Urmston Grammar School

If you want a friendly, co-educational grammar where staff will know your child well, Urmston Grammar is a settled, mid-sized school of around 1,100 pupils on the south-western side of Greater Manchester, taking boys and girls together from eleven to eighteen. It has a long memory. Its roots reach back to the Urmston Science and Arts School of 1882, the Urmston Grammar name was first used in 1923, and the school marked its centenary in 2023. It moved to its present home on Newton Road in 1929.

The school's strong local following has deep roots. For a stretch of the twentieth century it was split into separate boys' and girls' schools, a decision so unpopular that pupils held a silent protest, walking through the streets of Urmston in the hope of keeping their school together. The two halves were fully reunited as one co-educational school in 1991. It became one of the country's first converter academies in 2010 and earlier held specialist Science and Language College status, which still shapes its strengths today. Pupils sit an entrance test for a place in year 7, and the school stays popular and oversubscribed, with a sixth form that keeps a good number of pupils on through to eighteen.

The head is Thomas Kennedy-Fowler. Urmston Grammar suits a capable, motivated child who would thrive in a school small enough to feel known and proud enough of its own story to give them a real sense of belonging, within easy reach of Manchester for families who want a place close to home.