Preston Manor School


Preston Manor is a mixed all-through school within the London Borough of Brent, located in the Preston and Wembley Park areas. It educates primary and secondary school-age children and adults and has a sixth form.

History

Grammar school

It was founded in 1938 as Preston Manor County Grammar School and its first headteacher was Mr W.P. Bannister. He remained headmaster until his death in 1963. It provided a traditional grammar school curriculum with science and languages streams. The school motto was "Munus prae jure" which may be translated as "Duty before right".

Comprehensive

It became a Technology College in 1993.

Preston Manor as a Science College

Preston Manor was amongst the first cohort of schools nationally to become a specialist Science College in 2002 with Mathematics as an additional specialism.
Science and Maths achievement have increased dramatically and continue to improve since becoming a specialist college. Results for both subjects are significantly above the National Average across all key stages.
It has four local primary partner schools in the borough that it works with throughout the year as part of its specialist science community work. Pupils at Ark Academy, Oakington Manor, Byron Court, Preston Park and Wembley Manor pay regular visits to its laboratories or receive outreach lessons from its trained science teachers. It also works closely with its secondary community partners, JFS and the KS3 Pupil Referral Unit pupil to provide an enriched and motivating curriculum for their students. It is continuing to develop its community work, offering workshops to parents and members of the local community on Science and Health related issues.

Academy

The school converted to academy status in February 2013.

Academic results

Over the past five years, achievement of students at Key Stage 3 have been consistently above the national average in all three core subjects.
At Key Stage 4 the percentage of students achieving 5 or more A* to C grades at GCSE has risen steadily over the past 3 years. The percentage of students achieving 5 or more A* to G grades has remained steady over the same period.
In summer 2006 it achieved its highest ever examination successes at GCSE and Post 16, putting Preston Manor in the top 25% of schools nationally. As a result of the innovative practice within the school, it hosted over ten visits for educationalists from the Department for Education and Skills and other schools to showcase good practice in raising achievement with African-Caribbean boys, whole school literacy and most importantly the personalisation of education.
It gets the second best GCSE and A-level results in Brent, with well-above average results, although the GCSE results are better than those at A-level. The best in Brent is JFS, which gets results similar to a grammar school.

Ofsted Reports

In November 2005, Ofsted judged the school to be outstanding overall, recognising Preston Manor as a forward-thinking school, whose commitment and level of care to students is outstanding. In recognition of its consistently high standards, it gained High Performing Specialist School status and was asked to take on a second specialism, which will add to its already extensive collaborative work with local primary and secondary schools.
Preston Manor has now started to teach food technology and DT. These options will be available to choose from GCSE options in many more years to come.

Expansion

As of September 2008 Preston Manor began admitting forty more students into its cohort. To facilitate this the school needed to expand. Work began in January 2008 on a £4.5 million project which will see a new teaching block and a 4 court sports hall built, amongst other new facilities.

Notable former pupils