Newstead Wood School is a selective girls' grammar school in Avebury Road, Orpington, south east London, England. Admissions The school is a grammar school which admits girls in Year 7 based on the results of a selection test, also known as the 11+. The current head teacher is Alan Blount. The school's motto is Fortitudine Crescamus (Latin for: 'May we grow in strength'). The school has been admitting boys into the sixth form since 2012. History The school was founded as Orpington Grammar School for Girls in 1957, when administered by the Kent Education Committee. In 1965, as a result of the London Government Act 1963, the local area, and thus the school, came under the authority of the London Borough of Bromley. It was at this point that the school's name was changed to Newstead Wood School. Nearby Bullers Wood School became a comprehensive in the late 1970s, and most schools in the borough are now comprehensive. There were firm plans for Newstead Wood School to become comprehensive in 1978, but the school has remained one of the only two selective state schools in Bromley. As a result, it is heavily oversubscribed. In 1997, a survey in the Sunday Times found that the school was the best value in England for each A or B grade achieved at A-level, second to St Olave's school; Bromley was a low spender (per pupil) comparative to other LEAs. In 2004, a pupil gained the best result at Maths GCSE in England. In 2009 the headteacher told the conference in Harrogate of the Girls' Schools Association that schools were not concentrating on brighter pupils, instead trying to raise average pupils' grades from D to C, and that girls in mixed-sex schools can have their ambitions crushed and be held back in male-dominated professions (girls from single-sex schools are statistically more successful in science-based professions than from mixed schools). She also criticised a government scheme to give one-to-one tuition to less able pupils, and not more-able students, when considering the lack of women in traditionally-male occupations, and she claimed there was a 'huge reluctance' to concentrate on top students. On 1 April 2011, the school gained academy status and is now sponsored by United Learning. Academic performance At its last full inspection in 2022, Newstead Wood was rated by Ofsted as Outstanding,. The school has a large catchment area of nine miles, from which