Ashmole Academy


Ashmole Academy is a secondary school with academy status in Southgate, England in the London Borough of Barnet. Under the direction of the headteacher Derrick Brown, around 1,500 pupils are educated in ages 11–18.
Pupils come from a wide range of minority ethnic heritages and a greater than usual number of pupils speak English as an additional language. In January 2007, Ofsted gave an overall rating of the school as Grade 1 Outstanding, the highest available assessment for a UK school.

History

The school, named after Elias Ashmole, was founded in 1958 as the successor of Russell Lane Secondary Modern Boy's School which had changed its name to Ashmole School in about 1949, had Southaw School merged into it in 1971, and became a foundation school in 1999. It achieved specialist status in Science in 2002, and added the second specialism, Music, in 2006. The school moved into a new building on the same site in September 2004 costing £14m. The existing administration block was refurbished and opened as the performing arts centre in June 2005. This was funded by the sale of of school grounds for redevelopment as housing.
On 1 October 2010, it became one of the first schools in North London to convert to an Academy after an invitation from the Coalition Government.

Academic standards

Ofsted gave an overall rating of the school as Grade 1 Outstanding, the highest available assessment for a UK school, following their 2007 inspection. They stated "Ashmole is an outstanding school. Pupils make very good progress, whatever their starting points, and standards are exceptionally high. Staff set consistently high expectations of achievement and pupils often exceed their targets. As a result of consistently good teaching, standards in the sixth form are outstanding."

Notable former pupils