About Us...

Shirley High School is a mixed, 6-form entry, 11-16 comprehensive Foundation School set in a pleasant residential suburb of Croydon on a site exceeding 13 acres.  We have a school roll of 900, with 180 pupils in each year group.  

The school has been an 11-16 school since reorganization in 1983. Since then there have been a number of improvements and additions to the original building, including a new classroom block, Sports Hall and an extensive refurbishment to the Design & Technology area. Most recently a new Performing Arts block was built, which was officially opened in July 2007.

We are very proud of our performing Arts School Specialist status. To achieve this we had to show excellence in all areas of the curriculum and have the ability to pass on those skills to other schools.

The school aims to develop pupils to the best of their ability and to strive for academic excellence. The school's GCSE examination results have shown a consistent improvement over the past five years and are consistently above the national average.  The school was awarded a School Achievement Award 2003 by The Department for Education and Skills in recognition of the improvement in its GCSE results. In the 2003 League Tables Shirley High was in the top 100 most improved schools in the country from 2000-2003 on the criteria of 5 or more A* - C grades.  Last year, approximately 95% of our pupils achieved the benchmark 5 GCSE passes at A* - C grades.  And 61% of our students achieved 5 x A*-C GCSEs. including English and Maths

The school has a reputation of being a well-ordered, happy caring community, popular with our pupils and their parents and is over-subscribed in the first choices from local primary schools with over 700 applications for the 180 places in year seven.  We are committed to working closely with parents in the education of our pupils.  We believe pupils develop best in a well-ordered environment where expectations are made clear.  There are a number of co-curricular (extra-curricular) activities provided for pupils to ensure a broad and balanced education.

The National Association of Advisers for Computers in Education (NAACE) in 2004 awarded the school a NAACEmark Award for the quality of its Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The school has been awarded a Kite Mark for the use of the school for the community. Shirley High is also a partner school for the Open University Initial Teacher Training.  We also received the Healthy Schools Award in 2007 and Artsmark Gold in June 2009

The school places a strong emphasis on staff training our innovative and rigorous continual professional development programme is accredited by the College of Teachers and allows staff to obtain a Certificate and/or Diploma in Educational Studies.

The school was last inspected by Ofsted in June 2009 and the report identifies Shirley High School as a ‘Good’ school with ‘Good’ teaching and Learning ‘Good’ behaviour and an ‘Outstanding’ Curriculum.

The school has a Christian tradition and in September 2007 in partnership with Archbishop Tenison’s CE High School we introduced our first sixth form courses.  We are expecting this area of the school to grow steadily in the future.  Our excellent staff are dedicated to helping our students develop their interests and skills so they can take their rightful place within our society as confident young adults.

N M Barrow