Queen Mary's High School, situated on Upper Forster Street, just outside

Walsall Walsall (, or ; locally ) is a market town and administrative centre in the West Midlands County, England. Historically part of Staffordshire, it is located north-west of Birmingham, east of Wolverhampton and from Lichfield. Walsall is th ...

town centre, is an all-female selective-education and grammar school and entry in Year 7 is by passing an entrance exam. It is twinned with

Queen Mary's Grammar School Queen Mary's Grammar School (QMGS) is a boys' grammar school with academy status located on Sutton Road, Walsall, England, about a mile from the town centre and one of the oldest schools in the country. The sixth form is coeducational. Admiss ...

, and like the Grammar School is part of the Queen Mary's Foundation. The main body of the school is girls only, but the Sixth Form is open to applicants of both sexes conditional on a minimum grade achievement at GCSE (no fewer than 7 GCSEs above 'B' Grade). This policy is similar to that of Queen Mary's Grammar School. However, there are a very small number of males who attend the school- no more than ten in a school of 1000. The school gained an outstanding level in the Ofsted report when it was last inspected in 2007. The school was a

Language College Language Colleges were introduced in 1995 as part of the specialist schools programme (SSP) in the United Kingdom. The system enabled secondary schools to specialise in certain fields, in this case, modern foreign languages. Schools that succes ...

and it is compulsory for pupils to take Mandarin, French, German, or Spanish from year seven to GCSE level; Japanese had until recently also been an option. In Year 8, pupils begin studying an additional language. Pupils visit Spain, France or Germany in Year 8, according to which of these languages they are studying. The school also sponsors exchanges with schools in Germany and Japan. Pupils can also take Latin or Greek every three years as an extra-curricular activity, culminating in an additional GCSE. Class sizes in the lower school are currently around 24 girls, with Design Technology classes being in groups of 16. However, Year 7 of the 13/14 academic year, and all subsequent years, have class sizes of around 30, as the school has increased the number of students it can take. Sixth-form classes have a minimum of about 8 students and a maximum of 20. The school is divided into houses named after famous 19th-century female authors - Austen (after Jane Austen), Bronte (after Emily Brontë), Eliot (after

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

) and Shelley (after

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel '' Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also ...

), the latter being a new house in the 2012/13 academic year. Each house has a member of staff in charge of it, a captain from Year 13 (upper sixth form) and a vice-captain from Year 12 (lower sixth form). Alumni of the school include

Meera Syal Meera Syal FRSL (born Feroza Syal; 27 June 1961) is a English comedian, writer, playwright, singer, journalist and actress. She rose to prominence as one of the team that created '' Goodness Gracious Me'' and portraying Sanjeev's grandmother, ...

Notable staff

* Barbara Foxley was head hereBeddoe, D. (2004-09-23). Foxley, Barbara (1860–1958), educationist and campaigner for women's rights. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 29 Jan. 2018, se
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References

External links

School website

history of the school
{{authority control Educational institutions established in 1893 Academies in Walsall Grammar schools in Walsall Girls' schools in the West Midlands (county) 1893 establishments in England