Barking Abbey School


Barking Abbey School is a secondary school located in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. It serves students from the London Boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, and Newham. Years 7 to 9 are at the Longbridge Road site, and years 9 to 13 at the Sandringham Road site. Barking Abbey also has a Sixth Form of over 400 students. AS, A2, BTEC courses are available to 16- to 19-year-olds. It is situated in Fair Cross, just west of Mayesbrook Park, north of Upney Underground station.

History

Barking Abbey School was founded in 1922, the first co-educational grammar school in England. The first headmaster was Colonel Ernest Loftus, who stayed for 27 years, being replaced by Mr Frank Young DFC in 1949.
In 2005, Barking Abbey started the Barking Abbey Basketball Academy. This enabled younger players from around London, Essex, and Hertfordshire to experience the life of being in a basketball academy, preparing some of them to move abroad on scholarships to various countries around the world. It has been announced that Barking Abbey will become the first pilot Regional Institute of Basketball within Great Britain.
In 2007, Barking Abbey's Dance Department opened its Dance Academy as a "centre of excellence".
It has introduced the teaching of Latin, making it one of the few state schools in London to offer this course.

Academic performance

The school gets the best GCSE results in the LEA, with well above average results. At A-level, it gets the second best in the LEA.

Notable former pupils