Any maintained secondary school and any maintained or non-maintained special school in England can apply for specialist status in one of ten curriculum specialisms: arts, business & enterprise, engineering, humanities, languages, mathematics & computing, music, science, sports and technology.
Schools can also combine any two of these specialisms. Special schools can, alternatively, apply for an SEN specialism in one of the four areas of the SEN code of practice. Mainstream secondary schools can only apply for an SEN specialism once they have achieved high performing specialist school status.
Click on the logos below for more information about each specialism:
Specialist School numbers
A list of all 3068 specialist schools, including High Performing Specialist Schools (HPSS) and SEN schools in the programme is now available. Please click here to download the file (Excel 2 MB).
Please note these reports do not include data on Academy Specialisms or Academy HPSS options.
