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 t ...
secondary school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' secondary education, lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) ...
located in
Houghton-le-Spring,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
.
Kepier School offers
GCSEs
The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private sc ...
,
BTECs and
OCR Nationals
OCR Nationals are vocationally related qualifications which were officially launched by the OCR Board in September 2004. The qualifications are designed to meet the needs of those seeking vocational education in place of the traditional, theory-i ...
as programmes of study for pupils. The school also operates a five-year
football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
academy programme for gifted young players.
History
The school was built and endowed in 1574 by
Bernard Gilpin
Bernard Gilpin (1517 – 4 March 1583), was an Oxford theologian and then an influential clergyman in the emerging Church of England spanning the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Jane, Mary and Elizabeth I. He was known as the 'Apostle of the N ...
, an influential clergyman who became known as the 'Apostle of the North' and was associated with Houghton-le-Spring.
The school has resided between 1990 and 2018 on the site of the former Sancroft School. It was built in 1974 though has had major renovations since it became Houghton Kepier School. The change of building was decided when Houghton-le-Spring Grammar, Shiney Row Comprehensive, Sancroft Comprehensive and Bernard Gilpin Comprehensive began a merger over the latter years of the 1980s.
On the merger, the schools were known as Houghton Kepier School, a name that lasted until 2003 when the school gained specialist
Sports College
Sports Colleges are senior secondary schools which promote sports alongside secondary education.
United Kingdom
Sports Colleges were introduced in 1997 as part of the Specialist schools programme, Specialist Schools Programme in the United Kingdo ...
status and was renamed Houghton Kepier Sports College. It became a
foundation school
In England and Wales, a foundation school is a state-funded school in which the governing body has greater freedom in the running of the school than in community schools.
Foundation schools were set up under the School Standards and Framework A ...
in 2006 and converted to
academy status in 2011. It wasn't until the incumbent headmistress Nicola Cooper joined the school in 2011 that further changes to the historic logo and name were made and introduced for the autumn term in 2012.
The original Royal Kepier Grammar School still stands off Church Street, though the building on Hetton Road used until 1990 is now demolished. In 2015, the school announced it was to demolish its current building and build a state-of-the-art three-storey academy on a disused sports field due to its dated design specifications and the presence of asbestos in the building's insulation.
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 watchmaker 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 which i ...
of fabric supplied by Total Sport, to ensure the grey trousers were from this supplier. These cost £15.99, while similar products were available for £7.00 elsewhere. Students not wearing the "required" trousers were sent home. The school website, on its "Learner's Uniform" page, does not mention a specific supplier and describes the uniform not as grey, but as "black tailored school trousers".
A new school building was completed beside the original in September 2018, and was quoted by
Ofsted
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a Non-ministerial government department, non-ministerial department of Government of the United Kingdom, His Majesty's government, reporting to Parliament of the U ...
to be 'Brigher and better for Learning,' alongside some new furnishings being fitted alongside originals from the older build, with the school continuing to offer its value for learning and high quality sporting facilities. Staff and pupils moved into the new building in January 2019.
Headteachers
Ofsted
The school has been inspected by the
Ofsted
The Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a Non-ministerial government department, non-ministerial department of Government of the United Kingdom, His Majesty's government, reporting to Parliament of the U ...
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
*
George Carleton, bishop
*
William Romaine
William Romaine (1714 at Hartlepool – 1795), evangelical divine of the Church of England, was author of works once highly thought of by the evangelicals, the trilogy ''The Life, the Walk, and the Triumph of Faith''.
Early life
Romaine was born ...
, divine
*
Robert Surtees, antiquarian
Notable former staff
*
Adam Walker Adam Walker may refer to:
* Adam Walker (American football, born 1963), American football running back
* Adam Walker (American football, born 1968), American football running back
* Adam Walker (Australian politician) (1829–1902), Australian polit ...
, politician
References
External links
*
{{authority control
Secondary schools in the City of Sunderland
Educational institutions established in the 1570s
1574 establishments in England
Academies in the City of Sunderland