Lincolnshire is one of the few counties within the UK that still uses the eleven-plus to decide who may attend grammar school, in common with Buckinghamshire and Kent.
Grammar schools in the county include:
Despite the bias towards selection, there are non-selective schools in Lincolnshire with good (above average) results, and excellent results. The Priory (formerly the Lincoln School of Science and Technology) is well regarded and achieves results comparable with the selective schools. William Farr School at Welton recently topped the national list for 'A level' results and was described in a recent OFSTED report as "outstanding", achieving A level results well above most comprehensives, especially across the East Midlands. Another good comprehensive is The Deepings School in Market Deeping; the good comprehensives are generally in middle class areas.[citation needed] Amongst the secondary modern schools are some that achieve good results and OFSTED inspections. In the county are 63 state secondary schools and 8 private schools, not including sixth form colleges, although only the two independent schools in Stamford are typical of the 'public schools'. North East Lincolnshire has 12 state schools and one independent school, and North Lincolnshire has 14 state schools. In general, most school results in both these unitary authorities are low for GCSE and A-level, with the exception of the Franklin College in Grimsby.[citation needed]
Schools in Lincolnshire luckily rarely fall victim to arson, however, North East Lincolnshire has had arson problems and to a lesser degree, Scunthorpe.[2][3][4] Due to Grimsby's teenage pregnancy levels, it has a Young Mums Unit to support pregnant schoolchildren. [5]
King Edward VI Academy, is a bi-lateral secondary school and specialist Humanities College in Spilsby. The bilateral status is highly unusual, with less than five similar arrangements in the whole of England and Wales, permitting those who have passed the eleven-plus together with those who fail to study separate curriculums while under the same roof and with the same teaching staff. The school is an amalgamation of two separate institutions, the King Edward VI Grammar School opened in 1550 and the Sir John Franklin Secondary Modern School, which opened in 1954. These schools were combined in 1991 as Spilsby High School, initially retaining both sites, but now studying together in the same building.
All five comprehensive schools in the district of Lincoln have sixth forms, no matter how badly performing the school is. Conversely, outside Lincoln, there are many high-performing secondary modern schools that have no sixth form. In September 2008, Grantham opened its first sixth form at a secondary modern, Stamford opened a sixth form at New College Stamford in 2007 and Spilsby's opened in September 2008. Since September 2008 Spalding has a mixed post-16 centre (The South Holland post 16 centre). Both secondary modern schools in Louth have a sixth form as do such schools in Holbeach, Sleaford, Bourne, Old Leake and Skegness. For secondary modern pupils, there is no sixth form in Gainsborough, Long Sutton, Horncastle (including Coningsby and Tattershall), Alford, Mablethorpe, or Caistor. The nearest main college for those last four towns at present for A levels would be the new Wolds College in Louth. In addition, since 2006, there is the new Skegness Academy, jointly run by Grimsby Institute and Boston College.
Few comprehensive schools in North Lincolnshire have sixth forms – the only sixth forms are in Brigg, Barton-upon-Humber and none are in Scunthorpe. However, Scunthorpe has the much-praised John Leggott College. There is also the North Lindsey College, an FE college.
Like North Lincolnshire, pupils in North East Lincolnshire do well at A level, however few comprehensive schools similarly have a sixth form. Over on the other side of the Humber, all comprehensive schools (except one in Snaith) in the East Riding of Yorkshire have sixth forms. Three schools have sixth forms, one in Grimsby, Cleethorpes and New Waltham. It is only the one in New Waltham that gets reasonable results. The Franklin College acts as Grimby's sixth form, as well as the Grimsby Institute.
The average percentage for 16-year-olds with grades A-C at GCSE, including Maths and English, across England is 46.7% – for Lincolnshire's 8400 pupils taking GCSE at 16 it is 50.6% – the second highest for education authorities in the East Midlands (Rutland is 58%). Some schools in Lincolnshire are woefully below this level. For the St Clement's College in Skegness, it is 5% – the lowest in Lincolnshire (although it is a secondary modern) and the third lowest result in England, but for the low-performing comprehensive Joseph Ruston College in Lincoln, it is 13% – the government target is 25% for comprehensives.[6] For the St Bede's Catholic Science College in Boston and the Castle Hills Community College in Gainsborough it is 8% – these are secondary moderns. Lincoln has no selective schools, although its Priory School is a surrogate. It is also the largest school in Lincolnshire. The best performing secondary modern is St. George's College of Technology in Sleaford, which achieves results better than twelve comprehensives.
The average score by council district, for the % of pupils gaining 5 grades A-C including English and Maths, is (compare to average house price by district):[7]
The proportion of pupils at grammar schools in each district varies – it is 35% for Boston, 31% for South Kesteven, 23% for West Lindsey but only 16% for North Kesteven. East Lindsey, Boston and South Holland do not have any comprehensives. However, for South and North Kesteven, this will include supplementary pupils from Nottinghamshire and beyond.
Caistor Grammar School received the best A level results for state schools in the East Midlands, followed by Bourne Grammar School, then Queen Elizabeth's High School in Gainsborough. Although North East Lincolnshire performs well under the England average at GCSE, at A-level it performs better - many areas in the Yorkshire & Humber region do not. North Lincolnshire also performs well under average at GCSE, but performs as well as Lincolnshire overall at A-level, being well above average. These two anomalies are due to the John Leggott College in Scunthorpe and the Franklin College in Grimsby – both excellent sixth form colleges. Lincolnshire gets the best results at A-level, on average, in the East Midlands (and some of the best in England for a traditional county). As found in other areas that have selective schools (e.g. Buckinghamshire and Warwickshire), the grammar schools significantly outclass the local independent schools at A-level.
The Lafford High School secondary modern in Billinghay is closing in 2010 due to falling pupil numbers.[8] However, many primary schools in Boston and South Holland are struggling to cope with vast increases in numbers due to mass migration from Eastern Europe agricultural workers.
The two poorly performing comprehensives in Lincoln (Joseph Ruston and the City of Lincoln) are being replaced in September 2008 by two academies to be named under the Priory title, called the Priory Witham Academy and Priory City of Lincoln Academy, and costing £40 million to build.[9] Boston Grammar School and Boston High School plan to merge, to local opposition.[10]
In Stamford, the place of grammar schools was long filled by a form of the Assisted Places Scheme that provided state funding to send children to one of the two independent schools in the town, Stamford School (boys) and Stamford High School (girls), that were formerly direct-grant grammars.[11] The national scheme was abolished by the 1997 Labour government. The Stamford arrangements remained in place as an increasingly protracted transitional arrangement. In 2008, the council decided no new places could be funded and the arrangement finally ended in 2012. The town has one comprehensive school, Stamford Welland Academy (formerly Stamford Queen Eleanor School). This was formed in the late 1980s after the dissolution of the town's two comprehensive schools – Fane and Exeter.
Louth had a new FE college built in September 2008, called the Wolds College, next door to the Cordeaux School.[12]
Most secondary schools in Scunthorpe have been renamed or replaced in the past few years.[13] Grimsby has falling school numbers.[14][15]
A variety of community education programmes operate in partnership with Lincolnshire County Council, including ones at local further education colleges and others run by charitable trusts, such as Pelican Trust, or operating as community interest companies such as Community Learning in Partnership (CLIP) which provides lifelong training as well a work-based learning scheme for young people in the UK aged 16–18 who are not engaged in any kind of employment, education or training.[16]