Johnston is a Language College and a lead school for Gifted and Talented education, with full International Status.

It is usually oversubscribed and runs on strict admissions criteria based entirely on students' addresses, managed by the County Council.

He worked to bring education to a wide range of people – rich and poor, male and female – and believed that it should be secular, useful and scientific as well as historical and literary.

The long awaited new building has been promised, but whether it comes about or not the work must and will go on; boys will continue to find here both knowledge and experience and skill of mind and hand and muscle; they will take to heart the school’s motto and courageously seek for wisdom, and the world will be a better place because of their presence in it and their abiding faith in the high standards of work and conduct which the school has ever striven to uphold.When the school was finally begun in 1950 it was described as built on a 22 acre green field site at Crossgate Moor alongside the Great North Road … retaining a view of Durham Cathedral from many of the classrooms.

The safe transplanting of those in new ground will be our privilege and duty when we occupy the new school.There were 34 boys in the sixth form when the new school opened.

Long years of hopes deferred, makeshifts and overcrowding have made of the proposed new school an elusive will-o'-the-wisp, subject for cynical jest, yet the gleam was pursued and at last shines clearly before us, beacon of the promised land!

(The old annexe buildings were bought in 1968 when the Cottage Homes Orphanage closed, and was fitted out as a sixth form centre which opened in 1969, the year that girls returned to Johnston.)

Successive years and governments brought planning blight and hopes deferred once again until the school buildings reached an advances state of dilapidation.

However, after the efforts of Head Richard Bloodworth (1999–2004) and Chair of Governors Roberta Blackman-Woods (later MP for the City of Durham) it was rebuilt in 2006-9.

This £25m building bring us all together and, still on the Great North Road, shows the world that we are a historic, stable and successful school.

It’s not just exciting, it’s an honour.Gordon Brown's Labour Cabinet held a meeting and public consultation in February 2010 and praised the school for its commitment to academic excellence, social justice and global future.

Durham Johnston in 2011 raised funds to re-site and rededicate the school war memorial, which names 107 men.

The majority were members of the Durham Light Infantry, although they served in both wars and in a variety of services and regiments.

After the new panels had been paid for the residue of the money was used for a War Memorial prize, which was awarded annually to a high achieving student at the school.

It remained in place until the spring term of 2009, when it was removed and stored in preparation to be rededicated in the new Durham Johnston school hall.

It was reinstalled in the third building and dedicated in March 2011 in recognition of the 90th anniversary of the original unveiling, with students and members of the local community raising the money for the initial memorial.

Because of this, the rededication of the memorial in 2011 was attended by representatives of AJEX, the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and the Rabbi to the Army performed a blessing in the school, as well as the local Anglican Vicar.

The school is named after James Finlay Weir Johnston, a professor of Chemistry at Durham University.

The quotation outside the door is the name of JFW Johnston's most successful book – an 800-page 2-volume work called ‘The Chemistry of Common Life’.

The music and drama corridor is Zouche Street, named after the Archbishop of York, another English military commander.

Johnston achieves the highest results of any state school in the region and has a distinguished track record in getting students from all backgrounds into the most competitive courses.

The sixth form and its success is the lasting legacy of the longest-serving and most well-known Head, Dr John Dunford (1983–1999).