‘Our success is founded on our inclusive and supportive school culture’
How The Crypt School guides its students to academic excellence
From its ‘teach to the top’ approach in the classroom, to its network of academic and pastoral support structures outside of it, SoGlos sits down with the head of The Crypt School in Gloucester, Nick Dyer, to find out how the school helps its students to flourish academically, with a view to each student getting the best possible start onto their chosen career pathway.
By Jake Chown | Published Friday 15 May 2026
In partnership with The Crypt School | cryptschool.org
The Crypt School is a co-educational grammar school in Gloucester, which welcomes students aged 11 to 18. It has an excellent academic reputation, an impressive extra-curricular programme and an environment of strong pastoral care to help its students achieve their full potential.
With an approach that puts emphasis on encouraging students to use their newly acquired knowledge to answer challenging questions, The Crypt School in Gloucester has an excellent record of guiding its young people to academic success.
SoGlos talks with the school’s head, Nick Dyer, about how the school helps students to thrive in their studies, from its approach inside the classroom, to extra support outside of it, and how it helps to prepare students for their future careers in an ever-changing landscape.
Tell us about The Crypt School’s academic record.
As a selective grammar school, students come to us with high academic ability to begin with. That’s, of course, a strong advantage in terms of their potential to succeed in their learning journeys; however, as a school we’ve got to work hard to make sure that they do indeed make that exceptional progress that they are capable of across the full range of academic subjects that they study.
Over recent years, the attainment of our groups in their GCSEs and other exams has further strengthened. For example, outcomes in modern foreign languages have improved significantly, and the school is now one of the best performing schools regionally in those subjects at GCSE.
Science and mathematics have always been great strengths of the school, but we also see students do extremely well in the humanities – history, geography and religious education – and in the creative arts – music, drama and art, for example. Many of our students also excel in and enjoy studying computing, English and more practical subjects such as sports science and food technology.
We’re fortunate to have very able students at the school, but we work hard to enable them to achieve ‘value added’ in the progress they make over the course of their studies with us.
What approach does the school take to supporting students to succeed academically, in the classroom?
We have very clear expectations of what our student’s learning is going to look like, in terms of the curriculum, but also of what we want them to achieve at key ‘end points’ across the year.
Our approach is to teach to the top, setting high academic expectations for all of our learners to aspire to. However, we provide extra support to those who find the work more challenging at times, which is really important, but we also take away that ‘scaffolding’ over time, enabling students to reach those high grades and make excellent progress in their work.
We put a lot of focus on questioning – not accepting the first answer given, but asking the students to dig deeper, to think more critically, with skilled teachers bouncing students’ ideas around the room to involve a wider group.
Ultimately, we want to equip our students with the knowledge they need to answer challenging questions, and to ultimately make evidence based judgments of their own. We do have a knowledge rich curriculum here at The Crypt School, but one that seeks to place critical thinking and the development of skills such as oracy at its centre.
We also want our students to increasingly become independent learners – but students do need to learn how to become more independent in both their work and learning. We have a strong focus on students all developing a growing sense of personal ownership of their progress, and of their work, and that is also a key feature of our sixth form curriculum and approach to learning: that’s about preparing our senior students for university study and the world of work, where they will have to operate independently.
We have a strong and deep rooted culture of celebrating and valuing each student’s progress and achievement here at Crypt which shapes our learning environment; with able and committed learners, and expert subject specialists, supported by a talented team of professional support staff, it’s no surprise our students really excel in their learning.
And of course, those students who have special educational needs are given the support and encouragement they need to excel in their learning and progress, too.
What does that extra support look like for students?
We offer a lot of academic support outside of lessons at lunchtime and after school, particularly in the form of revision sessions for exam students.
We might also identify that a student has challenges with handwriting, there might be students whose literacy skills aren’t as good as we would hope, for example, and they would be identified for extra support.
Beyond academic support, we also have an outstanding pastoral system here at the school. Students can find the challenge of their school work quite hard, and they need that extra support from a wellbeing perspective.
I think the success that we have as the school is founded on the care that we offer to students, built around our inclusive and kind culture. Whether it’s our counsellors, pastoral support workers, tutors or heads of year, the students know that if they are facing challenges – be they academic or pastoral – there’s someone they can go to for support and guidance. That’s really important and I think it’s something the students really appreciate.
How does The Crypt support students to pursue their desired career pathways post-school, whether that’s university, an apprenticeship, or full-time employment?
The careers landscape is ever changing, isn’t it? It’s challenging for us to know what that landscape is going to look like for the current Year 7, for example, when they go into the workforce in seven to 10 years’ time.
However, we do have a very thorough careers education guidance programme, that begins in Year 7 and strengthens through to the sixth form. That includes work experience in Year 10 and Year 12; lots of employer engagement activities; an annual careers fair; and we also have an independent careers advisor. All of that is led by our careers leader, who has a full network of contacts drawn from our parental body, our Old Cryptian network and others who want to give up some of their time to support our programme.
We don’t just concentrate on university – 75 per cent of our Year 13s will go to university, but there’s a significant group who are actively seeking apprenticeships and degree apprenticeship opportunities. Over the last few years, we’ve increased our support for those who want to look at apprenticeships, running workshops and replicating employer-led assessment days. There’s plenty of support for writing UCAS applications, CVs, or application letters, too.
Our main aim in the lower years is to give students an idea of the kind of careers that might be available to them, both now and in the future. We utilise labour market information, using a platform where students can record their personal achievements on, but also use it to research what careers are out there, how many jobs are available in the Gloucestershire area, what are the salary expectations and what skills and qualifications they would need to access that kind of career pathway.
What’s really fundamental, too, is the skills and personal qualities that each student is able to develop over their education at the school. If you can communicate well, that will always be something in demand. If you are resilient, there will always be challenges that you will face and can overcome. So, while knowledge and qualifications remain important, alongside that, our young people need those ‘softer’ skills that employers look for.
We know that our careers guidance programme is exceptional – that is what Ofsted said when they inspected the school in March 2024. We have also just had an external audit of our career programme by a company called Careers Mark – we gained their Careers Mark Award three years ago, and we’re aiming to have our programme re-accredited this month.
Of course, the labour market is in a time of great change: technology and AI in particular are reshaping how people work, and where they work. It is also going to profoundly affect what roles are going to increase in demand, what new roles will emerge and what roles will also disappear: our careers work in school must therefore remain relevant and future focussed.
And finally, how does The Crypt School balance academic learning with enrichment activities, and why is that important?
Academic learning is central to what we do here, but students want to engage with lots of other things, too. And it’s really important they do that, and through that develop their communication skills, ability to work in teams, to become leaders as well – but our programme is also about each student having fun and building friendships.
When they leave school and look back upon their school lives in years to come, they often remember those times where they played in a team or went on a trip; took part in a debate, sung in the Cathedral or led one of our clubs or societies; acted in a play or led their House in an assembly – we have a huge programme of extracurricular and enrichment activities here at Crypt – something for everyone to engage with and grow through their participation in.
Our enrichment programme and school culture is also underpinned by our house system which offers lots of opportunities for leadership and for fun, which helps all our students develop a stronger sense of belonging to their school. Our senior students also take on leadership roles as prefects, members of our sixth form student executive team, head boy and head girl. We also have our three school parliaments, which although are focused on important aspects of school life, provide opportunities for students to engage in debate and have their say, so they feel a sense of ownership and belonging to the life and work of the school.
Our programme builds culture, it enables friendships to flourish, and it helps the students to manage their other challenges – the workload, the expectations that they will do well academically and wider concerns that I think young people have today about our society. It’s a release from all of that and really good for their wellbeing and mental health. So it’s a fundamental part of our curriculum.
The school welcomed 
