Frequently Asked Questions

Fees will be payable per term and per year. We are currently planning our budget and working with our governors to confirm a fee structure for September 2026. Please check back on our Admissions & Fees page for further information about fees in future.

We will also work with churches and other donors to support us financially, hopefully putting a scholarship fund in place for families for whom admission fees would be a barrier to attendance.

We do not want money to be a hindrance to being part of Alcuin’s School and we are keen to work with each family’s unique set up. However, we need to ensure we can pay our teachers well, provide an excellent curriculum, and enable our school community to grow. 

Class sizes will be no more than 20, and there will be one class per year group. Smaller class sizes mean increased individual attention and feedback, enhanced student engagement, improved teacher-student relationships as well as peer relationships, improved academic performance.

Yes – this is a critical part of the vision and school mission. We expect all teachers to sign a statement of faith and adhere to one of a few selected creeds of confessions. One of the references for teacher applications must be from their church minister. 

Being a Christ-centred school impacts everything about it, for everything we do must be rooted in the knowledge that Christ is Lord over all of life. Therefore, the curriculum is taught with the knowledge that he is the cornerstone of everything that we do. See our Curriculum page and What is Christian, Classical Education page for further information.

In terms of community engagement, the overall aim, as the vision statement suggests is that we are preparing students by providing them with the knowledge, wisdom and virtue they need to be Christians in the modern world in every aspect of their lives. While students are with us at Alcuin’s, we want to enable them to be equipped to serve within their church community, within the wider world, within the networks they have and with their non-Christian friends. 

It is important to remember that students are only at school for just over a decade: they will spend another six, seven or even eight decades ‘in the world’ serving Christ: we hope Alcuin’s will be a place which will provide the solid foundations they need to be able to fulfil God’s purposes for their lives and build His kingdom here in the North East or wherever God leads them. 

One of the great benefits of Alcuin’s is that we are free to organise the curriculum in the way that we feel is best for students. The rich expertise within our team guarantees that at Alcuin’s, students will receive the very best of everything we can possibly give them; one of the key things about this is providing an exceptional ‘diet’ of transformative experiences. 

Being based in the North East, we have the sea, countryside, castles and a whole variety of fantastic heritage on our doorstep. This will be built into our curriculum solidly and we truly hope parents will share with us in enjoying these experiences and join us on many of these trips. 

Naturally, as a small school, we will struggle to have large sports teams, big orchestras and huge facilities; but we do have excellent links with sports teams, music teachers and other networks that can be accessed through Alcuin’s. We hope to be able to signpost students to these. 

We see these things as a great opportunity for students to be ‘in the world’: by not running lots of ‘Christian’ extracurricular activities at Alcuin’s, we can provide the space and the time to parents to engage in their local sports, music, and wider clubs in meaningful ways without feeling overly stretched during the week.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we want to put front and centre the enriching nature of good quality family time which we want to encourage all of our connected families to prioritise first before the traditionally understood extracurricular or enrichment activities.

Our vision is of serving with parents and churches in the education of their children. This means that a close relationship between teachers and parents will be built, and families and churches will be involved in school life as often as possible.

We would also like to draw on our school community to run workshops, visits, experiences and a whole manner of other things to make Alcuin’s a ‘learning community’ and not a place where children are educated in a silo.

We are excited by the opportunity to work with families in this early stage of our school development to consider how this works in practice, as there are many ideas from all over the world we can consider as we develop our unique Alcuin’s offer.

This is a non-negotiable element of the vision of Alcuin’s: every student will achieve their full potential academically and we endeavour to provide the very best curriculum and support system possible to enable them to do this. 

For Alcuin’s we do not see achievement in examinations as the sum total of ‘success’: our aim will be to send our students away from Alcuin’s with well-chosen and well-suited qualifications that will support them to go on to the next stage of their education (whether that is vocational or further formal education), alongside a deep love of learning, critical thinking, Christian discipleship, and rounded character development.

,Yes absolutely. We believe that every child is made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27) and therefore seek to provide an education to all students, regardless of their needs that is true, good and beautiful. If your child has a special educational need or even an EHCP in place, we would welcome an application from you and would consider the best way we can support your child to thrive if Alcuin’s is right for them and for you as a family.