| William Ellis School | |
| Coordinates: | 51.5589°N -0.1506°W |
| Established: | 1862 |
| Type: | Voluntary aided school |
| Head Label: | Headteacher |
| Head: | Izzy Jones |
| Founder: | William Ellis |
| Address: | Highgate Road |
| City: | Gospel Oak |
| County: | London |
| Country: | England |
| Postcode: | NW5 1RN |
| Local Authority: | London Borough of Camden |
| Urn: | 100056 |
| Ofsted: | yes |
| Staff: | 95 teaching, 30 support |
| Enrolment: | 853 |
| Gender: | Boys |
| Lower Age: | 11 |
| Upper Age: | 18 |
| Colours: | Blue & Gold (Year 7-9) & Black (Year 10-11) |
| Free Label 1: | Alumni Society |
| Free 1: | The Old Elysians Club |
| Website: | http://www.williamellis.camden.sch.uk/ |
William Ellis School is a voluntary aided secondary school and sixth form for boys located in Gospel Oak, London, England.[1]
The School is located near Hampstead Heath in north London.
It is situated just east of Parliament Hill and north of Gospel Oak railway station. It is next to Parliament Hill School, a girls' school.
Up to 10% of places are offered to boys with an aptitude for music as determined by a music aptitude test.[2]
The school's founder, William Ellis (not to be confused with the inventor of rugby football, William Webb Ellis) was a public-spirited businessman. In the mid-19th century, Ellis founded a number of schools (named 'Birkbeck Schools' after George Birkbeck, adult education pioneer and founder of Birkbeck University, London) and inspired many teachers to promote his educational ideas.
Ellis wanted children to be taught "useful" subjects such as science (including "Social Science"), and to develop the faculty of reason; this was in contrast to the learning by rote of religious tracts, ancient languages and history, characteristic of many schools at the time. Whilst William Ellis School is the only one of these schools that retains William Ellis' name, the last surviving Birkbeck School still operating as a school in its original (Grade 2 listed 1862) building is Colvestone Primary School (previously the 'Kingsland Birkbeck School') in Dalston, East London.[3]
The school was established in 1862 at Gospel Oak, and was originally known as the Gospel Oak Schools. It catered for both girls and boys of a wide age range. In 1889, the Gospel Oak Schools were reconstituted as a boys' secondary school, under the headmastership of E.B. Cumberland.
At this time, the school displayed characteristics of traditional public schools, such as a house system; a prefect system (with prefects wearing gowns when on duty); a school song; and playing rugby football rather than football as the school sport. School uniform was strictly observed, with blazer colours and ties indicating Junior School, Middle School, Sixth Form and prefects; and blazers and ties could only be removed in the summer if the weather was pronounced “Officially Hot”.
It combined these traditional features with liberal educational developments such as School Committees, in which pupils discussed and helped determine aspects of school policy. Classes in each Form were labelled G, L and M (rather than A, B and C) to avoid any suggestion of rank or streaming.
The school ran its lessons on an unusual six-day timetable, so that if a Monday were Day One, the following Monday would be Day Six of the timetable, and Day One’s academic timetable would fall on the Tuesday. This provided a rotation of lessons, so that unpopular items did not always fall upon the same weekday; it also allocated a Day for the sports activities of each Form, from First to Sixth, which again did not always fall upon the same weekday. It was a matter of pride that pupils could master the Six Day timetable, and remember over weekends and vacations the Day upon which the School would recommence. The school also had a Combined Cadet Force with army and RAF sections. The CCF Hut on the periphery of the school playground nearest Parliament Hill Fields house a stores for uniforms etc., an armoury with chained very elderly Lee Enfield .303 rifles, and one .22 target rifle.
Around 1955 two young teachers who had qualified during or as a result of a 3 year short service contract in the Education Corps resigned to return to Army service in the Greenjackets, causing something of a concern.
Although the adjacent Parliament Hill Fields and Kenwood were used for cross country runs, Rugby and Cricket activities were held at the School's extensive playing fields in Edgware, some seven miles away. Pupils at least between 1951 and 1955 walked to Belsize Park Underground and thence to Edgware by train holding cardboard tickets, later would be ferried to and from the fields by coach on their appointed games afternoon.
Much ingenuity had gone into extending and converting the building to provide the additional classrooms and specialist accommodation required by the post-war grammar school's large sixth form. However, the school's relatively small size meant that it was not capable of becoming either an independent, or a full comprehensive school, at the point when the state withdrew funding from direct grant grammar schools. An option of the school going independent was discussed. In March 1977, a group of parents tried to get a High Court injunction to stop the governors changing its grammar school status, organised by Dudley Stanley Fox.
With the provision of better facilities for the national curriculum and for information technology the School became fully comprehensive in the years after 1978. The Queen visited the school on 7 November 1979. Fiona Millar, the previous school governor, sent both her sons to the school.
Michael Palin and Patricia Hewitt have also sent their sons to the school.
From 1990 the School gained greater autonomy under the Local Management of Schools scheme, and spent a devolved budget of over £13 million per year for its 1000 pupils. In 1997 the school earned Language College status under the Specialist School Scheme.[4]
In line with this specialist status, the school requires students to study at least two languages in Key Stage 3, with a requirement for at least one to be taken at GCSE level. Languages on offer include French, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Bengali. In addition, the school employs a number of native-speaking language specialists, who work with students throughout the school, but particularly in coaching GCSE and A-Level candidates in advance of oral language exams. The schools Language College was removed in 2011, and cutbacks in the languages department have been made, in terms of staff members and language teaching time.
In January 2008, it was revealed that the school was in financial difficulty, following a dispute between the school and the local authority concerning a new central heating system. Consequently, the incumbent headmaster R.J. Tanton stepped down from his position.[5] J.M. Rose (who had begun his career at the school in the 1970s, and was now Director of the Sixth Form consortium) was appointed Acting Headmaster.[6]
The previous Headmaster, Sam White, formerly Deputy Headmaster of the London Oratory School, took up his position in September 2011, and is due to leave at the end of the 2019-20 school year. The current Headteacher is Izzy Jones.[7]
William Ellis School has a joint Sixth Form with the adjacent Parliament Hill Girls School, and all classes are coeducational. Together with La Sainte Union Catholic Secondary School and Acland Burghley School they make up the "LaSWAP"[8] consortium for 16 - 19 education, educating around 1000 students altogether.
In 2018, 86 per cent of pupils entered for a language GCSE: placing William Ellis School is in the top 10 per cent of all state funded mainstream secondary schools in the country for modern language entries.[9]
In the summer of 2019, 84% of William Ellis students entered the English Baccalaureate compared to the national average of 29.70%.[10]