King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls is an eleven to eighteen selective girls' school on Rose Hill Road in Handsworth, Birmingham. This page covers Handsworth School for Girls entry at eleven by the GL Assessment test, for children now in Year 3 to Year 5, and not sixth form, fees or A levels.
Is there a Handsworth Girls entrance exam?
Not a separate one. The school belongs to the West Midlands Grammar Schools Partnership, which means a single shared test, taken once, in September of Year 6. One sitting produces one result, and that result is what every partnership school on your list sees. There is nothing extra to sit for this school alone. The paper itself is set by GL Assessment, the assessment publisher the partnership uses, so the format is the same at every school in the group.
The deadline that matters most falls a year earlier than parents expect. A parent registers online in the summer term of Year 5, in a window that closes quickly. Primary schools neither handle it nor chase it, and a missed registration cannot be appealed away.
Do not confuse the two forms: registering your daughter for the entrance test happens with the partnership in Year 5. Naming the school on a school place application happens with your local council in the autumn of Year 6. Both are needed.
Qualifying on the test and receiving an offer are also separate. The test establishes the standard. The school's own published admissions arrangements then decide, among the girls who qualified, who is offered a place.
Check this first: nothing here is a live number and nothing here is a date, since both move with every admissions cycle and second-hand copies are usually stale. Read these two instead:
King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls official website and the partnership's own site. Check the school's official admissions page for this year's figures.
Pathway Eleven has no connection to King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls, to the partnership or to any admissions authority. We cannot register a child, confirm eligibility, or say anything about catchment or your chances. Pathway Eleven is an independent service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by GL Assessment.
How are the papers weighted?
Half the result comes from English comprehension and verbal reasoning together. Mathematics takes a quarter. Non-verbal reasoning, including spatial questions, takes the last quarter. If you remember one thing before planning a year of preparation, remember that split, because it decides where the hours should go.
The papers do not respect those categories on the page, though. There are two of them, both multiple choice, and each mixes the areas rather than devoting itself to a subject. A girl reads a passage, answers a word puzzle, does arithmetic, reasons about shapes, and keeps moving.
Each paper is scheduled for roughly fifty to sixty minutes, which includes hearing the instructions and working through the examples. Real working time is less. Answers go onto a separate answer sheet, so a slipped row costs a run of marks earned by perfectly good thinking.
The school behind the name
King Edward VI Handsworth School opened on the 14th September 1911, and its former pupils still gather as the Handsworth Old Edwardians' Society. It is an academy and a member of the King Edward VI Academy Trust Birmingham and the King Edward VI Foundation.
It describes itself as ambitious, forward-thinking and outward-facing, and offers what it calls a progressive grammar school experience, dedicated to excellence in girls' education. Its stated ethos is short enough to quote: Love of Learning, Pride in Diversity, Excellence for All.
What should a Year 5 parent do first?
Register, then read. The registration is the only irreversible step in the whole process, so deal with it first and treat everything after it as work that can still be adjusted. Put a reminder in a shared calendar a fortnight ahead of the window, because the summer term of Year 5 is precisely when a family is thinking about something else.
Then follow the weighting rather than the anxiety. Reading widely and building vocabulary serves both halves of the heaviest component, and it is the part of preparation that repays an early start, in Year 4 or before. Comprehension technique, by contrast, can be taught inside a term.
Non-verbal reasoning is worth meeting early and briefly, since most children improve quickly once the question types are familiar and then plateau. Mathematics generally needs pace and multi-step questions rather than new topics. Leave room to practise whole papers under timing, because holding accuracy across a mixed paper is its own skill.
Questions parents ask about Handsworth Girls entry
Which test does Handsworth Girls use?+
The shared West Midlands Grammar Schools entrance test, taken once in September of Year 6. There is no separate school paper. The same result is passed to each partnership school a family names, so preparation is for one test rather than several.
How old is the school?+
King Edward VI Handsworth School opened on the 14th September 1911. Older dates circulate online and refer to a predecessor rather than to the school in Handsworth, which is worth knowing if you are checking such claims for yourself.
Does a good test result guarantee a place?+
No. Qualifying means your daughter met the standard on the shared test. Offers are then decided by the school's own published admissions arrangements, applied to the group of girls who qualified. The two stages are separate, and the second allocates the places.
Other schools in this consortium
King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls sits in the Birmingham group of the partnership. One result travels to every partnership school a family names, so the neighbouring schools are worth reading about before you decide which to put down.
- Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls, girls, in Sutton Coldfield.
- Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, boys, in Sutton Coldfield.
- King Edward VI Aston School, boys, in Aston, Birmingham.
- King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Boys, boys, in Kings Heath, Birmingham.
- King Edward VI Camp Hill School for Girls, girls, in Kings Heath, Birmingham.
Where to go next
- The West Midlands 11 plus entrance test, every partnership school, and the test they share.
- 11 plus preparation in Year 5, the year the registration window falls in.
- 11 plus English comprehension, half the result rests here and on verbal reasoning.
- 11 plus non-verbal reasoning, the quarter that improves fastest, then plateaus.