330 YEARS & Girls Allowed

A year to be proud of; an exceptional past and a promising new future at Archbishop Tenison's School in Kennington

there is a lot to celebrate at Archbishop Tenison’s School this year and it is not just that they have been providing a quality education to children for a staggering three hundred and thirty years. This September, the doors are opening to girls too in this previously all boys school.

Admittedly, girls have been attending the Sixth Form for some years but this autumn Year 7 is open to girls for the first time. Archbishop Tenison’s have adopted what is called the ‘Diamond Approach’, in which boys and girls join together but are educated in classrooms separately until Key Stage 5. This means that Archbishop Tenison’s is now offering something that few non-independent schools in the country offer: a single sex education in a co-educational setting.

Archbishop Tenison School London Kennington Grinder Buzzsaw
In the classroom boys and girls are able to learn and develop in ways that best suit their gender. During PSE, tutor groups and play time they are mixed so they can enjoy and learn a wider range of people skills.

Archbishop Tension’s Principal, Elizabeth Sims, is confident this approach will offer pupils the very best of both worlds with an interesting competitive element between the boys and girls whilst also bringing in more social interaction for the boys already at the school. Unsurprisingly, with its long history of being boys-only, the school has a strong pedigree in science-related subjects. This year will offer girls a fantastic opportunity to step up and compete in Science, Mathematics and Engineering.

When London was still mostly built of wood and suffered in the Great Fire of 1666, Charles II was on the throne and Oliver Cromwell’s army had just taken the country through a civil war to deliver a new kind of Parliament. It was shortly after this time, in 1685, that Archbishop Tenison’s school was established to teach poor children in the crypt at St Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Square. This philosophy of care and provision of equal opportunity and education for all children is a deep-rooted one that survives with a justified pride at the school still.

Archbishop Tenison School London Kennington Boys Uniform
The premises eventually relocated across the river and the school has been sustained and well attended ever since. It continues with a little over five hundred pupils divided into four houses to which every child and employee (from teachers to cleaners) is assigned to one. These ‘houses’ pull together creating a sense of family pride and not just a little healthy competition too. Open to pupils of any faith (or none), the school still enjoys a strong association with the Church of England with 70% of pupils recorded as church-going, yet another tenet creating a close-knit community in which all teachers and pupils generally know at least everyone’s face, if not their name.

South London has many famously good schools that pupils wait on lists to get into but unknown to many is the fact that Archbishop Tenison’s out-performs most when it comes to improvement statistics, being in the top four performing schools in Lambeth.

This is a jewel in the crown of education in Kennington and its future is as bright as its past is deep.

ARCHBISHOP TENISON’S SCHOOL
55 Kennington Oval
SE11 5SR
t: 020 7735 3771
w: www.tenisons.com

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