Monkseaton High School closes 31 August: what happens now

Monkseaton High School closes permanently on 31 August, and the last thing it will do as a school is hand out GCSE results on Thursday 20 August from 8.30am. A-level results were collected there on Thursday 13 August from 9am. (Monkseaton High School)

The Seatonville Road school has been winding down for 20 months under a decision taken in December 2024. It stopped admitting Year 9 and Year 12 pupils from September 2025, and the pupils who stayed were the two year groups finishing their courses: Year 11 sitting GCSEs and Year 13 sitting A levels. Both have now sat their last papers, which leaves nothing for the school to do after results day but shut.

The decision, and the numbers behind it

North Tyneside Council’s Cabinet met as an extraordinary meeting on Thursday 19 December 2024 and approved “the proposal, without modification, that Monkseaton High School shall close on 31 August 2026”. (North Tyneside Council, Cabinet item CAB83/24)

The statutory proposal, published under section 15(1) of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, gave two reasons: the school “is no longer viable”, and there are surplus places elsewhere locally that can take displaced pupils, with no predicted increase in demand. It set out a deficit “currently over £5m”, projected to pass £7 million by 2026, and said financial rules do not allow schools to run sustained deficits. (Statutory proposal, North Tyneside Council)

The roll tells the same story. The proposal recorded 783 pupils in 2009, a low of 431 in 2016, 527 in January 2024 and 504 in the October 2024 census, leaving the school “operating at just over 50% of its capacity”. It also noted that “only one in five current pupils” came from the local community, and that 30.0 per cent of the cohort were eligible for free school meals.

The Department for Education’s register of schools, last confirmed on 31 July 2026, lists 155 pupils on roll in this final year, against a capacity of 955. It still shows the school’s status as open, because the closure date has not yet passed. (Get Information about Schools, URN 108642)

Results, certificates and records

The school has published what happens to the practical business of being a former pupil, and it is worth reading before the school’s own office stops answering.

Post-results services stay open as normal. The school says “post-results services, including reviews of marking, access to scripts and appeals, will remain available to students”. The deadlines are set by the exam boards, not the school. For A levels, T levels and other Level 3 results, a priority review of marking must be requested by 20 August. For everything else, including GCSEs, the deadline for a review of marking is 24 September, and scripts become available from 20 August. (JCQ post-results services)

Certificates will not come from the school. “Certificates for former students of Monkseaton High School will be available for collection from North Tyneside Council.” The same page directs requests for references, student records, confirmation of attendance, data protection requests, complaints, community lettings and safeguarding matters to a named North Tyneside Council contact after closure. If you are likely to need proof of attendance for a job or a course, note that route down now.

The school also says it will “continue to support our Year 11 and Year 13 students in securing their next destination, including sixth form, college, university, apprenticeships and employment”.

Where the pupils went

When the proposal was published, Monkseaton High had 149 pupils in Year 11 and 59 across Years 12 and 13. Year 9 pupils displaced in 2025 were offered places across ten North Tyneside secondary schools: Burnside College, Churchill Community College, George Stephenson High School, John Spence Community High School, Longbenton High School, Marden High School, Norham High School, North Gosforth Academy, St Thomas More Catholic High School and Whitley Bay High School.

For this summer’s Year 11 leavers, the council listed sixth forms at Burnside College, Churchill Community College, George Stephenson High School, Kings Priory, Longbenton Community College, St Thomas More Catholic High School and Whitley Bay High School, alongside further education colleges.

The other Monkseaton school is staying open

The two names are easy to confuse, so it is worth being clear: Monkseaton Middle School, a separate school, is not closing. In March its future was settled the other way.

Cabinet agreed a governor-led proposal on Monday 16 March to extend the middle school’s age range from Year 5 to 8 out to Year 5 to 11, so pupils can stay through to their GCSEs. Year 9 arrives in 2027, followed by Years 10 and 11, with the new age range taking effect from September 2027. The council said the governing body and its own officers “confirmed that the proposal is financially viable and that the school can deliver the curriculum within its existing buildings”. (North Tyneside Council)

Both decisions sit inside the council’s Strategic Education Review, which it describes as looking at “how to keep North Tyneside’s school system sustainable in the face of falling birth rates, surplus places and increasing financial pressures”.

What it means for you

If your child collects GCSE results on 20 August, go to the school as normal from 8.30am. That is effectively the last day the building works as a school office, so ask anything you need to ask while staff are still there, and take a note of the candidate number and centre number before you leave. You will need both for a review of marking, and a GCSE request has to go through the school as the exam centre rather than direct to the board.

If you are a former pupil of any year and you need a certificate, a reference or confirmation that you attended, the answer is now North Tyneside Council rather than the school. Replacement certificates from exam boards are slow and are usually charged for, so collecting the original is the cheaper route.

If you are a neighbour rather than a parent, the immediate question is what happens to a large site on Seatonville Road. No proposal for its future use appears on the council’s statutory notices page at the time of writing, and any change of use would need planning permission; we track new applications across the borough on our Whitley Bay planning news page. Changes to school catchment also feed through to what families pay to live in the area, which our Whitley Bay house prices page follows, and pupils travelling further to school from September will find services and fares on our Metro times and travel page.