King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls is a grammar school for girls aged 11–18 located in Handsworth, Birmingham, England. It is part of the Foundation of the Schools of King Edward VI. The school was founded in 1883 as King Edward's Aston on the site where its brother school, King Edward VI Aston School, remains to this day. In 2019 there were 1086 girls on roll. Pupils must pass an 11-plus entrance exam to get into the school. The King Edward Schools are fiercely competitive to get admission to, as only 1 in 10 is successful in passing the entrance exam. The King Edward VI Foundation holds its exams at the same time, and generally a candidate will sit one exam for multiple schools within the foundation. Notable leaver's destinations from the school in previous years have been Birmingham, Aston, Oxford, and Nottingham universities. The leavers' destinations by course were mainly medicine, dentistry, law, business studies and computer science.
The school has a record of high attainment and was deemed 'outstanding' in its last Ofsted inspection. In 2019, the Birmingham Mail ranked it as the second best school in the West Midlands, down from first place in 2018. Since 2017, GCSE pupils at King Edward VI Handsworth have consistently achieved exceptionally good results. According to the Times League Table, King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls was ranked 13 in all of the United Kingdom.
The main building is Grade II* listed.
History
When King Edward VI Grammar School for Girls opened in 1883 the first head was Margaret Nimmo who had previously been second mistress and the first graduate teacher at Blackheath High School. The school was then in the Aston area of Birmingham and it had 300 girls to educate. Half of the schools scholarships were given to girls from public elementary schools. The education approaches were information, Rote learning and competition.
Margaret Nimmo moved her school to Rosehill Road in Handsworth where it has merged with two others
In the beginning, the sixth form was very small with as few as 6 pupils in a year. Transfer to King Edward VI High School for Girls for sixth form studies was not unusual. It uses red brick, ashlar dressings and a plain tiled roof.
- Sarah Manners, actress
- Flora Spencer-Longhurst, actress
- Zarah Sultana, former Labour MP, now independent with Jeremy Corbyn
A society for alumni, the Handsworth Old Edwardians' Society (HOES), has been running since the turn of the 20th century. The society holds meetings for former pupils of all ages three times a year at the school.