London Academy of Excellence


The London Academy of Excellence is a selective free school sixth form college located in the Stratford area of the London Borough of Newham, England. It has approximately 460 pupils and 32 teachers.

Background

The school first opened in 2012 in collaboration with seven independent schools - Brighton College, Caterham School, Eton College, City of London School, Forest School, Highgate School and University College School, six of which continue to support the school as 'partner schools'. Its close relationship with Eton College has led to the school being dubbed 'the Eton of the East End' by the national media.
LAE is a flagship of the Conservative government's academies programme. It was visited by Michael Gove in February 2014, who called it a "superb new free school". As well as state funding, the school receives £500,000 annually from HSBC, and thus is able to offer sports and recreation activities, clubs, societies, a lecture programme and an outreach program to complement academic studies.
The school offers an academic A-Level curriculum designed to facilitate student's entry on to competitive degree courses at leading universities. Conditional offers of places are made on the basis of student's predicted GCSE results. For 2018 entry, students require a minimum of 5 GCSE 7-9 grades, including a minimum of grade 6 in Mathematics and either English Language or English Literature.
In 2015, the Sunday Times awarded the school with the title of 'The Sunday Times Sixth-form College of The Year'. It was the first free school to be named the best sixth form in the country". In 2016 eight students gained offers from Oxford University and the University of Cambridge, receiving much national media attention.
In 2017, the school adopted a gender-neutral dress code.

Results

The school was inspected in October 2017 and was awarded “outstanding” in all areas.
In 2019, LAE achieved record results with 65% of all A-Levels grades A*/A, and 93% A*-B. More than 850 LAE students have taken up places at Russell Group universities since the first cohort left in 2014, 67 attended Oxford and Cambridge, and 95 have embarked on highly competitive medicine, veterinary medicine and dentistry courses.