Archbishop Tenison's School

Archbishop Tenison's School, commonly known as Tenison's, was a Church of England mixed secondary school located in the London Borough of Lambeth. The school was founded in 1685, and closed in 2023.

Tenison's was an 11–16 boys and girls comprehensive school, part of the educational provision of the Anglican Diocese of Southwark and the London Borough of Lambeth. The school catered for around 530 pupils. The school was located directly opposite The Oval cricket ground, home of Surrey County Cricket Club.

History
Thomas Tenison, an educational evangelist and later Archbishop of Canterbury, founded several schools in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. A boys' school now at the Oval was founded in 1685 in the crypt of St Martin's in the Fields and relocated by 1895 in Leicester Square on the site previously occupied by the Sabloniere Hotel. The school moved to The Oval in 1928, with the new building being opened by the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII). A girls' school was formally established in 1706 for 12 girls and in 1863 a new school building was erected at 18 Lambeth High Street. The girls school closed in 1961, when it amalgamated with Archbishop Temple's Boys School to form a mixed voluntary aided (VA) school. The building was used by Temple's as a first-year annex from 1968 to 1974, when Archbishop Temple's School closed.  Archbishop Tenison founded another school in nearby Croydon in 1714.

Archbishop Tenison's at The Oval became a grammar school, then a comprehensive. Tenison's became a Grant-Maintained school in 1993, and a VA school in 1998. in 2019 the school converted to academy status.

The school closed in Summer 2023.

School badge

The badges of both the schools founded by Thomas Tenison are based on his personal coat of arms, which consist of the arms of the see of Canterbury  impaling the Tenison family arms. The former, placed on the dexter side of honour,  are blazoned as: Azure, an archiepiscopal cross in pale or surmounted by a pall proper charged with four crosses patee fitchee  sable.  The arms of Tenison, placed on the sinister side of the escutcheon are blazoned as: Gules, a bend engrailed argent voided azure between three leopard's faces or jessant-de-lys azure.
In standard English: a red field bearing a white (or silver) diagonal band with scalloped edges, and a narrower blue band running down its centre. This lies between three gold heraldic lion's faces, each of which is pierced by a fleur-de-lys entering through the mouth.

Academic performance
The school had long been renowned for its high academic performance. It suffered a dip in results in 2016 and 2017 but the 2018 GCSE results show that the school was returning to its former achievements with double the number of strong GCSE passes in Maths and English and a large number of students attained the new top grade 9 (equivalent to top half A*) in a range of subjects. In 2019 the school continued to show great improvement with a progress 8 score of -0.06,  which moved the results to average compared to all other secondary schools in England.

In its Ofsted report, from October 2016, the school was judged to be Inadequate and was placed into special measures.

Notable Old Tenisonians (OTs)

 Jeremiah Emmanuel, youth influencer
 Jason Euell, footballer
 Patrick Harrington, political activist
 Stephen Moore, actor
 Tony Banks, Baron Stratford, Labour MP from 1997 to 2005 for West Ham and from 1983 to 1997 for Newham North West
 Nicky Clarke, celebrity hair stylist
 Chris Gent, former Chief Executive Officer from 1997 to 2003 of Vodafone, and Chairman since 2005 of GlaxoSmithKline
 Don Letts, musician, member of Big Audio Dynamite
 Chris Riddell, award-winning illustrator, author, political cartoonist

References

External links
 
 Old Tenisonians Association
 EduBase

The Oval
Boys' schools in London
Educational institutions established in the 1680s
Defunct schools in the London Borough of Lambeth
1685 establishments in England

Defunct Church of England schools
Educational institutions disestablished in 2023
2023 disestablishments in England