Birmingham, West Midlands · Birmingham
King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys
The school's own results page openly attributes a recent drop in raw attainment to a 2020 admissions change reserving places for disadvantaged pupils — a widened-access trade-off, not a quality decline, by its own account.
Opened in 1883 and sharing its Kings Heath site with sister school King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls since 1956, including a joint sixth-form centre. Governed by the King Edward VI Academy Trust Birmingham, distinct from the historic King Edward VI Foundation charity that mainly organises the shared entrance test. Its own 2025 results document is unusually candid: the school attributes a fall in its internal top-grade rate (from 51% to 28% between 2024 and 2025) directly to a 2020 admissions policy change reserving places for Pupil Premium-eligible pupils, arguing underlying teaching quality remains strong by its own internal progress measure — a genuinely important context for anyone comparing raw attainment figures across grammar schools without knowing about the intake shift behind them.
Key facts
- Gender
- boys
- Age range
- 11-18
- Region
- West Midlands
- Local authority
- Birmingham
- Established
- 1883
- DfE URN
- 137045
- Website
- https://www.camphillboys.bham.sch.uk
Admissions
- Admissions authority
- The school sets its own test and criteria
- Entrance test board
- GL Assessment, shared across the Birmingham King Edward VI Foundation grammar school consortium (8 schools).
- Test format
- Two multiple-choice papers of around 60 minutes each, standardised for age: 50% English comprehension/verbal reasoning, 25% non-verbal/spatial reasoning, 25% mathematics.
- Qualifying / pass mark
- 205 (qualifying score, confirmed for September 2022 entry) and 224 (priority score, confirmed for 2021 through 2024 entry) are the most recent figures found on the school's own site. The current 2025/2026 entry cycle's figures weren't located — the Foundation publishes these fresh each year, separately from the admissions policy document itself.partly verified
205/224 are the most recent figures found, but current-cycle (2025/2026 entry) figures weren't located on either the school's or the Foundation's site during this research.
- Superselective?
- Not established
Catchment & priority criteria
A defined catchment of 18 named Birmingham electoral wards (including Moseley, Sparkhill, Small Heath, Acocks Green, Billesley, Stirchley and others), used to prioritise two of the five oversubscription categories rather than as a blanket residency requirement for admission.
- Looked-after and previously looked-after children achieving the qualifying score, ranked by test score then distance
- Pupil Premium children achieving the qualifying score and living in catchment, ranked by distance
- If under 25% of places are filled by the above, Pupil Premium children achieving the qualifying score living outside catchment, up to 25% of places total, ranked by score then sibling then distance
- Applicants achieving the priority score living in catchment — sibling priority first, then ranked by distance
- All other applicants achieving the qualifying score, ranked by test score, then sibling, then distance
Results
| Year | Attainment 8 | GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths | Progress 8 | A*–A | A*–B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 83.3 (secondary source; the same aggregator shows an identical value for its 2023 row, a possible copy-paste error worth treating with caution) | verify with school | Reported by a secondary source as 1.09 above the national average — this cohort's KS2 baseline (2019) predates COVID disruption so a genuine DfE figure should exist, but it wasn't independently confirmed here | 64.0% | 82.9% |
| A-level, calculated directly from the school's own official 2024 results PDF: A*-A 64.0% (343 of 536 entries), A*-B 82.9% (matching the school's own published summary almost exactly). | |||||
| 2025 | 75.7 (secondary source, not independently confirmed against DfE directly) | 96.60% (secondary source) | Not calculated by DfE — confirmed as the nationwide COVID-era gap. The school's own 2025 results document cites only an internally-calculated 'residual score of +0.86,' explicitly framed as internal analysis rather than official Progress 8. | 66.0% | 85.6% |
| The school's own 2025 GCSE results document discloses that its internal grade-9 rate fell from 51.0% in 2024 to 27.8% in 2025, attributing this directly to a change in cohort prior attainment following a September 2020 admissions policy revision that widened access via Pupil Premium criteria — a genuinely important, primary-sourced nuance for comparing this year's raw attainment against other years or schools. A-level, calculated directly from the school's own official 2025 results PDF: A*-A 66.0% (353 of 535 entries), A*-B 85.6% (independently cross-checked against the school's own summary, exact match). | |||||
Ofsted
- Rating
- Outstanding, in every category: quality of education, behaviour and attitudes, personal development, leadership and management, and sixth-form provision. This was a full graded inspection under the pre-September 2024 framework — it was the school's first inspection as an academy, and its predecessor school was also previously rated Outstanding.
- Date
- 22-23 November 2023
- Report
- Read the full report
Sources
- 1. DfE Get Information About Schools — URN, status, gender, LA — https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/137045
- 2. School's own Admissions page — https://www.camphillboys.bham.sch.uk/admissions
- 3. King Edward VI Foundation — school profile — https://kingedwardvifoundation.co.uk/our-schools/king-edward-vi-camp-hill-school-for-boys/
- 4. King Edward VI Foundation — The Test — https://kingedwardvifoundation.co.uk/the-test/
- 5. Ofsted report, inspected 22-23 November 2023 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50237703
- 6. School's own 2025 GCSE Results (PDF) — https://www.camphillboys.bham.sch.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=625&type=pdf
- 7. School's own 2025 A-level Results (PDF) — https://www.camphillboys.bham.sch.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=581&type=pdf
- 8. School's own 2024 GCSE Results (PDF) — https://www.camphillboys.bham.sch.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=480&type=pdf
- 9. School's own 2024 A-level Results (PDF) — https://www.camphillboys.bham.sch.uk/attachments/download.asp?file=479&type=pdf
Last updated 2026-09-01. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.