Welcome!

Rugby High is a warm and friendly school that is committed to providing  an outstanding 11 - 18 academic education.  Traditionally a girls' school, we have for many years taught boys from other schools  in our Sixth Form.  Now both boys and girls can apply directly to our Sixth Form and participate fully in all aspects of our school. 

At Rugby High we want to nurture the joy of learning: The excitement one feels when you crack open a difficult poem, the relief you get when all the practice questions you’ve done pay off in the exam and the sense of pride you feel when you’ve kept going in that subject you always find just a bit tougher than the others. 

We want you to build the skills needed to be successful and thrive in the twenty-first century world, we want you to have the experience of learning outside the classroom, building your emotional intelligence and your empathy to form positive relationships with friends, peers and adults.  We want you to find your voice, but above all we want you to be happy!  Happiness can’t be bought or artificially manufactured. It comes from learning to live and work in harmony with others. It’s in the bond that you make rehearsing for the school play, supporting the cricket team, or completing that expedition in Tanzania where you felt like you just couldn’t do it, but with the help of everyone around, you did!

This kind of learning is every bit as important as academic study. We want our students to have plenty of time to do it both with us and with other groups like cadets, guides, dance schools. We encourage students to have a range of different interests and not just to focus exclusively on academic work.

Although we value tradition, we are forward-thinking. Our students and teachers are expected to use technology to aid their learning. We are proud to be the only local state secondary school that still offers students a chance to learn Latin and proud too that our students use their own devices to access lesson materials and online textbooks.

We understand what a difference it makes if students enjoy school and feel happy and safe here. Pastoral care is important to us. Students who are well cared for, who are respected and who respect others are students who are able to learn well.  Our partnership with students and with parents is extremely important to us. Education is an active process. It requires our students to be engaged, and parents and teachers to be supportive. Sometimes life deals us a poor hand: we can’t stop sad events from happening but our pastoral team can listen to students and their families and can provide additional help and support.

By the time our students leave us, we don’t just want them to have great examination results. We want them to be confident, independent, and resilient.  We want them to have criticality about the world around them and the way that world is presented, so they can make well-informed and positive choices. We want all of our students to set heights in their hearts, to be ambitious, for themselves and for others, to be caring young people, willing and able to make a difference.

We hope that you will find the information on this website useful. We are always pleased to see prospective students and their parents and prospective employees, so if you would like to meet us in person, please ring 01788 810518.

Mark Grady, Headteacher