The school has 1600 pupils; more than 600 are in the sixth form. In 2006, the school was awarded Specialist College Status in Science & Humanities.
It is situated next to Monkseaton Drive (A1148), towards the north of Monkseaton. There is a subway for access under the main road. It is in the parish of St Peter, Monkseaton.
The school was originally built as a grammar school in 1963, and was originally known as Whitley Bay and Monkseaton Grammar School. The buildings were officially opened on 7 December 1963, by Edward Boyle, Baron Boyle of Handsworth. It was formerly housed in what is now the Marden Bridge Middle School. The original buildings on site were A Block, B Block and C Block.
In 1973, it became a high school. In 1995, the biology class of Elizabeth Pollock featured in the Radio 4 programme Six of the Best, looking at how the human eye worked.
The school has since been rebuilt and all except D-Block and a portion of C-Block have been replaced.[1] It had four main buildings, with several other outlying blocks around them. They were:
This article's list of alumni may not follow Wikipedia's verifiability policy. Please improve this article by removing names that do not have independent reliable sources showing they merit inclusion in this article AND are alumni, or by incorporating the relevant publications into the body of the article through appropriate citations.(March 2012)
Alan Campbell – MP for Tynemouth, taught History at the school from 1980–9, and married a former pupil.
Frank Collins – SAS Soldier, first to enter the building in the Iranian Embassy Siege. Later ordained as a Church of England minister. Committed suicide in 1998 a year after the publication of his book 'Baptism of Fire'.
Graham Fenton – Footballer who formerly played for Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers and Leicester City.