Getting into Plymouth High School for Girls
The Plymouth 11+, set by Quest Assessments and shared by the city’s grammar schools: what it involves and what to do next, for entry in September 2027.
Every fact on this page is checked against the school’s published admissions information, and nothing is guessed. · View sources · Report an error
Registration for the September 2026 test closed on Monday 31 August 2026. 1 weeks to test day.
What to do and when
Sitting the year after (2028 entry)? These are 2027-entry dates, and yours are not published yet: there is nothing you need to do this far out. Sign up for reminders and tick the 2028-entry box, and we’ll email only when your cycle’s dates are out and it is actually time to act.
5 dates as a calendar file, for Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. Share the link with anyone who needs them.
Life’s busy, so we’ll email you a nudge before each Plymouth High for Girls deadline above. Nothing else: no newsletter, no marketing, and the reminders stop for good after National Offer Day (1 Mar 2027) unless you sign up again for another school.
The test, in one look
Plymouth High for Girls sits the Plymouth grammar schools (shared Quest test), set by Quest Assessments.
Quest Assessments writes 11+ papers for a number of schools and councils, and each one picks its own mix of subjects, so the papers differ from place to place. What stays the same is the approach. Questions are built on the Key Stage 2 curriculum, answers are recorded on an OMR sheet by drawing a line through the chosen box, and marks are standardised according to age in years and months. That last point has a consequence worth knowing: there is no fixed number of correct answers that qualifies, because the mark needed shifts with how old a child is on the day. Quest publishes free familiarisation booklets, and working through one is worth doing if only so the answer sheet itself is not a surprise.
Quest papers are built on the Key Stage 2 curriculum and marked from an answer sheet, with scores standardised by age in years and months, so there is no fixed number of correct answers that qualifies. Two things follow. Work the underlying curriculum rather than chasing a target mark, and make sure the answer sheet itself is not a surprise on the day: download Quest’s own free familiarisation booklet. PlusProgress practice covers the curriculum ground adaptively and reports progress as a standardised age score, so the number at home means the same thing as the number the school sends.
Nothing beyond the Year 5 National Curriculum is assessed.
How places are decided
120 places for September 2027. Reaching the required standard puts a child in the running; this order decides the rest.
Catchment: No catchment area. Places go purely in rank order of 11-plus score, and where a girl lives counts only as a tie-break between identical totals, nearest first.
Children with an EHCP (EHCP) that names the school must be admitted first, subject to achieving the cut off score or above for the school for this year of entry.
3 ranked criteria decide the order.
▸The full criteria, in the school’s own words
- 1.Looked after and previously looked after children who achieve a score equal to or higher than 5 points below the adjusted cut off score for this school, by rank order of highest score in the 11-plus examination;
- 2.Up to 12 places will be allocated to candidates who achieve a score equal to or higher than 5 points below the adjusted cut off score for this school, by rank order of highest score in the 11-plus examination and who qualify for the free school meals pupil premium or Ever 6 FSM;
- 3.Other candidates by rank order of highest score in the 11-plus examination. Tie-break, from the Tie-breaker definition on page 21 of the same document, used only to separate candidates with identical aggregate scores: first, pupils who qualify for the free school meals pupil premium or Ever 6 FSM; then pupils whose home address is nearest the preferred school, measured in a straight line on Plymouth City Council's electronic mapping system from the spatial locator identified by the National Land and Property Gazetteer (all flats in a block share one measurement point, whatever the floor); and if there is still a tie at the normal point of entry, a random ballot conducted in accordance with the School Admissions Code by an officer of Plymouth City Council using an electronic random number generator. Distance is therefore the only point at which where a girl lives affects a PHSG place, and it bites only between equal scores, never as a threshold.
What an EHCP is: an Education, Health and Care Plan, a legal document from your council for a child with special educational needs. Where a plan names a school, that school has to offer a place, so those places are taken out of the number above before anyone else is ranked. It is not a route most families can apply through.
Taken from the school’s own determined admission arrangements. The full document is linked under sources.
How many children actually sit
Schools and councils publish some of this and not all of it. The numbers below came from Freedom of Information requests, which anyone can make, and each one links to the reply it came from.
444 children sat for Plymouth High for Girls for 2025 entry, for 120 places, about 3.7:1. Source
How pupils here do at GCSE
This is based on how pupils at this school go on to perform in their GCSEs, five years after the 11+. Attainment 8 is their average result across eight subjects. Read it as a description of outcomes rather than of teaching: a selective school admits children who were already scoring well at ten, so a high position here reflects who the school takes in as much as what it does with them.
Scores from Compare school and college performance data in England, Department for Education, 2024/25, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The Department publishes the scores and does not publish a ranking: the position above is ours, calculated over state-funded schools with a published score. See the full table.
One sitting, 3 schools
The same Quest sitting also covers these Plymouth grammars: We have pages for these so far:
Common questions
No. The schools state plainly that there is no longer a free-writing element to the English test. English is reading comprehension alongside spelling, punctuation and grammar, and every answer is multiple choice.
The Maths paper has a short fluency section of about 10 minutes followed by a reasoning section of about 30 minutes, 60 questions across the two. The fluency part rewards quick, accurate number work; the reasoning part is where the multi-step problems sit. They are worth practising differently.
On two Saturday mornings a week apart, not in one sitting. For 2027 entry the English paper is on Saturday 12 September 2026 and the Maths paper on Saturday 19 September 2026. Your child sits the same test whichever of the city’s grammar schools you go on to name.
Yes. Devonport High School for Boys, Devonport High School for Girls and Plymouth High School for Girls share the Quest test, so your child sits it once. Naming a school on your council application form is separate, and it is that form which decides where an offer can be made.
No. Each school sets a cut off score for its own year of entry and then applies its published oversubscription criteria to everyone who reaches it. Clearing the bar puts your child in the running; it does not reserve a seat.
Test week: one calm timed run-through, then rest.