Jesmond School wins Northeast Independent School of the Year

• The Royal Grammar School (RGS) has been named The Northeast Independent Secondary School for Academic Excellence, by The Sunday Times Parent Power Guide 2025.

Article written for JESMOND LOCAL University module

RGS, the region’s highest-performing school, has over 1,300 students in its secondary and sixth form. The school celebrates record-breaking achievements, with 85.7% of GCSEs graded between 7-9 and 91.1% of A-levels at A*- B, ranking RGS 56th in the country.

Headmaster, Geoffrey Stanford said,

“For RGS to be recognised again is a huge achievement. It demonstrates that children from the Northeast are as infinitely capable as any child with the right support”.

The Sunday Times Parent Power Guide 2025, showcases RGS as a “leading institution in shaping future education in the Northeast”.

The official league tables show the rankings schools in the UK using the institution’s performance average GCSE, A-Level and IB grade results from summer 2024.

Helen Davies, the editor of The Times Parent Power Guide 2025, said “The education landscape is changing…but there is much to celebrate from the hard work of committed teachers who are finding innovative ways to boost their student’s learning”.

For the northeast, 2 schools in Jesmond are ranked in the top 5 of the best secondary schools in the region. Royal Grammar School took 1st place in regional rank whilst Newcastle High School for Girls GDST ranked 3rd.

Nationally, the Royal Grammar School is ranked 66th among the top private and state secondary schools in England.

For state schools, Ponteland Comprehensive High School is ranked 493rd in the UK, yet the highest for state schools in the Northeast region.

RGS joins multiple schools recognised for their achievements, including Durham’s Johnston Comprehensive School, named the Northeast State School of the Year and the State Secondary School of the Year for academic excellence 2025.

This year, RGS celebrates its 500-year anniversary since Thomas Horsley founded the school in 1525. The academy has one of the largest co-educational sixth forms in the independent sector and is based in the centre of Newcastle, opposite the Jesmond metro.

In the last year, over 10,000 individual students in 105 local state schools benefitted from RGS partnership activities. 1-in-16 students at RGS attended on transformational, means-tested bursaries, with a total of 447 bursary families have been supported in the past 20 years.

Mr. Stanford said “our region has unique challenges, and we are acutely aware that the gap between academic performance between North and South has never been greater”.

According to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), the northeast has the lowest proportion of level 4 qualifications in the UK (28.6%) compared to London (46.7%).

These statistics highlight the divide between education attainment in the area and the disparity of the longstanding challenges in addressing regional inequalities and access to higher education.

We hope to see with the rising ranks of Jesmond schools, a shift toward closing gaps between regional education equity and empowering students to achieve their full potential through access to quality resources and opportunities.

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