North Leamington School

North Leamington School (NLS) is a mixed, non-selective, comprehensive school for students aged 11 to 18 years located at the northeastern edge of Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England. It is rated as a good school by Ofsted, and has 6.7% of children eligible for free school meals. Mike Lowdell is the current headteacher.

North Leamington is a mixed 11 to 18 comprehensive school, an academy since November 2016. It has an enrolment of around 1300, and maximum capacity of 1500 students: 240 for each year group from Years 7 to 11, and 150 for each of Years 12 and 13. Admission to Year 7 (transition from Year 6) is by application to Warwickshire County Council Admissions service. Entry after term one of Year 7 is by application direct to the school. As of September 2020, it is oversubscribed.

In 2019, NLS recorded an above average Progress 8 score of 0.46, with 53% achieving grade 5 or above in GCSE maths and English (compared to 43% average in England), and 76 per cent of students achieving grade 4 or above. At A level, NLS has an above average progress score of 0.32. 60 per cent of pupils were awarded A* to B grades.

Leamington College competed in the Top of the Form radio competition in 1962, which was recorded on Monday 8 October 1962, being broadcast on 25 October 1962, at 8pm on the Light Programme. Four boys competed against girls from Pate's Grammar School in Cheltenham, and lost by one point. Pate's Grammar School lost their next round. The Leamington team were C S Briggs aged 17, Andrew Ellis aged 15, and Peter Sharpe aged 14.

North Leamington School was created in 1977 by Warwickshire County Council, with the merger of three schools for 11-16 year olds: Blackdown High School (Park Road site), Leamington College for Girls, a girls grammar school (Cloister Way site) and Leamington College for Boys (Binswood Hall site) on Binswood Avenue. The Cloister Way site became the Lower School for Years 7, 8 and 9, while the Park Road site became the Upper School for Years 10 & 11. The Binswood Hall site became a separate sixth form centre. In 1994 the sixth form fully merged with North Leamington (becoming Years 12 & 13). This resulted in some operational challenges for staff, with teachers having to move between the sites located approximately a mile apart.

NLS was granted specialist school status as a Performing Arts College in 1999, thanks to sponsorship by EMI Music Sound Foundation (now Universal Music UK Sound Foundation) and retained this status until 2008. It was the first Arts College school in Warwickshire.

For September 2009, a new school complex was built on the former site of Manor Hall teacher training and conference centre. The new site on Sandy Lane, just off the B4113 road in the parish of Blackdown, was designed by Robothams Architecture, an architectural firm based in Warwick. The new buildings have a BREEAM 'excellent' rating, and have been given awards by RICS, the Leamington Society, and The Society for Construction and Architecture in Local Authorities. The Humanities Faculty building features a prominent sculpture by Walter Ritchie; Three Aspects of a Girl's Education was commissioned for the old Leamington College for Girls site by Warwickshire Education Committee in 1961, and features figures of Boudica, Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie.

NLS became an academy on 1 November 2016.