Portsmouth High School (Southsea)

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Portsmouth High School is an independent, selective, fee-paying day school for girls founded in 1882, one of the 26 sister schools of the Girls' Day School Trust. GDST schools were founded in the nineteenth century with the aim of ensuring that girls were offered a good education, similar to that offered to boys. Portsmouth High School moved to its present premises on Kent Road in Southsea in 1886; Dovercourt, the house built and lived in by the Southsea architect Thomas Ellis Owen, was acquired for the Junior School in 1926. During World War II the school was evacuated to two country houses in Hampshire, Hinton Ampner and Adhurst St Mary, and became a boarding school for six years. The school became fully independent in the mid-1970s when the direct grant scheme was discontinued.

As of 2006, Portsmouth High School has around 630 pupils, ranging from three-year-olds in the nursery at Dovercourt, to the sixth-formers, whose centre is another building ascribed to Owen. All Upper Sixth passed three or more A-levels in 2005.^[1]