School History

A Long and Proud History

The origins of our current school go back to 1925 when the Kingsbury County School, with 71 pupils, was established in a building which had been the main office in Colindale of the former Aircraft Manufacturing Company.

In 1932, by now with 420 pupils and 25 teachers, the school moved to its brand new premises in Princes Avenue, prior to being designated a grammar school under the Butler Education Act of 1944. With the grammar school came the secondary modern (or two in Kingsbury’s case, and the Tyler’s Croft Secondary Modern Schools, one for girls and one for boys) opened in 1952. Both have notable alumni such as Charlie Watts and Shirley Eaton from Tylers and Dennis H. Osborne from Kingsbury County School.

Kingsbury High School, the amalgamation of the grammar school and the two secondary moderns, was formed in 1967 and that is the date that most accurately represents the founding of our school. More recent alumni include George Michael, Courtney Pine, Ekow Eshun and Floyd Steadman the first black captain of Saracens RFC (who was awarded an OBE in 2023).

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, emphasised when The Queen personally chose the school for her launch of the Royal website in 1997.

Kingsbury High was then designated a “Beacon School”, charged with sharing good practice with other schools. Specialist status in Mathematics and Computing followed in 2004 and the years 2010, 2014 and 2018 have seen successful Ofsted inspections confirming Kingsbury High as a "good" school. The school has consistently maintained a very good level of examination performance.

The school converted to Academy status in December 2011. It remains committed to the comprehensive ethos and to national terms and conditions for teaching staff and has retained its straightforward name "Kingsbury High School."

In 2018 the school began a journey towards gaining UNICEF Rights Respecting Schools Status and reached the highest level in November 2022 as a Gold school, one of only 5 secondary schools in London to do so.  Kingsbury High is proud to be a comprehensive school and we still regularly send pupils to Oxbridge and we are equally proud of our reputation as a centre of excellence for our work with those with special educational needs. At whatever end of the academic spectrum and all points in between, our pupils continue to succeed in gaining the skills they need for education and for life.