Manchester High School for Girls

Manchester High School for Girls was founded in 1874 as one of the founding schools of the Girls' Public Day School Trust (now the GDST) and was the first academically rigorous independent day school for girls in the North of England. The school remained part of the GPDST/GDST federation for over a century before separating in the 1990s to become a fully independent foundation. The school today educates around 930 pupils ages 4-18 and is girls-only throughout. The Head is Helen Jeys.

The school is a member of the GSA and is inspected by the ISI. The campus sits in Rusholme, Manchester, immediately adjacent to the University of Manchester — one of the great Victorian civic universities of England. The school's geographic position has historically produced a particularly strong feeder relationship to the University of Manchester, alongside the standard Oxbridge and Russell Group pipeline.

Manchester High's most historically significant alumnae are the Pankhurst sisters — Christabel, Sylvia and Adela — daughters of Emmeline Pankhurst, the founder of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and the principal architect of the British militant suffragette movement. Christabel Pankhurst served as the chief strategist of the WSPU and led the militant suffragette campaign from 1903 to 1914, organising the hunger strikes, the window-smashing campaigns and the deputation to Parliament that culminated in the 1918 Representation of the People Act granting partial female suffrage. Sylvia Pankhurst was the leading figure of the British socialist-feminist tradition and edited the Workers' Dreadnought; Adela Pankhurst emigrated to Australia and became a founding figure of Australian feminism. All three were educated at Manchester High in the 1880s and 90s.

The school operates a substantial bursary programme intended to provide educational access for Manchester-area girls regardless of family means, maintaining the founding 1874 GPDST principle of academic education for girls regardless of social class.