Devonport High School for Girls 11 Plus Entry: 2027 Test Dates, GCSE Results & Ofsted Rating

Devonport High School for Girls (DHSG) is a selective girls' grammar school in Peverell, Plymouth, founded in 1908 and one of only three grammar schools in the city. Entry to Year 7 is decided through two invigilated 11+ examinations known as the Quest Assessment, sat on two Saturdays each September for entry the following September — meaning the September 2026 test dates below govern places starting in September 2027. This guide sets out DHSG's own published dates and admissions mechanics, its independently sourced 2025 GCSE results measured against Plymouth and England averages, and the current state of its Ofsted record, including a February 2025 inspection whose headline grade has not yet been made public. Every fact below is sourced directly from DHSG's own admissions pages, the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools service, the government's Compare School Performance service, Ofsted's own report portal, and Plymouth City Council's admissions guidance.

Devonport High School for Girls at a Glance

DHSG is a non-fee-paying, academically selective girls' grammar school that converted to academy status on 1 April 2011. The table below draws together the school's core identifying facts as recorded by the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools service.

Two figures in that table are worth pausing on. The actual roll of 971 pupils sits well above the school's notional capacity of 840, meaning DHSG is operating significantly over its published site capacity — a useful indicator of sustained demand for places, though it does not change the Year 7 admission number of 158, which is fixed independently each admissions cycle. And with 74 pupils (10.2% of roll) known to be eligible for free school meals, DHSG's intake profile is broadly comparable to many selective grammar schools nationally, where free school meal eligibility typically runs below the local authority average.

11+ Registration and Test Dates for September 2027 Entry

DHSG publishes its admissions timetable directly on its own website, and the dates below are taken from that page rather than from a third-party summary. Because places offered in September 2027 are decided by exams sat almost exactly a year earlier, families need to register the summer before Year 6 begins.

Attendance on both Saturdays is compulsory: the school's own guidance is explicit that "you must ensure your daughter is available on both days to sit the tests," since the two papers together make up the full assessment used for ranking. Families should treat the 31 August, 12 noon registration deadline as final — DHSG's own FAQ page confirms that missing the registration window closes off the standard route into the process for that admissions cycle. For the most current version of these dates, always check DHSG's own Application Process page directly, since exact dates are set and occasionally adjusted by the school itself.

What Does the Quest Assessment 11+ Test Actually Cover?

DHSG uses the Quest Assessment, and its own 11+ FAQ page is unusually direct about what the test does and does not include. Verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and spatial reasoning are explicitly not tested, and the English paper no longer includes a free-writing element — both changes that some third-party tutoring sites and older guides still get wrong. The assessment instead concentrates on English comprehension and mathematics, split across two components:

Across the two maths sections combined, candidates answer 60 questions in total, split between a shorter fluency-focused section and a longer reasoning-focused section. Perhaps the single most important fact for anxious parents is that there is no "pass mark" for the DHSG 11+: the school's own FAQ page states this without qualification. Because the test is not marked against a fixed threshold, a candidate is never simply "passing" or "failing" against an absolute standard — her result only matters relative to every other candidate's combined score across both Saturdays, which is what determines allocation of the 158 available places.

How Are Places Allocated? PAN, No Catchment, and the DHSG/PHSG Link

DHSG's Year 7 admission number is 158, and because there is no pass mark, places are allocated by ranking every candidate's combined score across both examination Saturdays from highest to lowest, then offering places down that ranking until all 158 places are filled. One detail families frequently misunderstand is the relationship between DHSG and Plymouth High School for Girls (PHSG), the city's other girls' grammar school: DHSG's own FAQ confirms that "both girls' grammar schools use the same test papers and hold the exams on the same days," and that a family only needs to register to sit the exam at one of the two schools — the resulting score is then used by both schools when each separately decides its own offers.

DHSG operates no catchment area, so where a family lives does not affect eligibility to apply or sit the test. Instead, oversubscription is governed by Plymouth's shared grammar school admissions framework. Every grammar school in the city, DHSG included, must give the highest priority in its oversubscription criteria to looked-after and previously looked-after children, ahead of any other criterion. Some independent tutoring sites claim that free school meal eligibility acts as an additional tie-break at DHSG specifically; that claim could not be corroborated against DHSG's own published admission arrangements, which name looked-after and previously looked-after children as the top priority and do not mention free school meal status as a separate tie-break category — families should treat any such claim with caution and verify directly with the school before relying on it.

GCSE Results: How Does DHSG Compare to Plymouth and England?

DHSG's GCSE outcomes are among the strongest in the South West, and the government's own Compare School Performance service makes it possible to see exactly how far ahead of local and national averages the school sits. The 2025 published figures below compare DHSG directly against the Plymouth local authority average and the England average across five key headline measures.

The scale of the gap is worth stating plainly: DHSG's Attainment 8 score of 73.8 is more than 27 points clear of both the Plymouth and England averages, and 97.6% of DHSG pupils achieve grade 5 or above in English and maths compared with under half of pupils across Plymouth and England as a whole. The EBacc entry rate of 87.0% is more than triple the Plymouth figure of 27.7%, reflecting DHSG's academic curriculum structure — the vast majority of pupils are entered for the full suite of EBacc subjects rather than a narrower option set. Every single leaver in the 2025 cohort progressed into a sustained post-16 destination, a full outcome measure that few schools in any local authority achieve. None of this data can be found in one place on any of the top five ranking search results for this school; it has to be pulled directly from the Department for Education's Compare School Performance service, which we have done here so families do not have to.

Ofsted Rating: What's Actually Published Right Now?

Ofsted's own report portal shows that DHSG's most recent inspection took place on 11 February 2025, with the resulting report published on 6 March 2025. This is important for families to know because it means the school has been inspected more recently than the headline grade currently in wide circulation suggests — but at the time of research, no headline Ofsted grade has yet been made public for that February 2025 visit. The rating field on the Department for Education's Get Information about Schools service is currently unpopulated for this inspection, meaning the overall effectiveness judgement has not been released in the standard public channel families typically check.

The last full published grading dates to an earlier inspection on 19 November 2019, when DHSG was rated Good overall, with the higher grade of Outstanding awarded specifically for both Behaviour and attitudes and Personal development. Families researching DHSG online should be cautious of any third-party page still quoting that 2019 Good rating as though it were current and unchanged — the school has since been reinspected, and the most accurate statement at the time of writing is that the post-2025 grade is simply not yet public. We recommend checking Ofsted's own report page for DHSG directly for the latest status before treating any rating as current.

Practice Exam vs Real Exam: What's Optional and What's Capped

DHSG also offers a practice exam ahead of the real 11+ examinations, and its own FAQ page is clear about two important limits on it. First, places on the practice exam are capped: registration closes either on a specified date in May of the same year, or once 170 spaces have been filled, whichever happens first — meaning families who wait too long may find the practice sitting is already full well before the real exam dates in September. Second, and just as importantly, the practice exam result carries no weight whatsoever in the real admissions process: DHSG states directly that "the results of the Practice exam do not get considered in any way when school places are being allocated."

In practical terms, the practice exam functions purely as a familiarisation opportunity — a chance for a candidate to experience real exam conditions, timing and question style at DHSG itself before the Saturdays that actually count in September. Families who cannot secure one of the 170 practice places, or who miss the May cut-off, are not disadvantaged in the real allocation process in any formal sense, since the two are entirely disconnected by the school's own account. The value of the practice sitting is confidence and familiarity, not a diagnostic score that feeds into the real outcome.

Plymouth's Three Grammar Schools

Plymouth City Council's own admissions guidance states plainly that "Plymouth has 3 Grammar Schools." Alongside DHSG, the city has Devonport High School for Boys and Plymouth High School for Girls — the school with which DHSG shares its exam papers and test dates, as covered above. Because all three schools sit within the same city-wide admissions framework, oversubscription criteria and the priority given to looked-after and previously looked-after children apply consistently across all three, even though each school sets and manages its own admission number and offer process independently.

Families comparing options across Devon's wider selective landscape may also find it useful to look beyond Plymouth. Leading Tuition also covers Colyton Grammar School and the Torbay grammar schools, both in East Devon, for families weighing DHSG against other selective options within reach of the county. For families who have already read our earlier DHSG 11+ preparation blog post covering exam-day strategy and subject-by-subject revision advice, this page is designed to sit alongside it as the reference for official dates, allocation mechanics and independently verified outcome data — rather than repeating the same preparation content twice.

Frequently Asked Questions About Devonport High School for Girls 11+ Entry