so the format itself holds no surprises on the day.

There is no dedicated CCHS or FSCE-format paper in our current range, and the closest genuine preparation combines full written English and maths practice with dedicated creative writing work, since these best match the test’s mixed written style and its separate Creativity element.

For Chelmsford County High School for Girls 11+ preparation, we recommend the following packs: