St Paul's Girls' School

Overview

St Paul’s Girls’ School was founded by the Worshipful Company of Mercers in 1904, using part of the endowment of the foundation set up by John Colet, to create a girls’ school to complement the boy's school he had founded in the sixteenth century. The governors hold proprietorial responsibility, and some are representatives of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London. The curriculum comprises the traditional ingredients of a liberal education with some more modern additions (such as drama GCSE). Every student follows a set curriculum in years 7, 8 and 9 but as they move up the school they have more and more ability to develop their own programme of study. The GCSE curriculum has room for up to four optional subjects and the A-level curriculum consists entirely of options. The 2011 ISI inspection rated the curriculum as "excellent".

Unique Points

St Paul's girls have regularly performed extremely well in A-levels and GCSEs. Over a third of girls at the school get all A*s in their GCSEs and many take extra language or maths GCSEs. In 2012, 99.14% of GCSEs were graded at A*s or As with 89.14% graded at A* alone. This was the highest ever A* percentage achieved by the school and in the country. Gustav Holst was Director of Music at the school during the period he composed his orchestral suites. The school has numerous pupil-run magazines and newspapers: these include, but are not limited to, The Marble, M2, Marmor (the classics magazine, Latin for "marble"), "Words" (the creative writing magazine), and The Foreigner (the modern languages magazine).

Entry Requirements

All girls will come to St Paul's to sit entrance examinations in the subjects they wish to study at AS level. We will shortlist girls for interview based on these examination results. Following success in the entrance examinations, girls are invited back to St Paul's for interviews. These interviews will cover their subject academic performance and their wider interests.