Walsall, West Midlands · Walsall
Queen Mary's High School
Shares a regional GL Assessment test with 18 other West Midlands grammar schools, but sets its own qualifying score after seeing the field each year — no fixed bar published in advance.
Queen Mary's High sits inside a much larger West Midlands testing partnership than any consortium seen elsewhere in this index: 19 grammar schools across Birmingham, Shropshire, Walsall, Warwickshire and Wolverhampton use the same GL Assessment papers on a shared date, but each school remains fully independent on admissions. The school's own policy is explicit that The Mercian Trust — not Walsall Council — is the admissions authority, and its qualifying score is only set after governors see the full order of merit each cycle, not fixed in advance. Families must complete two separate steps: registering directly with the school to sit the test, then separately naming it on Walsall's standard secondary transfer form — missing either one costs the place regardless of score. Despite very strong absolute attainment, the school's A-level value-added score has been negative for two consecutive years, a genuine and sourced nuance rather than a flattering headline figure.
Key facts
- Gender
- girls
- Age range
- 11-18
- Region
- West Midlands
- Local authority
- Walsall
- Established
- 1893
- DfE URN
- 136777
- Website
- https://www.qmhs.org.uk
Admissions
- Admissions authority
- The school sets its own test and criteria
- Entrance test board
- GL Assessment — confirmed on sister school Queen Mary's Grammar School's own admissions page and corroborated by independent 11+ guidance sites; the school's own policy document names only 'the Test' without stating the provider directly.partly verified
The school's own admissions policy names only 'the Test' and a 'West Midlands wide consortium,' not GL Assessment by name. GL Assessment is confirmed on sister school Queen Mary's Grammar School's own page and corroborated by independent sites, but not by this school's own document directly.
- Test format
- Two test papers covering three skill areas: verbal ability (including reading comprehension), non-verbal ability, and numerical ability, age-standardised. Administered as part of a West Midlands-wide consortium of grammar schools holding identical papers within a shared testing window — for September 2026 entry, the test was held 13 September 2025.
- Qualifying / pass mark
- Not fixed in advance. The school's own policy states governors decide the minimum qualifying score only after receiving the full order of merit each cycle. Secondary (tutoring-site) sources report a score of around 198 for 2025 entry and around 200 (with 215 reported as the actual lowest score securing a non-priority place) for 2026 entry — neither figure independently confirmed from a school or council primary document.partly verified
The 198 (2025 entry) and 200/215 (2026 entry) figures come only from tutoring/11+ guidance sites. The school's own results pages could not be retrieved as readable text during this research (likely JavaScript-rendered), so these numbers aren't independently confirmed from a school or council primary document.
- Superselective?
- Not establishedverify with school
No explicit self-classification found either way in the school's own policy. See full reasoning in superselectiveNote.
The school's own policy never uses the term 'superselective' or its opposite, describing itself only as 'a selective school which selects its entire intake... based on academic ability.' Its qualifying score is norm-referenced (set after seeing the applicant field) rather than a fixed absolute bar, which is standard grammar-school practice generally. The largest oversubscription category has no geographic catchment at all, which leans toward high selectivity, but without applicant-volume data against the 150-place intake or a third-party classification, this is reported as genuinely indeterminate rather than guessed either way.
Catchment & priority criteria
None for general admission — the largest oversubscription category is open to any qualifying girl nationally regardless of address. The only geographic element sits inside the capped Pupil Premium tier (max 30% of intake): within that tier, girls attending a Walsall state-funded primary school at the time of the test rank ahead of Pupil Premium girls who don't.
- Looked-after and previously looked-after children (including those who left care via adoption, child arrangements order, or special guardianship order) meeting the qualifying score, ranked by standardised score
- Children in receipt of Pupil Premium at the time of the test meeting the qualifying score, ranked by standardised score, capped at 30% of admitted pupils (currently 45 of 150 places); within this group, those attending a Walsall state-funded primary school rank first
- All other children meeting the qualifying score, ranked by standardised score, until the published admission number of 150 is reached
- Tie-break: sum of the candidate's rank positions across the three test skill areas, then independently verified random allocation
Results
| Year | Attainment 8 | GCSE 5+ Eng & Maths | Progress 8 | A*–A | A*–B |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 72.1 (England average 45.9) | 97.3% (England 45.9%) | +0.55 ('Above average') — this cohort predates the COVID-era gap | — | — |
| A-level average point score 38.67 (England average 34.38, above), A-level value-added -0.3 (England average 0.0, below). | |||||
| 2025 | 73.5 (England average 46.0) | 95.2% (England 45.4%) | Not calculated — no KS2 baseline data for this cohort nationally | verify with school | verify with school |
| A-level average point score 38.75 (England average 34.99, above), A-level value-added -0.3 (England average 0.0, below) for a second consecutive year — a real contrast against the school's very strong absolute attainment, worth surfacing rather than smoothing over. | |||||
Ofsted
- Rating
- Under Ofsted's new report-card framework: 'Exceptional' in Achievement and in Personal Development and Wellbeing; 'Strong standard' in Attendance and Behaviour, Curriculum and Teaching, Inclusion, Leadership and Governance, and Post-16 Provision. Safeguarding met. The previous inspection (2021) rated the school Outstanding under the old framework — not directly comparable to the new scale, so this shouldn't be read as a decline.
- Date
- 17 March 2026
- 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/136777
- 2. School's own Admission Arrangements 2026-27 — https://passelevenplus.co.uk/app/uploads/2025/10/Queen-Marys-High-School-Admissions-2026.pdf
- 3. School's own Admissions pages — https://www.qmhs.org.uk/Admissions/
- 4. Ofsted report card, inspected 17 March 2026 — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50303688
- 5. Ofsted report, inspected 12-13 October 2021 (Outstanding, old framework) — https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50172651
- 6. Queen Mary's Grammar School (boys) — admissions page, cross-check on shared consortium test — https://qmgs.walsall.sch.uk/Copy-of-September-2026-Entry/
- 7. The Mercian Trust — school page confirming trust governance — https://www.themerciantrust.org/Queen-Mary-s-Grammar-School/
- 8. Walsall Council — secondary school admissions — https://go.walsall.gov.uk/schools-and-learning/schools-in-walsall/school-admissions/apply-for-a-secondary-school-place
Last updated 2026-09-01. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.