Deputy Headteacher – Policy and Practice

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 838 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 25% of places allocated to feeder schools and 25% 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.

Teacher Training

ECTs, 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 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.

Bromley Schools' Collegiate:  An Initial Teacher Training Programme

At Archbishop Tenison's we are in partnership with Bromley Schools' Collegiate who are a well established provider of initial teacher training with over 30 years experience.  The ITT package offered by BSC allows prospective teachers to rain in a dynamic educational setting across a range of local schools in Croydon and Bromley all of whom are working in partnership to help produced high quality and well-trained teachers of the future.  The in-school training the initial teachers receive is complemented by a range of subject specific sessions led by the highly experience team at BSC.  All of the training that the initial teachers engage with helps to fully prepare them for the delivery of the National Curriculum, is aligned with the Core Content Framework and ensures a smooth transition into becoming an Early Careers Teacher.

More information can be found at:  https://www.bscteach.co.uk