It is a co-educational comprehensive school, for ages 11–16, and 16–18 in the Sixth Form Department.

The school makes use of the Council-run Northgate Sports Centre, which has an Olympic standard running track.

Earlier, it was Ipswich Municipal Secondary School.

[3] In its most recent Ofsted inspection in November 2019, the school was graded as "Good" overall, with a number of individual outstanding grades.

[4] GCSE results are consistently above the national and regional averages, and at A-Level it gets results similar to a grammar school: the fifth best in Suffolk in 2008.