Archbishop Tenison's CofE High School

The School

In 1714 the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, founded a school for some "ten poor boys and ten poor girls" on a site which has since become Croydon's popular Whitgift Shopping Centre. As we enter our 310th year, and three sites later, Archbishop Tenison's is now situated in the leafy Park Hill area of the town, a 5 minute bus ride or fifteen minutes’ walk from East Croydon Station.

Archbishop Tenison's is an 11-18 voluntary aided, mixed comprehensive school, part of the educational provision of the Anglican Diocese of Southwark and the London Borough of Croydon.

The school is well regarded locally for its high academic standards, an academic Sixth Form, the very high level of pastoral care provided for the pupils and its Christian ethos.  Assemblies are an important part of school life; there is an annual Eucharist for each year group; all students take Religious Studies at GCSE, with a good number continuing to A Level.

The School caters for around 760 pupils, including the Sixth Form.  The school is oversubscribed every year and as a result it is necessary for the Governors to rank applicants for the 150 places in Year 7 according to the schools admission criteria, with places allocated largely on the basis of church membership, with 20% of places allocated to feeder schools and 20% of places allocated to all. No entrance examination is set.

Many of our pupils stay on into the Sixth Form and students also join from other schools in the Borough and beyond. The Sixth Form offers a range of AS and A Level courses, together with some vocational courses. Most of the Year 13 proceed to Higher Education each year, gaining entry to top universities, including Oxford and Cambridge.

Archbishop Tenison’s aims to provide an education which is broad, balanced, relevant and accessible to the diverse and close-knit community it serves.

The school is well regarded in the area for its music, drama and sport. Students are active in debating and public speaking. We regularly achieve very impressive results in National Mathematical Challenges. There is a wide range of extra-curricular activities with around 40 different clubs and societies. Charity support also features strongly in the life of the Sixth Form and the school.

The rewarding aspect of working at Archbishop Tenison's is reflected by the way in which staff stay at the school and the high level of staff commitment to extra-curricular activities mentioned earlier. Moreover, each year there are educational journeys in the UK and abroad, residential field courses, Duke of Edinburgh and Christian

The school has featured in a number of guides to good state schools and was described as "Good" in our last OFSTED Report. The school has both a strong sense of traditional values and a readiness to embrace new ideas which are of real benefit to the pupils and students. We are looking for the person appointed to this post to be part of a school with both a distinguished history and a vision of Christian educational purpose.

Transportation

London Borough of Croydon, the largest London Borough, has good transport links, by train Central London only twenty minutes away, Gatwick 30 minutes and Brighton approximately forty minutes.

ECTs, CPD, ITTs and School Direct

At Archbishop Tenison’s we pride ourselves in our successful trainee teacher and ECT training programmes. We have a number of support staff that have taken up teacher training, becoming very successful subject teachers, heads of year and subject leaders. Every academic year we have numerous PGCE, School Direct and Work Experience students either training with us or using our School as one of their professional placements.

Southeast Learning Alliance (SELA) - An Initial Teacher Training Programme

At Archbishop Tenison’s we are in partnership with a number of schools in the local area to provide high quality, bespoke training opportunities for all our trainees.  The Initial Teacher Training packages offered by SELA allow prospective teachers to train in a dynamic educational setting across fourteen highly different but successful schools in the Croydon and Crawley areas. The Alliance comprises seven comprehensive secondary schools and seven primary schools, all of whom are working in partnership to help produce high quality and well-trained teachers of the future.  The in-school training students receive is complemented by the accredited provider, where the learning is subject specific and helps to fully prepare students for delivery of the National Curriculum. All of the training that students engage with is aligned with the Core Content Framework, ensuring a smooth transition into being an Early Careers Teacher following the Early Career Framework.

More information can be found at:  https://sela-teacher-training.org/