Headteacher’s Welcome
I hope you find our website useful in making that really important decision about which secondary school to send your child to. In order to make the right decision you need clear and accurate information about the school's strengths, its performance, ethos and its role in the local community. I have every confidence that if you send your child to this school, they will achieve their full potential both academically and as a fully developed young person.
Kirkby Stephen Grammar School is a very successful and constantly improving Sports College, set in a beautiful landscape in the attractive town of Kirkby Stephen. Our roll is usually about 400 pupils, with 60 students in the sixth form. Our strength is in our small size which enables teachers to devote plenty of time in care and guidance of your child, within a family environment. All teaching and support staff know the pupils and their families well. Smaller class sizes and individualised programmes are also strengths of the school. We set challenging targets for ourselves and for all pupils, whatever their ability. Our examination results are improving at all levels and we are also highly successful in adding value to children's learning: in other words, they make more progress than their counterparts in similar schools and with similar abilities. With a highly qualified and stable teaching and support staff, we feel that we offer a high quality education to every pupil in the school.
We excel at sport and we stretch the gifted and talented pupils in a range of activities, as well as supporting those pupils with special needs effectively. We are also well known for the amazing range of extra-curricular activities that we offer in music, drama, educational trips, international exchanges and visits. This school is the hub school for the Eden Valley School Sport Partnership which is helping to improve sport and PE in all five secondary and forty primary schools in the Eden Valley.
Ours is a community school in the truest sense, with community groups, sports clubs and many other organisations using the school facilities throughout the week and at weekends. We are also an "extended school" where we coordinate a vast range of services to support families in the Upper Eden Valley.
