Opinions on Hereford cathedral/MSJ/ Denmark Road high schools

[AllieLou]

We are considering our secondary school options for our eldest who will start senior school in sept 2026. We are based in Herefordshire and options include Hereford cathedral school, Denmark Road High School in Gloucester and Malvern St James in Malvern which are all doable in terms of commute/bus routes.
Does anyone have any recent experience of these schools? Any threads I have found on them are pretty old and schools change!
I see MSJ is going co ed this September which makes it more appealing to us. Our daughter is bright and sporty and I’m concerned DR could be too focussed just on grades.

I wouldn’t describe DRHS as too focused on grades. The year 10 welcome talk made it very clear that they don’t want girls stopping extra curricular activities in year 10/11 to focus on studying. How sporty the school itself is probably depends on whether your DD likes the sports they play.

They have a lot of clever girls, lots of them work hard, but they run a huge extra curricular programme, with their “Discover+” lessons (essentially clubs which run in several timetables lessons a week). They’ve been very supportive of DD’s training & competing outside school too.

No school is perfect, but there are things I really like- homework has to be set with a minimum of 7 days to complete so you can plan and won’t get caught out by a last minute addition (really important if you have lots of sport outside school). No homework over holidays.

I would look carefully at travel though. In year 7 we had a school bus from our village. We had less than 24hrs notice before day 1 of year 8 that they were cutting the route! With the new priority for local girls it will be interesting to see how demand for the various school busses changes over the next few years, so I would strongly advise a back up plan that you’d be prepared to use for years just in case.

I don’t know the other schools you’re looking at, but we’re very happy with DRHS.

I went to HCS, albeit in the 90s, and had the best time. Was back there a few times recently for some reunion type stuff and it all seemed exactly the same, even down to many of my teachers still being there. Not too helpful for current info I know, but it was and seems to still be a great place for turning out Decent Chaps i.e. well-rounded, mature adults. Very encouraging of students having lots of non-academic interests, whatever they might be.

When I was there I loved the sense of community and everyone cheering you on no matter what you were good at - no "jocks and geeks" nonsense. The rugby team would come to watch debating competitions or take part in school plays. Most people did music in some form or another, that sort of thing.

Only have experience of DRHS - it's a fantastic school and not a hot house/grade obsessed in my experience, although we are early on in our journey. The Discover program mentioned above is great and gives girls a really wide and interesting range of activities, far better than the co curricular offering my other child has at the most sought after of the Glos grammars.
Do give the travel time serious consideration though. Would you want to do that commute? Would you be able to pick your daughter up after any sports fixtures or school trips? And given the changes to the admissions policy, there are likely to be fewer and fewer new joiners who don't live in Gloucester(shire) so a bus route that might be viable in 2025 may not be able to run in 5 years time.

Thank you so much for your replies, I really appreciate it, and the points re. Bus routes to DRHS.