Plymouth, Devon · Plymouth
Plymouth High School for Girls
Genuinely pools its ranking with Devonport High School for Girls across a combined 278 places — a shared admissions system found nowhere else in this index so far.
PHSG has taught girls since 1874 (its academy URN dates only from a 2021 conversion — the school itself is the older of Plymouth's grammar schools). Unusually, it runs a genuinely shared admissions system with Devonport High School for Girls: identical Quest Assessments papers on the same dates, one shared registration, and a combined ranked pool covering both schools' places together. Devonport High School for Boys is a separate trust with its own pool, though it may share the same test provider from 2026. With no fixed pass mark and no comparable countywide threshold to measure against, 'superselective' genuinely can't be determined here.
Key facts
- Gender
- girls
- Age range
- 11-18
- Region
- South West
- Local authority
- Plymouth
- Established
- 1874
- DfE URN
- 148369
- Website
- https://www.phsg.org/
Admissions
- Admissions authority
- The school sets its own test and criteria
- Entrance test board
- Quest Assessments, an external commercial provider, jointly used with Devonport High School for Girls on identical papers and dates.
- Test format
- Two multiple-choice papers — English Comprehension and Mathematics — each 40 minutes with 60 questions, sat on two fixed Saturdays in September. A non-compulsory familiarisation session is offered beforehand.
- Qualifying / pass mark
- No fixed pass mark is published — the school states plainly there is no passing threshold. Places are allocated by rank order of standardised score across a pool shared with Devonport High School for Girls: the two schools' combined 278 places (PHSG's 120 plus DHSG's 158) go to the top-ranked applicants who named a grammar school as first or second choice, with school placement then decided by preference order.
- Superselective?
- Not establishedverify with school
No basis for a confident classification given Plymouth's pooled-ranking system and the lack of a published applicant-volume figure.
Cannot be determined with confidence. Superselective is normally used where a school requires a score well above a shared countywide 'grammar-qualified' pass mark, but Plymouth has no such shared threshold — PHSG and Devonport High School for Girls jointly rank applicants with no separately published absolute cut-off, and no reliable applicant-volume figure exists to compute an admit-rate comparison.
Catchment & priority criteria
No geographic catchment area — admission is open to any applicant regardless of home address, decided purely by rank order within the shared PHSG/Devonport Girls' pool. Distance is used only as a tie-break for identical scores.
- Children with an Education, Health and Care Plan naming the school, subject to reaching the cut-off score
- Looked-after and previously looked-after children scoring at or above 5 points below the adjusted cut-off
- Up to 12 places for Free School Meals/Ever-6 FSM-eligible children scoring at or above 5 points below the adjusted cut-off
- All other candidates, by rank order of score
Results
| Year | Attainment 8 | GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths | Progress 8 | A*–A | A*–B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 65.34 | 91% (97% at grade 4+) | +0.24 | — | — |
| Most recent year with DfE-methodology Progress 8 available — it can't be calculated for 2025 or 2026 cohorts due to the nationwide COVID-era KS2 baseline gap. DfE's own performance site blocked automated access throughout this research; figures come from the school's own official results page instead. | |||||
| 2025 | — | — | — | — | 51.8% |
| A-level: 74.2% grades A*-C, average point score 35.09 per entry (the school's separate 'Examinations' page instead gives 35 for a nearby year — a minor inconsistency between two of the school's own pages, not resolved here). GCSE: self-reported 'best 5' bands (89.3% at 9-5, not directly comparable to the DfE grade-5-in-English-and-maths measure above). | |||||
Ofsted
- Rating
- Good
- Date
- 17-18 April 2024
- Report
- Read the full report
Sources
- 1. DfE Get Information About Schools — current URN, status, capacity, trust — https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/148369
- 2. GIAS predecessor URN (113532, closed on academy conversion) — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/113532
- 3. Determined Admission Arrangements 2026-2027 — https://www.phsg.org/_site/data/files/users/9/policies-kmr/3AF8368818B3EBE344A36432AACCE9C5.pdf
- 4. Secondary School Admission Criteria 2027-2028 (draft watermark) — https://www.phsg.org/attachments/download.asp?file=1609&type=pdf
- 5. School's own 11+ FAQ — test format, no pass mark, shared 278-place pool mechanism — https://phsg.org/page/?pid=434&title=Frequently+Asked+Questions
- 6. Devonport High School for Girls' matching FAQ — corroborates the shared allocation mechanism — https://dhsg.co.uk/page/?pid=221&title=11++Frequently+Asked+Questions
- 7. Ofsted report, inspected 17-18 April 2024 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50247924
- 8. School's own Examinations page — 2023/24 Attainment 8, Progress 8, grade 5+ figures — https://phsg.org/page/?pid=319&title=Examinations
- 9. School's own year-by-year exam results page — 2022-2025 headline stats — https://www.phsg.org/page/?title=Exam+results&pid=24
- 10. School's own history timeline — founded 14 September 1874 — https://www.phsg.org/page/?title=PHSG+History+Timeline&pid=346
- 11. Thinking Schools Academy Trust page — confirms co-educational sixth form — https://www.tsatrust.org.uk/our-academies/plymouth-high-school-for-girls/
Last updated 2026-08-30. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.