The Royal Grammar School, Newcastle won 2023’s top overall award for its partnerships work with organisations such as British Engines and TSG. Head Geoffrey Stanford writes about how it benefits thousands of pupils in one of the country’s most deprived areas
At the time of submitting our partnership programme entry for the awards’ Outstanding Educational Partnerships category, we had no idea that it would lead to us winning the coveted overall award as the national Independent School of the Year 2023 as well. For the Newcastle Roval Grammar School to be selected out of more than 700 nominations from the very best UK private schools was rather overwhelming.
Operating in a region where there’s a huge amount of poverty and some of the weakest academic results in the country, we’ve had a strong bursary programme for many years. In addition to providing fully-funded places to hundreds of deserving young people for more than 20 years, as part of an ongoing project, the Reece Foundation has funded both a maths and a physics teacher, based at RGS Newcastle, to inspire and engage local children. In recognition of the demonstrable impact this initiative has had, British Engines are now also funding a robotics teacher and other partners including TSG are coming forward to fund a computer science teacher. These organisations are leveraging both our expertise and our institution’s capacity to reach young people across our region, while supporting us t...