Devonport High School for Boys Sixth Form Entry

Devonport High School for Boys is a selective state grammar school in Plymouth whose sixth form is co-educational, so girls may enter at 16 even though the DfE register lists the school's gender of entry as boys. Entry to Year 12 requires an average points score of 6.0 across a candidate's best eight GCSEs and at least grade 5 in English and Mathematics. Year 12 capacity is 150; the published admission number for external students is 20.

Everything below is taken from the school's own determined admission policies, its sixth form prospectus, its published results and its Ofsted report. Where two of those documents disagree — and several do — both versions appear here, with a note on which one governs.

Girls Can Apply at 16+, Even Though Every Register Entry Says Boys

The school teaches boys from Year 7 to Year 11 and admits both sexes into Year 12. That is not a recent or informal arrangement: Ofsted recorded it under its own heading at the inspection of 17 to 18 October 2023, and the school describes it in its own words on a government service. It is, however, almost invisible on the school's website, and it is absent from the record most families check first.

Source: Ofsted inspection report published at dhsb.org; DfE Get Information About Schools; GOV.UK Get School Experience; dhsb.org/results-destinations. Retrieved 16 August 2026.

The register entry is the one to watch, because it feeds the school directories and comparison sites most families read first. You can check it on the DfE's Get Information About Schools record for URN 136496, which gives the gender of entry as boys and carries no sixth-form gender field at all.

Which of those governs? The admission policy does, and it is the strongest evidence of all — because it never mentions gender. The Year 12 policy sets out who may apply as "students in Year 11 at DHSB" and "external students", and applies its minimum entry requirements "to both students in Year 11 at DHSB and external students". No clause restricts external applicants by sex. A girl who meets the requirement is an external student like any other.

One oddity survives in the drafting. The policy's definition of a home address still reads: "A student's home address is defined as the address at which he is normally resident, or if he lives at more than one address, the address at which he lives for the majority of the time." The masculine pronoun is inherited from the Year 7 policy, where it is accurate. In the Year 12 policy it is a drafting leftover, not a restriction — nothing in the criteria turns on it.

For a girl in Plymouth, this matters more than any other fact on this page: 16+ is the only route into Devonport High School for Boys, and the school's own admissions pages will not tell you it exists. If your daughter is looking at Plymouth's selective sixth forms, this one belongs on the list alongside Devonport High School for Girls, which is a separate school with separate arrangements.

What Does an Average Points Score of 6.0 Actually Require?

Most grammar sixth forms publish a grade count: five 6s, or six 5s including English and Maths. Devonport does not. Its Year 12 admission policy for 2027/2028, published in the school's own admissions policy folder, sets a points average and two floors:

"In order to follow a full level three curriculum at DHSB, the applicant needs to have achieved an Average Points Score (APS) of 6.0 or higher from their best eight GCSEs and at least a grade 5 in both English and Mathematics. The minimum entry requirements will apply to both students in Year 11 at DHSB and external students."

The mechanism rewards strength and tolerates one weak result. Eight grades summing to 48 or more clear the bar in any combination, so a candidate with three 8s can carry a 4 and still qualify — provided that 4 is not in English or Mathematics, where a grade 5 is mandatory regardless of the average. That second clause is the one that catches people out, and it is the reason a strong scientist with a weak English grade can be turned away while a more even candidate with a lower total is admitted.

Worked examples calculated by Leading Tuition from the rule as stated in the DHSB Year 12 Admission Policy 2027/2028. Retrieved 16 August 2026.

The average also governs how many A levels a student may take. The prospectus advises three, and adds that "the option of a fourth A level is available to those with an Average Grade of 7.0 or more at GCSE". So 6.0 gets you in; 7.0 is what buys the fourth subject. The school is explicit that it does not regard four as necessary: "Universities make offers based on only three A levels and there is no expectation that students should take four."

The 2026/2027 and 2027/2028 Policies Do Not Say the Same Thing

The school publishes a separate Year 12 admission policy for each admission year, and the two currently on its website differ in one substantive respect. The 2026/2027 policy explains how legacy letter grades convert into points. The 2027/2028 policy drops that paragraph entirely.

Source: DHSB Admission Policy 2026_27 — Year 12 and DHSB Admission Policy 2027-28 — Year 12, both published in the school's admissions policy folders at dhsb.org/admissions. Retrieved 16 August 2026.

The 2027/2028 document governs entry in September 2027, and the consultation on it closed on 11 January 2026, so the text is settled. For almost every applicant the removal changes nothing, because unreformed lettered GCSEs are long gone from mainstream English entry. It matters to a narrow group: applicants holding older overseas or resit certificates graded A* to G, or IGCSE results reported in letters. If that describes your child, the honest position is that the 2027/2028 policy no longer publishes a conversion rule, and the school will apply one at its discretion. Ask sixthform@dhsb.org for it in writing before you rely on a calculation of your own.

A second, milder inconsistency runs between the policy and the prospectus. The policy calls the measure an "Average Points Score (APS)"; the prospectus calls the identical measure an "Average Grade". They describe the same calculation over the same eight subjects at the same threshold, but a parent reading only the prospectus could reasonably think the school means something looser than a points average. The determined policy is the document that governs.

How Many External Year 12 Places Are There Really?

Published admission numbers usually cap an intake. This one does the opposite, and the policy says so in a single sentence that most summaries of the school reproduce incorrectly:

"The capacity for Year 12 is 150. The published admission number (PAN) for students from outside DHSB (external students) is 20 which is the minimum number of external students (who have achieved the minimum entry requirements) that will be admitted."

Read carefully, that is a guarantee rather than a limit. Twenty qualified external students will be admitted whatever happens; the oversubscription criteria only start to bite when external applications exceed the places actually available. How many places are actually available depends on how many of the school's own Year 11 stay on — and the school publishes that figure.

Capacity and admission number from the DHSB Year 12 Admission Policy 2027/2028. Destinations figures from dhsb.org/results, published alongside the 2025 GCSE headlines. The 37-place estimate is ours, not the school's, and assumes the internal retention rate holds. Retrieved 16 August 2026.

Only 113 of a year group of 179 stayed. Nearly a third of the school's own Year 11 went elsewhere — 28 to other sixth forms, 31 to a college, 6 into apprenticeships and 1 into employment, with none leaving education altogether. On that pattern the external intake is not competing for twenty seats; it is filling roughly thirty-seven, of which twenty are promised in advance. Treat that as an estimate, because retention moves year to year and the school does not publish external application volumes. But it is an estimate built from the school's own two numbers, and it points the same way every year the retention rate stays near 63%.

The direction of travel supports it. In a statutory consultation that closed at 9.00am on 7 November 2022, the school proposed "the enlargement of Devonport High School for Boys by 30 places at Post-16 starting in September 2024", bidding into the Department for Education's Post-16 Capacity Fund on the basis that Plymouth would need substantially more post-16 places. A school that has argued for thirty extra sixth form places is not a school looking for reasons to turn qualified external applicants away.

Is There a Test or Interview at 16+? No — Here Is the Whole Process

Some selective sixth forms set a paper or an interview at 16+. Devonport does not. Neither the 2026/2027 nor the 2027/2028 Year 12 policy mentions an assessment, a reference or an interview at any point. The whole of the process is an application form, a set of GCSE results and, where there are more qualified applicants than places, a ranking.

Source: DHSB Year 12 Admission Policy 2027/2028; dhsb.org/sixth-form-admissions; AQA key dates search (source JCQ). Retrieved 16 August 2026.

Two details in that table repay attention. The first is the order of events: applications close on 31 January and outcomes are notified by the end of May, both well before GCSE results exist. An offer made in May is therefore conditional in substance even though the policy does not use the word — it becomes a place only when the results confirm the average points score, which is why confirmation is pinned to the day after internal enrolment rather than to results day itself.

The second is that late applications are considered up to the end of September. That is an unusually forgiving window, and it is the clause that matters most to a student whose grades on 20 August 2026 turn out better than anyone expected, or whose first-choice provider disappoints. It is not a formality — places have to exist — but the door is explicitly open for six weeks after results.

One practical warning. As of 16 August 2026, the "Application Form" link on the school's own Sixth Form Admissions page leads to a Google Form titled "Devonport High School for Boys Application for a Full Time Sixth Form Place from September 2026", and that form returns the message "no longer accepting responses". The same page still leads with the open evening of 2 December 2025. Neither is a live route for September 2027 entry. Email sixthform@dhsb.org and ask to be told when the 2027 form opens, rather than assuming an absent form means the school is not recruiting.

Where You Live Decides Nothing at 16+, and Almost Nothing at 11+

Plymouth families frequently ask about the catchment. There is not one, at either entry point, and the confusion is partly the school's own doing. Its Post-16 Capacity Fund consultation uses the phrase in passing — "The school catchment area also includes parts of Devon and Cornwall (aproximately 30% of the current school intake is from these areas)" — while neither determined admission policy contains a catchment criterion of any kind. The consultation document is describing where pupils happen to live. The policies are what decide who gets in.

Source: DHSB Year 7 Admission Policy 2027/2028 and DHSB Year 12 Admission Policy 2027/2028. Retrieved 16 August 2026.

The comparison shows what actually changes at 16. Geography is irrelevant at both stages, which is unusual among English grammar schools and is why the school draws roughly 30% of its intake from Devon and Cornwall. What disappears is the test; what replaces it is a GCSE ranking that sits below looked-after status, premium status and exceptional need in the order of priority. A student in receipt of the pupil or service premium is ranked above a student with a higher points score. Families comparing routes may find the same absence of a catchment at Colyton Grammar School and Churston Ferrers Grammar School, the other two Devon selective sixth forms within reach of a Plymouth commute.

Subject Requirements the Admission Policy Never Mentions

Clearing 6.0 gets a student into the sixth form. It does not get them onto a particular A level, and the policy is blunt about the distinction: "An offer of admission is to the Sixth Form and not a guarantee of studying a specific course." The thresholds that decide courses are in the prospectus, subject by subject, and they are considerably higher than the entry average in the subjects most likely to matter.

Source: DHSB Sixth Form Prospectus, subject pages. Retrieved 16 August 2026.

Two consequences follow. A candidate at exactly 6.0 whose Maths grade is a 6 is admissible to the sixth form and admissible to Mathematics only "individually", possibly with extra tuition attached; Further Mathematics is closed at that grade. And a science-facing applicant needs 6s across two sciences and Maths before any of the average matters, which in practice sets a higher bar than the published entry requirement for anyone aiming at medicine, engineering or physical sciences.

Where the school cannot timetable a combination it turns to a consortium. It is a founder member of the Link Partnership with Devonport High School for Girls, Notre Dame Roman Catholic School and Plymouth High School for Girls, and the prospectus states that such places are "negotiated in September by the Heads of Sixth Form" — after enrolment, not before. Teaching is five hours per subject per week, classes run from 10 to 25 with an average of about 17, and tutor groups hold 25 to 30 students.

If the Grades Do Not Land on 20 August 2026

GCSE results for the June 2026 series are released to students on 20 August 2026 from 08:00, according to AQA's key dates calendar, which takes the date from JCQ; A level results were released on 13 August 2026. A student holding a place at DHSB whose results fall below the average points score, or below a grade 5 in English or Mathematics, is in a defined position rather than an ambiguous one.

The first route is the school itself. Late applications are considered up to the end of September, and the policy does not restrict that window to students who applied on time. If a place is refused, both the student and the parent have a right of appeal to an independent panel, and Plymouth City Council hears appeals on the school's behalf; the appeal timetable the school published for September 2026 entry allowed until 30 April 2026 after a 2 March 2026 allocation, with on-time appeals heard within 40 school days. Expect the 2027 timetable to follow the same shape.

The second is resitting. English Language and Mathematics are the two grades with a hard floor, and both can be retaken in the November series, which puts a corrected grade in hand in time for a late application in the following academic year rather than the current one. That is a real cost in time, and it is worth weighing against the alternative providers in the city before committing to it.

The third is to look sideways. Twenty-eight of the school's own Year 11 chose another sixth form and thirty-one chose a college in the most recently published destinations round, so the local alternatives are neither theoretical nor a mark of failure. What the school offers against them is a sixth-form provision Ofsted graded Outstanding in October 2023 while grading the school Good overall, an A level cohort where 58.5% of grades were A* to B in 2025, and a 16 to 19 bursary of £1,200 a year for students in care, care leavers and those on qualifying benefits. Our guide to DHSB at 11+ covers the school's selective intake in detail, and the 2026 11+ guide sets out the test itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Reviewed against the DHSB Year 12 Admission Policies for 2026/2027 and 2027/2028, the DHSB Year 7 Admission Policy 2027/2028, the sixth form prospectus, the school's results and destinations pages, its Post-16 Capacity Fund consultation document, its Ofsted report of 17 to 18 October 2023, the DfE register entry for URN 136496 and AQA's key dates calendar, all retrieved on 16 August 2026. Figures marked as estimates are ours and are labelled as such.