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.
Famous quotes containing the words high school, queen, mary, high and/or school:
“Someday soon, we hope that all middle and high school will have required courses in child rearing for girls and boys to help prepare them for one of the most important and rewarding tasks of their adulthood: being a parent. Most of us become parents in our lifetime and it is not acceptable for young people to be steeped in ignorance or questionable folklore when they begin their critical journey as mothers and fathers.”
—James P. Comer (20th century)
“We used chamber-pots a good deal.... My mother ... loved to repeat: “When did the queen reign over China?” This whimsical and harmless scatological pun was my first introduction to the wonderful world of verbal transformations, and also a first perception that a joke need not be funny to give pleasure.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Miss Mary Emerson is here,—the youngest person in Concord, though about eighty,—and the most apprehensive of a genuine thought; earnest to know of your inner life; most stimulating society; and exceedly witty withal. She says they called her old when she was young, and she has never grown any older. I wish you could see her.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The most useful man in the most useful world, so long as only commodity was served, would remain unsatisfied. But, as fast as he sees beauty, life acquires a very high value.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“School days, school days; dear old golden rule days.
Readin’ and ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic; taught to the tune of a hick’ry stick.”
—Will D. Cobb (1876–1930)