Archbishop Tenison's C of E High School, Croydon

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Tenison's

Motto	Tenaciter : Tenaciously
Contact Information	Phone: (020) 8688 4014 Fax: (020) 8681 6336
Established	1714
Type	State school
Principal	Mr R Parrish
Location	Selborne Road Croydon, Greater London United Kingdom
Enrollment	~770 students
Grades	Year 7 to Year 13 (Upper Sixth)
Publication	The Tenisonian (published annually)
Website	[1]

1 About Tenison's
2 History of the school
3 The House System
4 Sport at Tenison's
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] About Tenison's

Archbishop Tenison's Church of England High School, commonly known as Tenison's, is an 11-18 voluntary aided, mixed comprehensive high school in the London Borough of Croydon, England, part of the educational provision of the Anglican Diocese of Southwark and Croydon Council. Its 11-16 year-old pupils are predominantly active in the Church of England, as selected by the governors, with a minority of places available to members of other Christian denominations, except Roman Catholics.

[edit] History of the school

Several schools were founded by Thomas Tenison, an educational evangelist, in the late 17th and early 18th century. In 1714, Tenison, by then Archbishop of Canterbury, founded a school for some “ten poor boys and ten poor girls” on a site which is now at the heart of Croydon’s shopping centre; almost 300 years and three sites later, Tenison's is one of the oldest surviving co-educational establishments in the country. It is a little known fact that Tenison's was the first ever mixed gender school in the world.

The school now occupies a site established almost 50 years ago in a leafy residential area of Croydon - Park Hill, some ten minutes walk from East Croydon station. It caters for around 770 pupils, of whom 270 are in the Sixth Form. Since 1959, the school accommodation has been augmented by the building of a Sixth Form Centre, an Art block, and Geography and Technology Centres. The school has just come to the end of a planned expansion from two forms of entry to three. This, of course, required additional accommodation, which includes a new mezzanine library and resource area, a music suite, new technology rooms and science laboratories and several general-purpose classrooms.

Tenison's has recently become a Mathematics and Computing Specialist School and has received funding for the extra provision for ICT and Mathematics facilities. These have included interactive teaching whiteboards and tablet PCs across the school.

An essential part of the funding to gain the specialist status was donated by Lord Harris of Peckham who recently visited the school and opened a new IT room. Lord Harris has also recently funded the school with the money to visit a school in Singapore in order to further develop Tenison's mathematical specialist status and international reputation.

[edit] The House System

Pupils at Tenison's are organised into 3 houses - Ramsey, Fisher and Temple. Pupils are part of the house system from years 7 to 9 and compete annually for the House Points Cup and the Inter-House Cup (a school sporting competition). Involvement within the house system lessens in years 10 and 11; however, there have been calls to put greater emphasis on the house system, and inter-house competitions, for all year groups.

[edit] Sport at Tenison's

Despite its inner borough location and comparatively small size, Tenison's does well in local and county sporting competitions, and pupil involvement is high. There are successfull football and netball teams in every year, 7 - U6, entry into various local athletic events, as well rugby union in the Sixth Form.

The school has no grass playing fields but does enjoy the use of nearby Coombe Lodge for football, and a recently constructed all-weather surface on the school site enables the provision of basketball, netball and five-a-side football, as well as four other on-site tennis courts.

Tenison's holds its annual summer Sports Day at Croydon Arena in nearby South Norwood.