Grammar School Index

Plymouth, Devon · Plymouth

Devonport High School for Girls

Shares its entrance test with Plymouth's other two grammar schools, but not its admissions authority, PAN, or criteria — three separate legal decision-makers on one shared exam.

DHSG sits within a genuinely hybrid Plymouth system: it shares one Quest Assessments test with Devonport High School for Boys and Plymouth High School for Girls — same papers, same dates, interchangeable test centres — but each school is legally its own admissions authority with its own admission number and criteria. DHSG's own website can't agree on when it was founded (1908 on the homepage, a different narrative on its own history page, 1911 elsewhere), so no founding year is given here rather than picking one. Its sixth form is mixed-gender even though the main school (11-16) is girls-only.

Key facts

Gender
girls
Age range
11-18
Region
South West
Local authority
Plymouth
DfE URN
136588
Website
https://www.dhsg.co.uk

Admissions

Admissions authority
The school sets its own test and criteria
Entrance test board
Quest Assessments, commissioned jointly by all three Plymouth grammar schools (this school, Devonport High School for Boys, and Plymouth High School for Girls) — confirmed by a candidate guide carrying all four logos (Quest plus the three schools) together.
Test format
Two papers: English comprehension (no writing component for girl candidates) and Mathematics, each around 40 minutes plus instructions, machine-marked. Sat on two Saturdays in September at any of the three schools' test centres. Boys applying to the boys' school additionally sit a writing paper the girls don't.
Qualifying / pass mark
No fixed or pre-published pass mark exists. The 'cut off score' is defined only operationally, after the fact, as the score of the last candidate admitted that year under the general-ability criterion — a rank-order threshold reset annually by that cohort's demand and performance, not a fixed standard on any published scale.verify with school

Structural, not a research gap: the school doesn't publish a fixed pass mark or the scale it would sit on, and no historical raw cut-off figures were found published anywhere.

Superselective?
Nopartly verified

This is an analytical classification based on the structure of the published arrangements, not a label any primary source asserts or denies.

Superselective usually describes a school setting a materially higher bar than the ordinary standard used by other grammars in the same system — a two-tier structure, as in parts of Kent or Buckinghamshire. Plymouth has no such tier: all three Plymouth grammar schools sit the identical test on the same dates and each simply ranks applicants to fill its own admission number, like most standalone English grammar schools. This is an analytical judgement based on the structure of the arrangements, not a label any official source applies either way, and no applicant-to-place ratio was found to test it further.

Catchment & priority criteria

None — the school's own determined arrangements state this explicitly. Admission at the normal entry point is purely by rank order of test score down to the published admission number, with a small number of places reserved near the cut-off for looked-after and FSM-eligible children. Geography enters only as a tie-break for identical scores.

  1. Children with an EHCP naming the school, subject to reaching that year's cut-off score
  2. Looked-after and previously looked-after children scoring at or above 5 points below the adjusted cut-off
  3. Up to 12 places for Free School Meals/Ever-6 FSM-eligible children scoring at or above 5 points below the adjusted cut-off
  4. All other candidates, by rank order of score

Results

YearAttainment 8GCSE 5+ Eng & MathsProgress 8A*–AA*–B
202573.8 (Plymouth average 45.7, England average 46.1)97.6%Not calculated by DfE — no KS2 baseline data for this cohort nationally—64.5%
EBacc entry 87.0%, EBacc average point score 6.96. A-level: average grade B (38.82 points/entry), value-added score -0.25 ('below average', England average -0.03).
2024——+0.78——
Most recent year DfE could calculate Progress 8 for this school — 2024/25 and 2025/26 have none nationally due to the COVID-era KS2 baseline gap. The preceding year, 2022/23, scored +0.5.

Ofsted

Rating
Good (from the last full graded inspection, November 2019; a February 2025 ungraded monitoring visit found the school's work may have improved significantly since, but issued no new grade under Ofsted's post-2024 framework)
Date
11-12 February 2025
Report
Read the full report

Sources

  1. 1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, capacity, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/136588
  2. 2. Ofsted report, inspected 11-12 February 2025 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50270897
  3. 3. Determined Admission Arrangements 2027-2028 — https://www.dhsg.co.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=427&type=pdf
  4. 4. School's own application process page — test format, provider, PAN, registration dates — https://www.dhsg.co.uk/page/?title=The+Application+Process&pid=122
  5. 5. School's own 11+ FAQ — confirms shared test with Plymouth High School for Girls, no fixed pass mark — https://www.dhsg.co.uk/page/?title=11%2B+Frequently+Asked+Questions&pid=221
  6. 6. Joint 'Plymouth 11+ 2026' candidate guide — proves the shared test/provider/dates across all three Plymouth grammar schools — https://www.dhsg.co.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=405&type=pdf
  7. 7. DfE Compare School Performance — 2025 GCSE and 16-18 results — https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/136588/devonport-high-school-for-girls/secondary
  8. 8. DfE Compare School Performance — historic Progress 8 (2022/23, 2023/24) — https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/school/136588/devonport-high-school-for-girls/secondary/progress-measures-for-2023-and-2024
  9. 9. School's own examination results page — https://www.dhsg.co.uk/page/?title=Examination+results&pid=89

Last updated 2026-08-30. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.