Kepier School is a

coeducational Mixed-sex education, also known as mixed-gender education, co-education, or coeducation (abbreviated to co-ed or coed), is a system of education where males and females are educated together. Whereas single-sex education was more common up to ...

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

Houghton-le-Spring Houghton-le-Spring ( ) is a town in the Sunderland district, in Tyne and Wear, England which has its recorded origins in Norman times. Historically in County Durham, it is now administered as part of the Tyne and Wear county. It lies betw ...

Sunderland Sunderland () is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is a port at the mouth of the River Wear on the North Sea, approximately south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne. It is the most p ...

Tyne and Wear Tyne and Wear () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North East England. It borders Northumberland to the north and County Durham to the south, and the largest settlement is the city of Newcastle upon Tyne. The county is ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

. , it has 1147 pupils, and is larger than the average secondary school.

History

The school was established in 1987 as a result of a merger of three local

comprehensive school A comprehensive school is a secondary school for pupils aged 11–16 or 11–18, that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, in contrast to a selective school system where admission is restricted on the basis ...

s: Bernard Gilpin School, Houghton School and Sancroft School. It was originally called Houghton Kepier School. It is not connected to the nearby small fee-paying

grammar school A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a Latin school, school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented Se ...

, founded in the 1570s and closed in 1922, the Royal Kepier Grammar School, but was named after it. The school was commended by the

Department for Education The Department for Education (DfE) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for child protection, child services, education in England, educati ...

in 2003 for using staff who were not qualified teachers as temporary "cover supervisors" in an attempt to manage teachers' workload; the initiative was criticised by the

National Union of Teachers The National Union of Teachers (NUT; ) was a trade union for school teachers in Education in England, England, Education in Wales, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It was a member of the Trades Union Congress. In March 2017, NU ...

. The then headteacher, Sue Hyland, was the national secondary school Leadership Trust Award winner in 2002. The school had been failing when she came to it in 1999; "Results had been going down for seven years". By 2002, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' described the school as "recognisably on the up", but struggling with a lack of money, particularly for staffing. In 2001, one of the staff, Eileen Osborne, published textbooks on religion and

citizenship Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationalit ...

which were used in other schools.

Uniform controversy

In early September 2017, it was reported that students were forced to line up in the rain while the principal compared the students' trousers with a

swatch Swatch is a Swiss watch company founded in 1983 by Ernst Thomke, Elmar Mock, and Jacques Müller. It is a subsidiary of The Swatch Group. The Swatch product line was developed as a response to the "quartz crisis" of the 1970s and 1980s, in whic ...

of fabric supplied by Total Sport, to ensure the grey trousers were from this supplier. These cost , while similar products were available for elsewhere. Students not wearing the "required" trousers were sent home.

Inspections

The school has been inspected by

Ofsted The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a non-ministerial department of His Majesty's government, reporting to Parliament. Ofsted's role is to make sure that organisations providing education, training ...

five times since 2012. In 2012, the inspectors deemed it "satisfactory". Both inspections in 2013 saw the school judged as "requires improvement", with the inspectors commenting that "leaders and managers do not always focus their actions where they are most needed and do not check the impact on students' achievement." In 2016, the school had improved sufficiently to be rated as "good", because of "... vastly raised teachers' expectations of how quickly pupils can make progress in all of the subjects they study."

Notable former pupils

* Michael Adams, TV personality

References

External links

* {{authority control Secondary schools in the City of Sunderland Educational institutions established in 1987 1987 establishments in England Academies in the City of Sunderland