St Joseph's Catholic Academy

St Joseph's Catholic Academy is a coeducational Roman Catholic secondary school with academy status, located in Hebburn, Tyne and Wear, England.The school currently caters for students aged 11 to 18 and also a number of Vocational courses for 14- to 19-year-olds. It is the only secondary school in the local authority area that has a sixth form. The only other sixth form is found at South Tyneside College.The school is on the B1306, near the A185 junction, in the south of Hebburn, one mile north of the terminus of the A194. It is on the district boundary with Gateshead. Further down Mill Lane until 1992 was the Monkton Coke Works.HistoryThe school opened as St. Joseph's Grammar Technical School in 1959, being officially opened on 9 June 1960 by James Cunningham, the Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle. It was a grammar school with a technical focus (similar to a technical school) for catholic children in the north of County Durham, and the County Borough of South Shields. Further grammar technical schools were to be opened in Gateshead, Lanchester, Stockton and Whitley Bay.St Joseph's became a comprehensive in 1974 when it merged with the neighbouring St James' RC Secondary Modern School, which was on the same site. The school gained specialist Technology College status in 1996.