Queen Mary's High School is a designated selective grammar school on Upper Forster Street in Walsall, admitting girls in Years 7 to 11. This page covers Queen Mary's High School 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.
Who is Queen Mary's High School for?
Girls, at eleven. The school admits girls in Years 7 to 11 and runs a co-educational sixth form, so boys may enter in Year 12 but not before. It sits on Upper Forster Street in Walsall and is designated a selective grammar school under the School Standards and Framework Act.
It is one of the founding schools of The Mercian Trust, which it shares with the boys' grammar school of a similar name elsewhere in Walsall. The two are frequently considered together and they are not interchangeable: one takes boys at eleven, the other girls, and each publishes admission arrangements of its own.
The school describes a long and established tradition of educating the thinkers, doers and change makers of the future, and says it has been doing so successfully for over a hundred and twenty-five years. The campus is listed, which it sums up as a school steeped in history and tradition whose outlook is anything but dated.
The entry route, step by step
At the testing stage the school sets nothing itself. Queen Mary's High belongs to the West Midlands Grammar Schools Partnership, and one entrance test serves every school in it. Your daughter sits that test once, in September of Year 6. 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.
Getting to that morning requires a parent to have registered online in the summer term of Year 5. The window is brief, it opens and shuts while most families are thinking about something else, and no primary school will handle it for you or remind you about it.
After the result comes a second decision that turns on something other than the score. The school's own published arrangements determine which of the qualified girls are offered places. Those arrangements, rather than the test, are what a preference order should be built around.
Registration is not application: you register for the entrance test with the partnership during Year 5, and you apply for a school place through your local council in the autumn of Year 6. Two forms, two deadlines, two organisations, and neither one covers for the other.
Which areas repay attention first?
Words, and by a distance. English comprehension and verbal reasoning between them decide half the marks, and they respond to years of reading rather than weeks of worksheets. If your daughter is in Year 4 or Year 5, reading widely is the most useful thing happening.
Non-verbal reasoning is the quick win. Familiarity with the question types produces most of the gain and it arrives early, after which more practice adds very little. Mathematics tends to need speed and confidence with multi-step problems rather than any new topic.
Leave time for whole papers under proper conditions. The separate answer sheet, the clock, and the jump from a comprehension passage to a shape sequence are all part of what is being tested, and none of them are rehearsed by topic practice on its own.
What happens in the test room?
Two multiple-choice papers, each set at roughly fifty to sixty minutes. That includes hearing the instructions and going through worked examples, so the productive time is shorter than the number on the timetable implies. Nothing about that is unusual, but it lands badly on a child who has only ever practised without a clock.
Neither paper is a subject on its own. Each mixes English comprehension, verbal reasoning, mathematics and non-verbal reasoning, which includes spatial questions. The split of marks is fixed: half to English and verbal reasoning combined, a quarter to mathematics, a quarter to non-verbal reasoning.
Check this first: no score, no intake figure, no catchment line and no date appears above, since every one of them is set fresh each year by people who are not us and the second-hand versions go out of date quietly. There are exactly two places worth reading:
Queen Mary's High School 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 Queen Mary's High School, 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.
Questions parents ask about Queen Mary's High School
Can boys attend Queen Mary's High School?+
Only in the sixth form. Girls are admitted in Years 7 to 11, and both girls and boys may enter in Year 12. So an application at eleven here is for girls, and boys who want a place join at sixteen alongside the girls already in the school.
Is this the same school as Queen Mary's Grammar School?+
No, although they share a trust. Queen Mary's High School admits girls in Years 7 to 11; Queen Mary's Grammar School admits boys. Both sit in The Mercian Trust and both are in Walsall, and each publishes its own admission arrangements, which is the document that decides offers.
What are the houses named after?+
Female authors. The four houses are Austen, Bronte, Eliot and Shelley, and they carry what the school calls the Spirit of Queen Mary's: creativity, passion, leadership, charity and courage. Its stated aim is to enable each student to achieve excellence in all aspects of their life.
Is the test the same one other grammar schools here use?+
Yes. Queen Mary's High is part of the West Midlands Grammar Schools Partnership, which runs a single entrance test in September of Year 6. One sitting, one result, sent on to every partnership school a family named at registration, so there is no separate paper to hunt down.
Other schools in this consortium
Queen Mary's High School is one of the partnership's Shropshire, Wolverhampton and Walsall schools. The shared entrance test covers all of them, so naming more than one costs a family nothing extra in preparation.
- Wolverhampton Girls' High School, girls, in Wolverhampton.
- Haberdashers' Adams, mixed, in Newport, Shropshire.
- Newport Girls' High School, girls, in Newport, Shropshire.
- Queen Mary's Grammar School, boys, in Walsall.
Where to go next
- The West Midlands 11 plus entrance test, the shared test, and which schools sit inside it.
- 11 plus verbal reasoning question types, codes, letter series and the rest, by type.
- 11 plus English comprehension, how the passage questions are built and marked.
- 11 plus preparation in Year 4, the year reading habits are worth the most.