Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire · Buckinghamshire
Aylesbury High School
The standard Buckinghamshire 121 threshold, allocated by catchment and distance rather than a strict score-rank — not the county's most selective girls' grammar.
Aylesbury High School split from the original mixed Aylesbury Grammar School (founded 1598) as a separate girls' school in 1959. Like all thirteen Buckinghamshire grammar schools, it sets its own admissions policy but shares a common county-wide entrance test — the Secondary Transfer Test — run under contract by GL Assessment for The Buckinghamshire Grammar Schools consortium. Unlike some of its Buckinghamshire peers, it allocates oversubscribed places by catchment residence and distance rather than by strict score rank, which is one reason it doesn't meet this site's bar for 'superselective' despite being a popular, high-performing school.
Key facts
- Gender
- girls
- Age range
- 11-18
- Region
- South East
- Local authority
- Buckinghamshire
- Established
- 1959
- DfE URN
- 136846
- Website
- https://www.ahs.bucks.sch.uk
Admissions
- Admissions authority
- The school sets its own test and criteria
- Entrance test board
- GL Assessment, under contract to The Buckinghamshire Grammar Schools (TBGS) consortium of the county's 13 grammar schools; Buckinghamshire Council handles registration, test-centre allocation and results processing on TBGS's behalf.
- Test format
- Two multiple-choice papers sat the same day, each roughly an hour including practice time. Paper 1: English (25 min) and Verbal Reasoning (20 min). Paper 2: Non-Verbal Reasoning (four ~5-minute sections) and Mathematics (25 min). Scores are combined into a single age-standardised score (the STTS).
- Qualifying / pass mark
- A Secondary Transfer Test Standardised score (STTS) of 121 or more automatically qualifies for a grammar school place — quoted directly from the school's own admissions policy. This is the same county-wide threshold used by all Buckinghamshire grammar schools, reached by roughly the top 30% of test-takers. Up to 6 catchment places are reserved for Pupil Premium/looked-after girls scoring 115-120.
- Superselective?
- Nopartly verified
The false conclusion rests on a structural comparison (standard county threshold, catchment+distance allocation vs. Dr Challoner's explicit score-ranking) rather than a specific numeric score comparison — no published average-qualifying-score table or last-distance-offered figure could be found for Aylesbury High School specifically.
Uses the same standard Buckinghamshire-wide qualifying score (121) as all thirteen consortium schools, and allocates oversubscribed places by catchment residence and then straight-line distance rather than ranking every qualifying applicant by score — unlike Dr Challoner's High School, another Buckinghamshire grammar which explicitly ranks by standardised score. No official Buckinghamshire-wide table of average admitted scores by school was found to test this further.
Catchment & priority criteria
Buckinghamshire Council publishes a catchment-area map for Aylesbury town and its surrounding villages; the precise boundary wasn't independently confirmed as text, only as a published map. All applicants must first reach the 121 qualifying score, then places are allocated by the priority order below, with straight-line distance from home to the school's Walton Road entrance as the tie-break within every category.partly verified
The ordered priority list and distance tie-break are confirmed from the school's own determined admissions policy. The Published Admission Number shows as 189 in that current policy, while some third-party tutoring sites quote 186 — likely a stale figure from an earlier cycle rather than a live disagreement. The exact catchment boundary was found only as a published map, not as text.
- Looked-after, previously looked-after, or internationally adopted children, resident in catchment since the preceding 1 September
- Pupil Premium-eligible girls resident in catchment since the preceding 1 September
- Pupil Premium/vulnerable girls scoring 115-120, resident in catchment (maximum 6 places)
- Sisters of girls currently at Aylesbury High School or Aylesbury Grammar School
- Daughters of permanent staff (2+ years' service, or recruited for a demonstrable skill shortage)
- Girls resident in the catchment area since the preceding 1 September
- All other qualifying girls
Results
| Year | Attainment 8 | GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths | Progress 8 | A*–A | A*–B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 74.3 | 98.9% | Not calculated by DfE — no KS2 baseline data for this cohort (COVID-era disruption to primary assessment) | — | — |
| EBacc entry 58.6%, EBacc average point score 6.84. DfE-validated figures via Compare School Performance. | |||||
| 2026 | — | — | — | 45% (3-year rolling average to 2026, self-reported) | 75% (3-year rolling average to 2026, self-reported) |
| School-reported provisional summer 2026 GCSE results (DfE-validated tables not yet published as of this research): 31% grade 9, 53% grades 8-9, 70% grades 7-9, average grade 7.4. | |||||
Ofsted
- Rating
- Outstanding
- Date
- 5 December 2023
- Report
- Read the full report
Sources
- 1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, capacity, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/136846
- 2. School's own determined Admissions Policy for September 2027 entry — https://www.ahs.bucks.sch.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=138&type=pdf
- 3. Ofsted provider page — https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/provider/23/136846
- 4. Full Ofsted report, inspected 5 December 2023 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50239315
- 5. Buckinghamshire Council — Secondary Transfer Test overview, confirms GL Assessment — https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/schools-libraries-and-parks/school-admissions-and-appeals/grammar-schools-and-transfer-testing-11/the-secondary-transfer-test/
- 6. Buckinghamshire STT familiarisation booklet — paper structure and timings — https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/documents/36850/Secondary_Transfer_Test_-_Familiarisation_Booklet_RiwS4qP.pdf
- 7. UK government tender notice — TBGS/GL Assessment 5-year STT contract — https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/002612-2024
- 8. School's own history page — founded 1959, split from Aylesbury Grammar (1598) — https://www.ahs.bucks.sch.uk/page/?title=History+of+AHS&pid=19
- 9. DfE Compare School Performance — validated 2024/25 GCSE results — https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/136846/aylesbury-high-school/secondary
- 10. School's own exam results page — provisional 2026 results, A-level averages — https://www.ahs.bucks.sch.uk/page/?title=Exams&pid=30
- 11. Comparator: Dr Challoner's High School admissions process (explicit score-ranking) — https://www.challonershigh.com/admissions/admissions-process
Last updated 2026-08-30. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.