Kingsbury High School

Our school motto Spectemur Agendo goes back to the founding of our predecessor school in the 1920s. It’s Latin for “let us be judged by our actions”. Our students gain excellent examination results and Ofsted rate the school as “good”. We’re proud to be judged by the actions which have led to those outcomes.

Well, if you are coming up to Year 7 age, you will be coming to a school which gives its students the best start possible.

And if you are thinking of coming to our Sixth Form, ours is one of the best around, graded outstanding the last time Ofsted announced separate judgments for sixth forms.

We now offer students who join us in Year 7 a very exciting first couple of years. Rather than a long slow warm up to what used to be called “key stage 3”, we now have a two year Foundation stage to what we call “The Kingsbury Curriculum.” But school is about more than examinations and we are equally proud of the many opportunities we provide for our students beyond the curriculum.

The way we are as a school is expressed through our PRIDE values: Personal Excellence, Respect and Friendship, Inspiration, Determination and Courage, and Equality. Through these, we aim to combine both academic success and the development of the broader aspects of each student’s character.

Students will experience the full range of subjects by rotating through different arts and technology based subjects in each half term.

Students in years seven and eight receive extended homework projects to support their work at school and each half term they make an oral presentation to their class in one subject, to help improve their public speaking skills and confidence.

Students are also expected to complete a portfolio of their experiences which we call “The Kingsbury Guarantee.”

All of this culminates in a graduation ceremony at the end of Year 8 when students and parents come together to celebrate the successes of the first two years.

We hope this firm foundation will enable our students to accelerate in Year 9 and go on to examination success at the end of Year 11. Currently around two thirds of our students gain five A*-C grades including English and Maths and we hope to maintain this high standard over the next few years.

Alongside our academic work, we have an excellent programme of extra-curricular activities and every three weeks we have an “Excel Day” when the usual timetable is replaced by an all-day activity.

Kingsbury High School started out as Kingsbury County School in 1925, becoming the Kingsbury County Grammar School in 1944. Two secondary modern schools, Tyler’s Croft Girls and Boys, were opened on Bacon Lane in 1952, and the three schools merged to become a comprehensive in 1967.

In 1993 a majority of parents voted for the school to gain Grant Maintained status, which brought direct government funding and a degree of independence, for example, over admissions. The school rapidly gained a national reputation for computing, emphasized when The Queen personally chose the school for her launch of the royal website.

Kingsbury High was then designated a “beacon school”, charged with sharing its good practice with other schools. Specialist status in Mathematics and Computing followed in 2004 and the years 2010 and 2015 have seen highly successful Ofsted inspections confirming Kingsbury High as a "good" school. The school has consistently maintained a very good level of examination performance with a record 77% of students gaining five A* - C grades including English and Maths in 2013.

The school converted to Academy status in December 2011, reluctantly, in the knowledge that this would bring greater funding for the benefit of our students. Kingsbury High remains committed to the comprehensive ethos and to national terms and conditions for teaching staff. We have retained our straightforward name "Kingsbury High School."

Our students now have a whole new range of experiences at Kingsbury High as they move through Year 7 and 8. At the end of Year 8, if they have met certain criteria, students will “graduate” from the Kingsbury Curriculum. Their pathway into Year 9 will depend upon how well they have been able to do that. In the Sixth Form, we offer traditional, two-year A level courses, with BTECs available alongside. We also offer a three-year pathway for students who have not quite made the grades for A level but would like to try out an advanced pathway. And we offer English and Maths GCSE to those who have not yet fully qualified at GCSE.