Welcome to Norwich High School for Girls

We are proud of our girls, our community, our heritage and our school.

We aim to give our students a broad range of opportunities to flourish by ensuring they are nurtured, challenged and empowered to be the very best they can be. We do this by providing a bespoke environment where girls are known as individuals and are confident to be themselves.

Our Values

The values which motivate Norwich High School for Girls and drive our behaviour are:

Girls first

Our girls are known and valued as individuals.

Our girls benefit from the fact that everything is designed and developed to meet their educational and pastoral needs, so they can be their very best whilst here at school and beyond.

We are ambitious for every student

Our girls are intellectually curious, equipped to meet academic challenge and innovate.

They benefit from the opportunities of our pioneering curriculum.

Our education is about more than exams

Our girls fulfil their potential.

They become outstanding scholars, sportswomen, musicians, actors and are inspired to explore a wide range of pursuits.

Community matters to us

Our girls contribute to and benefit from the unique community fostered by staff and students.

They positively support the lives of others in school and the wider community; they are outward looking and networked.

Norwich High School for Girls is an award-winning independent day school for girls aged 3 to 18 set across an expansive 14 acre site in central Norwich on leafy Newmarket Road. Since our creation in 1875 by the Girls’ Public Day School Company (now the Girls’ Day School Trust or GDST), we have been Norwich and Norfolk’s leader in girls’ education.

With around 600 pupils, we have a long tradition of fostering academic success and a strong record of attaining first choice university places; but we are about more than just exam results. 

Ensuring each girl is valued and supported is at the heart of what we do. We are immensely proud of everything our students achieve; whether exam results, sporting, musical or creative endeavours or community service and charity work.

We provide a distinctive, girl-friendly environment by design across the whole school ecosystem: classroom, curriculum and culture.

We give girls rich opportunities to develop into confident, happy and aspirational young women with the ambition and resilience to reach their goals and make a positive difference.

GDST Spotlight: Meet Estelle

Norwich High School for Girls is the Best Independent Secondary School in Norfolk 2024

  • Senior School
  • Sixth Form
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Norwich High School for Girls awarded The Sunday Times East Anglian Independent Secondary School Of The Year 2023

  • Senior School
  • Sixth Form
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“I personally find that what makes Norwich High so brilliant, alongside the quality education and stellar grades, is the unique culture of the place itself.”

Senior School Student

Our history

Norwich High School remains true to its founding principles – we offer girls excellence in education, experience and opportunity – and we have always been keen to embrace fun and allow girls to flourish.

1873 onwards

In the twenty first century it is difficult to imagine a society without education for girls. In 1873 a group of Norwich citizens, discussing the lack of girls’ education in the city were faced with just such a society. Consequently they approached the Girls’ Public Day School Trust, asking them to found a School in the Norwich; the result being Norwich High School for Girls. 

A GDST first

Norwich High School for Girls, the first Trust School established outside London, opened on Monday, February 22nd 1875 at Churchman House in St Giles. With Miss Benson as Headmistress, 61 girls were present on the first day. Assembled in the largest room, Miss Benson opened the school with verses from the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians.

It may not seem radical now, but to Miss Kate Cooper, one of those original 61, it was a transformative day; “it is not easy to realise how great was the innovation that we should be thus assembled together in a public school”.