Devonport High School for Boys 11+ Guide 2026: Admissions, Exam & Prep

Devonport High School for Boys (DHSB) is a fully selective state grammar school for boys aged 11 to 18, based in Stoke, Plymouth, and tracing its founding to 1896 in the naval town of Devonport. For September 2027 entry, boys currently in Year 5 must register for the school’s 11+ entrance tests by 31 August 2026, sit two test papers on consecutive Saturdays in September 2026, and reach the required qualifying standard to be considered for one of the school’s 180 Year 7 places. From September 2026, DHSB is also moving, alongside Devonport High School for Girls and Plymouth High School for Girls, to a shared Quest Assessments testing arrangement across Plymouth’s three grammar schools — while retaining its own distinctive school-set English writing paper as an additional qualifying hurdle unique to boys’ entry. This guide covers the school’s naval history and character, exactly how Plymouth’s shared testing arrangement works, the 2026 key dates, the oversubscription criteria, and how to prepare effectively.

Key Facts: Devonport High School for Boys, Plymouth

About Devonport High School for Boys: History and Naval Character

Devonport High School for Boys owes its origins directly to the naval town it is named after. The school was founded on 16 January 1896 by Alonzo Rider on Albert Road in Stoke, Devonport, at a time when Devonport was one of the Royal Navy’s three great home dockyard towns (alongside Portsmouth and Chatham), and the surrounding area’s economy and civic life revolved almost entirely around the naval base and dockyard. The school was created specifically — and unusually explicitly for a Victorian grammar school — “to meet the needs of boys in Devonport and the surrounding area who sought a career in the Royal Navy, as engineers and civil servants,” giving it a founding purpose tied directly to the naval dockyard economy rather than the more generic classical curriculum of many contemporary grammar schools.

The school subsequently moved to its present site on Paradise Road, occupying the former Stoke Military Hospital, a substantial building originally constructed in 1797 to treat sailors and Royal Marines serving at the adjoining Devonport dockyard during the Napoleonic Wars. That a Victorian grammar school for the sons of dockyard workers and naval families came to occupy a former Georgian naval hospital is a distinctive piece of local history, and it means DHSB’s current buildings carry naval associations that considerably predate the school itself. Plymouth’s wider identity as a naval city — still home to HMNB Devonport, the largest naval base in Western Europe — continues to shape the character and catchment of the school today, with a meaningful proportion of families connected to the Royal Navy, the dockyard or the broader defence and maritime sector.

DHSB converted to academy status in March 2011, shortly after receiving an Outstanding rating from Ofsted in February 2011 — one of relatively few schools to convert to academy status while already rated Outstanding under the pre-2012 inspection framework. The school’s most recent inspection, in October 2023, resulted in a Good overall rating, with Outstanding judgements awarded for behaviour and attitudes, personal development, and Sixth Form provision — a pattern consistent with many grammar schools that were rated Outstanding under the older Ofsted framework and later re-inspected as Good under the current, more demanding framework introduced in 2019. The school has been led by headteacher Dan (D J J) Roberts since 2015, following earlier long-serving heads including N M Pettit (1993–2008) and J L Cresswell (1953–1974).

Devonport High School for Boys is single-sex throughout its full 11–18 age range, including the Sixth Form — a point of contrast with several other English grammar schools (including Carre’s Grammar School in Sleaford and Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Penrith) that admit boys only up to Year 11 but run a co-educational Sixth Form through a formal partnership with a neighbouring girls’ school. DHSB’s sister grammar school in the same naval city, Devonport High School for Girls, is a distinct and separately administered school with its own site, admissions process and governance — the two schools share a name, a city and, from September 2026, a testing provider, but are not the same institution and should not be confused with one another.

Do Plymouth’s Grammar Schools Share a Common 11+ Test?

This is a genuinely important question for Plymouth families, because the honest answer is: partly, and it is changing. Plymouth has three state grammar schools — Devonport High School for Boys, Devonport High School for Girls (DHSG), and Plymouth High School for Girls (PHSG). Historically, each school administered its own 11+ testing arrangements, with DHSG and PHSG already operating a shared testing arrangement for girls’ entry, registering candidates once for consideration at either or both girls’ schools. According to the schools’ own published guidance, from September 2026 all three Plymouth grammar schools are moving to Quest Assessments as a common exam provider, with reports from independent 11+ specialists indicating that a single registration will cover all three schools — meaning a family registering their child once should, in principle, be able to be considered across DHSB, DHSG and PHSG as preferred.

However, this shared arrangement is narrower than the large regional consortia found elsewhere in England, such as the 14-school Lincolnshire Consortium or the wider London/home-counties consortium groups. It covers only three schools in a single city, rather than a whole county, and — distinctively — Devonport High School for Boys requires an additional, school-set English writing paper that DHSG and PHSG do not require in the same way. According to the school’s own admissions FAQ, a boy must specifically pass this DHSB-marked writing component to qualify, in addition to his Quest Assessments reading and mathematics scores. In practical terms, this means a boy applying to DHSB cannot rely solely on strong performance in the shared Quest Assessments papers: he must also produce a piece of writing strong enough to satisfy DHSB’s own markers, a requirement that has no direct equivalent at DHSG or PHSG. Families should always check the current year’s official guidance directly on the DHSB admissions page, since testing arrangements for Plymouth’s grammar schools have changed for the 2026 cycle and may continue to evolve.

It is also worth being clear that Plymouth is its own unitary local authority, separate from Devon County Council, even though the city sits within the historic and ceremonial county of Devon and is often grouped with Devon’s other grammar schools (Colyton Grammar School, Torquay Boys’ Grammar School and Torquay Girls’ Grammar School) in regional 11+ guides. Families applying to DHSB submit their Common Application Form through Plymouth City Council, not Devon County Council, and Plymouth’s coordinated admissions scheme and closing dates apply, even though families living just across the city boundary in South Hams or further into Devon can and do apply to DHSB, since the school has no catchment area.

What Are the Key 2026 Dates for Devonport High School for Boys Admissions?

For boys seeking September 2027 entry to Year 7 at DHSB, the following 2026 timetable applies:

Registration for the 11+ tests themselves is completed through DHSB’s own online form, but families must separately submit a Common Application Form to Plymouth City Council listing all their preferred schools before the 31 October 2026 deadline. Missing the CAF deadline means a boy will not be considered through the coordinated admissions process, even if he sat and qualified in the 11+ tests. Official registration and admissions arrangements are published on the DHSB admissions page and the Plymouth City Council school admissions guide. For the national context, see our 11+ exam dates 2025–2026 guide.

How Does the Oversubscription Criteria Work at Devonport High School for Boys?

With 180 Year 7 places and no defined catchment area, DHSB is regularly oversubscribed among qualifying boys. According to the school’s published admission arrangements, once boys with an Education, Health and Care Plan naming DHSB and looked-after or previously looked-after children who reach the qualifying standard have been admitted, remaining places are allocated in broadly the following order:

1. Children with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) naming Devonport High School for Boys
2. Looked-after and previously looked-after children who reach the qualifying standard
3. Up to 174 places offered to the highest-scoring qualifying boys, ranked strictly by test score
4. Up to 6 further places reserved for qualifying boys registered for Pupil Premium
5. Any remaining qualifying boys, ranked by score, with ties broken in order by: Pupil Premium/Service Premium status, children of DHSB staff, the DHSB English writing paper mark, straight-line distance from home to school, and finally random allocation

This tiered structure — the bulk of places (174) going straight to the highest scorers, with a small, separate allocation (up to 6) reserved for Pupil Premium-eligible boys who still meet the qualifying standard — is a distinctive feature of DHSB’s admissions policy and reflects a deliberate effort to widen access to the school for qualifying boys from lower-income households, similar in spirit to (though structured differently from) the Pupil Premium priority categories used at some other English grammar schools. Because there is no catchment area, boys living anywhere — in Plymouth itself, across the Tamar in Cornwall, or further into Devon — can apply to DHSB provided they reach the qualifying standard in the tests. In practice, distance only becomes relevant as one of the final tie-breaks once score-based ranking and the other priority categories have been exhausted, so most successful applicants live within a reasonably commutable distance of Plymouth.

What Does the Devonport High School for Boys 11+ Test Actually Cover?

The DHSB 11+ process is built around three components, sat across two Saturdays in September. From September 2026, two of these are set by Quest Assessments, the provider Plymouth’s three grammar schools are moving to in common: a multiple-choice English reading paper, and a multiple-choice Mathematics paper. These two papers are used to produce a ranked score for every candidate, similar in function to the standardised reasoning papers used in many other English 11+ regions, though DHSB’s test content is built around reading comprehension and mathematics rather than the verbal and non-verbal reasoning question types common in consortia such as Lincolnshire’s.

The third component is distinctive to DHSB: a school-set English writing paper, marked internally by the school rather than by Quest Assessments. According to DHSB’s own admissions FAQ, this writing component is not simply folded into the overall ranked score — a boy is specifically assessed on whether he has passed the writing paper, functioning as an additional qualifying hurdle alongside his Quest Assessments performance. This means a boy who scores very well on the multiple-choice reading and mathematics papers but produces weak, underdeveloped writing may still not qualify, regardless of his overall ranked score — a genuinely important distinction for families more used to purely multiple-choice regional 11+ tests, and one that is easy to overlook if preparation focuses only on reasoning-style practice papers.

What Is the Academic Record and Sixth Form at Devonport High School for Boys Like?

Devonport High School for Boys performs strongly against local and national averages for a selective school. In its most recent published performance data, the school recorded an Attainment 8 score of 69.3, with 98.9% of pupils achieving grade 5 or above in English and Maths GCSE, and a Progress 8 score of +0.30 — figures that placed the school among the top-performing state schools nationally in independent league table rankings. These results are consistent with the school’s Good Ofsted rating from October 2023, which specifically praised the school’s Sixth Form provision as Outstanding, alongside Outstanding judgements for behaviour and attitudes and personal development.

DHSB runs a substantial Sixth Form, remaining single-sex through to Year 13, in contrast to some other English grammar schools that open their Sixth Form to a neighbouring girls’ school through a joint partnership arrangement. Notable alumni reflect the breadth of a school now well over a century old, including former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester Sir Martin Harris, former Chief Executive of the Crown Prosecution Service Richard Foster, and Rear-Admiral Terence Loughran, who commanded HMS Ark Royal — a fitting continuation of the school’s founding purpose of preparing Devonport boys for distinguished naval and public service careers.

Beyond the classroom, DHSB offers a broad extracurricular programme spanning sport, music, drama, Combined Cadet Force and a wide range of clubs and societies, reflecting both the school’s academic focus and its historic naval-town character. For families comparing DHSB’s results with other selective schools nationally, see our 2026 grammar school league tables guide.

How Should My Child Prepare for the 11+ at Devonport High School for Boys?

Preparation for DHSB should cover all three components of the school’s 11+ process: the Quest Assessments English reading paper, the Quest Assessments Mathematics paper, and DHSB’s own English writing paper. Because the Quest Assessments papers are new to Plymouth’s grammar schools from September 2026, families should treat any older practice material based on previous test formats as a general guide to skills rather than an exact match for question style, and check DHSB’s own current guidance and any official familiarisation sessions for the most accurate picture of the 2026 format.

English reading rewards both a strong vocabulary and genuine reading comprehension — the ability to infer meaning, identify a writer’s intent, and answer precisely under multiple-choice conditions where several plausible-looking answers are deliberately offered. Wide reading across fiction, non-fiction and quality journalism remains the strongest long-term foundation. Mathematics preparation should be built on rock-solid Key Stage 2 arithmetic — times tables, fractions, decimals, percentages and the four operations applied quickly and accurately — layered with reasoning-style word problems that reward careful reading as much as calculation speed.

The English writing paper deserves particular attention precisely because it is easy to under-prepare for if a family focuses primarily on multiple-choice practice. Since DHSB is reported to treat this as a genuine pass/fail hurdle rather than simply one score among several, boys need structured practice planning, drafting and refining short pieces of writing under timed conditions, with clear attention to structure, vocabulary range, accuracy and a distinct authorial voice — skills that develop through repeated, feedback-driven practice rather than through generic reasoning drills.

Given how competitive the 180 places at DHSB typically are, and the distinctive three-part structure of its 11+ process, a personalised one-to-one approach is particularly valuable: it lets a tutor identify precisely which of the three components — reading, mathematics or writing — a boy is weakest in, and design a programme that closes that specific gap rather than relying on generic practice alone. At Leading Tuition, our specialist 11+ tutors support families across Plymouth, the wider Devon and Cornwall area, and beyond, including through online tuition. For general background on how 11+ testing works across England’s different selective regions, see our guide to what the 11+ exam involves.