Torquay, Devon · Torbay

Torquay Girls' Grammar School

Its own admissions criteria have visibly narrowed year over year — catchment priority, then sibling priority, then staff-child priority, each dropped in a successive policy.

TGGS has taught girls since 1915. It shares one GL Assessment English/Maths test — sat once, on one day — with Torquay Boys' and Churston Ferrers grammar schools, though each remains its own admissions authority with its own threshold and criteria. Comparing three of the school's own successive admissions policies shows a real, recent shift: catchment-area priority was dropped by 2025, and sibling and staff-child priority have both gone from the current 2027-entry policy, leaving just care status, then Pupil Premium, then pure rank order by score — a genuine narrowing that many third-party 11+ guides likely haven't caught up with.

Key facts

Gender: girls
Age range: 11-18
Region: South West
Local authority: Torbay
Established: 1915
DfE URN: 136506
Website: https://www.tggsacademy.org/

Admissions

Admissions authority: The school sets its own test and criteria
Entrance test board: GL Assessment sets and externally marks the papers, for entry from September 2024 onward — replacing CEM, which supplied the papers through September 2023 entry, after CEM stopped supplying admissions tests. The change followed a joint 2022 consultation by Torquay Boys', Torquay Girls', Churston Ferrers, and The Spires College (a bilateral school).
Test format: Two GL Assessment papers — English and Maths — each around an hour, externally marked and combined into a single age-standardised score. Sat on the same day as Torquay Boys' and Churston Ferrers grammar schools, at whichever one school a family registers with; that single score is then checked against each school's own separate threshold.
Qualifying / pass mark: No fixed numeric pass mark is published. Candidates are ranked by total standardised score; the Published Admission Number is 192. The 'eligible score' is set by the Admissions Panel each year from that year's rank order and is never disclosed, even to successful families — the school states this is deliberate, so all Year 7 starters begin 'from the same starting point.'partly verified
The absence of a fixed score is confirmed directly. An illustrative rank-position mechanism (e.g. '140th-ranked candidate') appears in the 2025-entry policy but isn't restated in the current 2027-entry document — treat any specific rank position as illustrative of the method, not this year's actual cutoff.
Superselective?: Noverify with school
No primary source publishes an applicant-to-place ratio for this school, so the classification is qualitative rather than based on a hard oversubscription statistic.

Catchment & priority criteria

No geographic catchment area or priority zone at all — any eligible-scoring candidate from anywhere in England is ranked on the same list, regardless of home address. This is a genuine recent change: the school's own 2022-entry policy did include catchment-area priority, which had already been dropped by the 2025-entry cycle. Distance is used only to break a tie for the final place.

Looked-after and previously looked-after children
Pupil Premium/Service Premium-eligible children on the eligible list
All remaining eligible children, by rank order of combined score, up to the 192-place PAN

Results

Year	Attainment 8	GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths	Progress 8	A*–A	A*–B
2025	68.4 (a secondary aggregator gives 68.6 for the same cohort — see flags)	90%	Not published — no KS2 baseline data for this cohort nationally	39.5%	72.3%
58.4% grades 9-7, 86.5% EBacc entry. A-level via the school's TG6 sixth form: 100% A*-E pass rate (national 97.5%), sixth-form progress score +0.28.
2024	68.9 (marked provisional by the school)	90.3%	+0.35 (marked provisional; predates the COVID-era KS2 baseline gap affecting later cohorts)	39.0% (secondary aggregator, not independently re-verified)	71.1% (same caveat)

Ofsted

Rating: Outstanding
Date: 1 November 2023
Report: Read the full report

Sources

1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, capacity, LA — https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/136506
2. Current admissions test page — GL Assessment, format, 2027-entry dates — https://www.tggsacademy.org/tggsadmissionstest
3. Admissions Policy — Entry September 2027 (determined arrangements: PAN, criteria, no catchment) — https://www.tggsacademy.org/_site/data/files/about/policies/67EEEDE35BC60E418C7B77941B911248.pdf
4. Admissions Policy — Entry September 2025 (illustrative rank-band mechanism, sibling/staff priority still present) — https://www.tggsacademy.org/_site/data/files/admissions/selection/TGGS%20Admissions%20Policy%202025.pdf
5. Torbay Council copy of the September 2022 entry policy — establishes the historical baseline (catchment area, CEM test) — https://www.torbay.gov.uk/media/15976/torquay-girls-grammar-school-admissions-policy.pdf
6. Joint 2022 consultation letter — confirms coordinated Torbay test and the CEM-to-GL switch — https://www.tbgs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Consultation-Document.pdf
7. Ofsted report, inspected 1 November 2023 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50235876
8. School's own history page — founded 1915 — https://www.tggsacademy.org/history
9. School's own GCSE results page — 2025 and 2024 figures — https://www.tggsacademy.org/tggsgcseresults
10. TG6 sixth form A-level results page — http://www.tg6.org.uk/alevelresults2024

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