Welcome from Headteacher, Gary Hartley

I would like to welcome you to the Kirkby Stephen Grammar School community of parents, carers and staff. Many of our teaching and support staff are also parents of students in school and members of the community, which creates a strong commitment to the community. This also means that the staff ‘go the extra mile’ for the students and are passionate about their prospects for future success. I have every confidence that if you send your child to this school, they will achieve their full potential both academically and socially.

Kirkby Stephen Grammar School is a successful and rapidly improving Academy, set in a beautiful landscape in the attractive town of Kirkby Stephen. Our roll is currently about 350 pupils, with 50/60 students in the sixth form. Our strength is in our small size which enables teachers to devote plenty of time to the 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 enrich the experience of our students through 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 (local, national and international) 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 thirty 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.