Kepier
Academy · ages 11–16 · no sixth form
Below average on 1 of the four headline measures — 10th of 18 for average grade in Sunderland.
Houghton le Spring · Sunderland · one of 18 state secondaries
Summary
Kepier sits 10th of 18 state secondaries in Sunderland for average GCSE grade. 55% of its pupils passed both English and maths, against 61.3% across Sunderland. 37.3% reached the stronger grade 5 in both. Subject by subject it is furthest clear of Sunderland in combined science and biology, sat by 24% of the year,, and furthest behind in English Literature and English Language. Ofsted: Good in March 2022.
It is an academy of 1,131 pupils, taking ages 11 to 16. 37.8% of its pupils are eligible for free school meals, a high share by national standards, and 12.3% are on SEN support with a further 0.9% holding an education, health and care plan. 30.9% were entered for the full EBacc, fewer than the 41.2% entered across Sunderland, which is a choice about how broad a curriculum to push, and 23.6% took the separate sciences rather than combined. 25.3% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, better than the 27.7% across Sunderland, and 77.1% of its leavers went on to further education.
Subject comparisons are measured at grade 4 or above against Sunderland, and count as ahead or behind only where the gap is wider than the year-to-year swing that entry group would produce.
The school·Sunderland
Inspection
Good
Inspected March 2022
- Behaviour and attitudes
- Good
- Leadership and management
- Good
- Personal development
- Good
- Quality of education
- Good
- March 2022 Full inspection Good
That grade was given under the framework that ran from September 2019 to 2024, when Ofsted still issued one overall grade.
Attendance
25% of pupils missed a tenth of school or more, against 28% across Sunderland and 21% nationally. The comparators are the median secondary school, not an average.
GCSE · Key stage 4·2024/25
Attainment
55%
Passed English & maths grade 4+, an old grade C
in line with average
Sunderland 61% · England 65%
43.6
Average grade across 8 Attainment 8, out of 90
in line with average
Sunderland 43.3 · England 46.1
After Year 11
77% stayed in education, 9% started an apprenticeship (2022/23 leavers)
GCSE results by subject
2024/25 · share reaching grade 4 or above · a standard pass, the old grade C
Every bar is on the same 0–100% scale, so subjects can be read against each other as well as against the county and England. A dash means the figure does not exist rather than being zero. The county and England lines cover state-funded schools only, the same schools you can browse here, because independent schools sit outside the Department for Education's subject release and outside this site.
Compare these subjects against another school, side by side.
Maths is the subject most of this year group sat. Maths tutors on Tutorperch.
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What these mean
- Attainment 8
- The average pupil's total score across eight GCSE-equivalent subjects, with English and maths counting double. It is scored out of 90. A score of 50 is roughly equivalent to achieving a grade 5 across eight subjects.
- Grades 4 and 5
- GCSEs are graded from 9 down to 1. Grade 4 is a standard pass and broadly corresponds to the old grade C; grade 5 is what the government calls a strong pass. Grade 7 is broadly equivalent to an old grade A.
- The EBacc
- A combination of subjects rather than a qualification in its own right: English, Maths, the Sciences, a Language, and History or Geography. The figure shows the share of pupils entered for all the EBacc subject areas, so it gives an indication of how widely a school enters pupils for this particular combination of subjects.
- Progress 8
- A measure of how much progress pupils make between the end of primary school and the end of GCSE, rather than simply what grades they achieve. It takes pupils' prior attainment into account, making it useful for comparing schools with different intakes. Progress 8 is not published for 2024/25 because the pupils concerned did not have Key Stage 2 tests that can be used as the normal starting point.
- Percentage points
- The gap between two percentages. A subject going from 30% to 36% has risen six percentage points, though it has risen by a fifth. We write "pp" to keep the two apart.
- Why some subjects say nothing
- A year group is small. Where a gap is no bigger than the swing a different intake would produce, we say the subjects are level rather than dressing chance as a finding. Two kinds of subject carry no share at all: a vocational award has no 9-to-1 grade to report, and some qualifications are not published on the 9-to-1 scale for a given year group, most often community languages sat outside the school's own timetable.
- Persistent absence
- The share of pupils who miss at least 10% of their possible sessions during the school year. This includes both authorised and unauthorised absence, so illness and other authorised reasons are included. Persistent absence has remained substantially higher than its pre-pandemic level.
- Spare places
- The amount of available capacity a school has compared with the number of pupils on roll. This is different from oversubscription: spare places measure whether a school has capacity, whereas oversubscription describes demand for places exceeding the number available. A school with no spare places may be popular, but a small school can also be full without receiving a large number of applications.
School details
Dairy Lane
Houghton le Spring
Tyne and Wear
DH4 5BH
- Principal
- Mr Colin Devlin
- Trust
- Eden Learning Trust
- Pupils
- 1,131 of 1,150 places
- Spare places
- 1%
- Free school meals
- 38%
- SEND
- 12% on SEN support, 1% with an EHC plan
- Separate sciences
- 24% of the year
- Progress 8
- Not published · last -0.29 in 2023/24
Other schools in Sunderland
17 schools. Distances are straight-line from this school.
- Hetton Academy 2.6 km
- Farringdon Community Academy 4.7 km
- Sandhill View Academy 6 km
- St Robert of Newminster Catholic School and Sixth Form College, Washington 6.1 km
- Biddick Academy 6.4 km
- Christ's College 6.7 km
- Venerable Bede Church of England Academy 6.7 km
- Academy 360 6.7 km
- Oxclose Community Academy 7.8 km
- St Aidan's Catholic Academy 8 km
- Washington Academy 8.2 km
- Thornhill Academy 8.2 km
- Southmoor Academy 8.4 km
- St Anthony's Girls' Catholic Academy 8.5 km
- Castle View Enterprise Academy 8.9 km
- Red House Academy 10.5 km
- Monkwearmouth Academy 12.1 km