Reading School A GSG School
- Reading School
Erleigh Road
Reading
Berkshire
RG1 5LW - Head: Dr Chris Evans
- T 0118 901 5600
- E admissions@reading-school.co.uk
- W www.reading-school.co.uk
- A state school for boys aged from 11 to 18.
- Boarding: Yes
- Local authority: Reading
- Pupils: 1,130; sixth formers: 377
- Religion: None
- Fees: Day free; Boarding £14,514 pa
- Open days: November (sixth form open afternoon); March (year 7 open days)
- Review: View The Good Schools Guide Review
-
Ofsted:
- Latest Overall effectiveness Outstanding 1
- 16-19 study programmes Outstanding 1
- Outcomes for children and learners Outstanding 1
- Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Outstanding 1
- Personal development, behaviour and welfare Outstanding 1
- Effectiveness of leadership and management Outstanding 1
- 1 Full inspection 21st November 2023
- Ofsted report: View the Ofsted report
What The Good Schools Guide says..
While getting in may be fraught, the atmosphere eases once everyone is settled. Maths forms are set from year 8, ‘but no one cares what set you’re in – even boys in set five will get As,’ said a mum pragmatically. ‘Teachers are wonderful, and they don’t tolerate tiger parents.’ Boys describe the environment as ‘friendly competitive’ and ‘it pushes you to do better’. GCSE maths and sciences (all do separate sciences here) are unsurprisingly excellent, but ‘English really stands out,’ a mum told us. ‘It’s underrated, but…
What the school says...
Reading School is recognised as one of the leading state schools in the country. It was selected as Sunday Times State School of the Year in 2010. OFSTED describes it as 'an outstanding school that enables students to reach exceptionally high standards both in their academic work and in their personal development'.
OFSTED rated our Boarding Provision in 2014 as 'Outstanding' stating 'The calibre of the boarding house staff is excellent. Their commitment, enthusiasm, motivation, morale and belief in the boarders are second to none. This means that boarders receive exceptionally high quality care that significantly enhances their personal development and well-being'.
Our students consistently achieve impressive academic results, including in 2014 88.1¬hieving grade A* to B at A-level; 85% going on to one of the top 30 universities; and 17% winning places at Oxford or Cambridge. Boys participate in a wide range of enrichment activities, including sports, music, drama, chess, astronomy, and public speaking. Senior boys also give back to the local community by volunteering at local primary schools and charities.
At Reading School we believe all our students have gifts and talents. We aim for all to be resilient and rise to the challenges of learning and life; to be curious and balance logic with imagination; to achieve excellence with integrity; and to value learning for its own sake and for the benefit of others.
Converted to an academy 2011. ...Read more
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School associations
State boarding school
State grammar school
Sports
Rowing
What The Good Schools Guide says
Head
Since January 2024, Rev Dr Chris Evans BA MTh PhD. How much space have we got? He was previously deputy head (since 2016), head of sixth form, chaplain, head of theology and philosophy (still teaches A level philosophy), boarding housemaster … and a former pupil of Reading School. So, we’re thinking he might know his way around the place. Before teaching here, Dr Evans worked as a prison chaplain, founded a gardening company that only hired ex-offenders, was a church youth worker, and taught religious studies at two state comps. He read theology at Bangor University, gained a masters in theology, had a couple of stints studying theology at Harris Manchester College, Oxford and was awarded a PhD in hermeneutics from King’s College London in 2019. And we haven’t even touched on his work...
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Overall school performance (for comparison or review only)
Results by exam and subject
Subject results
Entry/Exit
Special Education Needs
Interpreting catchment maps
The maps show in colour where the pupils at a school came from*. Red = most pupils to Blue = fewest.
Where the map is not coloured we have no record in the previous three years of any pupils being admitted from that location based on the options chosen.
For help and explanation of our catchment maps see: Catchment maps explained
Further reading
If there are more applicants to a school than it has places for, who gets in is determined by which applicants best fulfil the admissions criteria.
Admissions criteria are often complicated, and may change from year to year. The best source of information is usually the relevant local authority website, but once you have set your sights on a school it is a good idea to ask them how they see things panning out for the year that you are interested in.
Many schools admit children based on distance from the school or a fixed catchment area. For such schools, the cut-off distance will vary from year to year, especially if the school give priority to siblings, and the pattern will be of a central core with outliers (who will mostly be siblings). Schools that admit on the basis of academic or religious selection will have a much more scattered pattern.
*The coloured areas outlined in black are Census Output Areas. These are made up of a group of neighbouring postcodes, which accounts for their odd shapes. These provide an indication, but not a precise map, of the school’s catchment: always refer to local authority and school websites for precise information.
The 'hotter' the colour the more children have been admitted.
Children get into the school from here:
regularly
most years
quite often
infrequently
sometimes, but not in this year
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