Queen Mary's High School, situated on Upper Forster Street, just outside Walsall town centre, is an all-female selective-education school and entry in Year 7 is by passing an entrance exam. It is twinned with Queen Mary's Grammar School, 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 and is conditional on a minimum grade achievement at GCSE (no fewer than 5 GCSEs above 'B' Grade, including the subjects you wish to take). This policy is similar to that of Queen Mary's Grammar School.
The school recently gained an outstanding level in the Ofsted report.
The school is a Language College and it is compulsory for girls to take one language to GCSE out of French, German, Spanish and Japanese; all girls are assigned to one language when they start year seven, their first language is either French, German or Spanish, or Japanese.In year 8 they are given an additional language - either French, Spanish, German or Japanese.They also visit the place where the language is spoken. The school year beginning in 2009 saw a change in rules for compulsory languages. In past years, it had been a requirement to take both languages for GCSE, but a second language is now optional. The school has recently been awarded Mathematics and Computing College status as well.
Average class sizes in lower school are about 24 girls.
The school is divided into houses named after famous 19th-century female authors - Austen (after Jane Austen), Bronte (after Charlotte Brontë), Eliot (after George Eliot)and Shelley (after Mary Shelley)
After 11 years of being headteacher at the school, Mrs Diana Woods retired at the end of the 2008/09 term, to go and pursue her travels in China, where her husband was working. She was replaced by the deputy headteacher at Wolverhampton Girls School, Mrs Alison Bruton, who is also a Physics teacher and enrichment programme(year 7)to some of the students.
QMHS also has an Old Girl's Club which was formed to promote and maintain contact between former pupils and with the school. It has a membership of over 300 with an active committee who endeavor to support and be involved with the interests of the school whilst maintaining contact with its members through an Annual Reunion Luncheon, annual newsletter and social events. The club is anxious to not to lose touch with those girls who are about to embark upon a new life away from what will hopefully have been an enriching and fulfilling career at the school.
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“Young people of high school age can actually feel themselves changing. Progress is almost tangible. It’s exciting. It stimulates more progress. Nevertheless, growth is not constant and smooth. Erik Erikson quotes an aphorism to describe the formless forming of it. “I ain’t what I ought to be. I ain’t what I’m going to be, but I’m not what I was.””
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“...he sent letters to all the royal provinces, to every province in its own script and to every people in its own language, declaring that every man should be master in his own house.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Esther 1:22.
King Ahasuerus, after his Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command.
“Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And every where that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go;
He followed her to school one day—
That was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play,
To see a lamb at school.”
—Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788–1879)
“The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places how are the
mighty fallen!
Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon;”
—Bible: Hebrew Second Samuel (l. I, 19–20)
“But there are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified Top Secret.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)