Bacup & Rawtenstall Grammar School

Bacup and Rawtenstall Grammar School — known to everyone, simply, as BRGS — suits a bright, hard-working child who will settle happily into a school with high expectations and a genuine sense of belonging. It is a selective co-educational grammar in Waterfoot, up in the Rossendale hills of Lancashire, taking boys and girls from eleven through to sixth form, all admitted on the eleven-plus. The setting alone is worth mentioning: this is not a school on a ring road. It sits on Glen Road with the kind of hilltop Lancashire backdrop that makes the daily commute feel, on a clear day, almost cinematic.

The school's roots go back to Newchurch Grammar School, founded in 1703 — which is the sort of provenance that gives a place genuine ballast — with staff from that school establishing BRGS on its present site in 1913. It is proud of that history without being captured by it. Since September 2023 BRGS has been part of Star Academies, a national group of schools, and has taken on that group's STAR values of Service, Teamwork, Ambition and Respect. In practice, the school sets out to combine high academic standards with strong pastoral care: form tutors and pastoral leaders support pupils through the day-to-day, and an enrichment programme runs alongside the curriculum with a particular emphasis on developing children as leaders rather than simply as exam-passers.

For families across Rossendale and beyond, the draw is a settled, well-established school where a capable child can be stretched and still feel part of something close-knit. BRGS has been doing this for a long time. It shows.