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  • Ark King Solomon Academy
    Penfold Street
    London
    NW1 6RX
  • Head: Max Haimendorf
  • T 020 7563 6900
  • E office@kingsolomonacademy.org
  • W www.kingsolomonacademy.org
  • A state school for boys and girls aged from 3 to 18.
  • Boarding: No
  • Local authority: Westminster
  • Pupils: 1,309; sixth formers: 154
  • Religion: Does not apply
  • Open days: October, November, December
  • Review: View The Good Schools Guide Review
  • Ofsted:
    • Latest Overall effectiveness Outstanding 1
      • 16-19 study programmes Outstanding 1
      • Early years provision Outstanding 1
      • Outcomes for children and learners Outstanding 1
      • Quality of teaching, learning and assessment Outstanding 1
      • Personal development, behaviour and welfare Outstanding 1
      • Effectiveness of leadership and management Outstanding 1
    • 1 Full inspection 5th December 2023
  • Previous Ofsted grade: Outstanding on 14th May 2013
  • Ofsted report: View the Ofsted report

What says..

All agree that teaching is outstanding (made so by weekly coaching on professional development). ‘We tell our teachers we are going to help them become better teachers,' says the head. 'It means very talented people want to work with us.' Music is heavily embedded in the curriculum, taught for its 'cognitive benefits', 'moral, social and cultural' understanding and 'potential to build effective teamwork' - plus, no doubt, its advantages on the well-honed UCAS form...

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What The Good Schools Guide says

Principal

Since 2008, Max Haimendorf MA Oxon. One of the first generation of super-bright heads to swap a City job for teaching. He graduated from St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in biological sciences and joined the first cohort of Teach First. As part of his on-the-job training, taught science at Uxbridge High School, then worked as the scheme’s PR. A period with management consultants Oliver Wyman clarified his career goals: ‘Teaching seemed so different from the usual conveyor belt that takes Oxbridge graduates to the City,' he told the Guardian soon after his appointment - when still in his 20s - as the youngest head in England.

At King Solomon, he has taken the core problem (‘the endemic issue of educational disadvantage’) and addressed it with a Wyman-like mixture of ‘creative enterprise and...

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Please note: Independent schools frequently offer IGCSEs or other qualifications alongside or as an alternative to GCSE. The DfE does not record performance data for these exams so independent school GCSE data is frequently misleading; parents should check the results with the schools.

Who came from where

Who goes where

Special Education Needs

Interpreting catchment maps

The maps show in colour where the pupils at a school came from*. Red = most pupils to Blue = fewest.

Where the map is not coloured we have no record in the previous three years of any pupils being admitted from that location based on the options chosen.

For help and explanation of our catchment maps see: Catchment maps explained

Further reading

If there are more applicants to a school than it has places for, who gets in is determined by which applicants best fulfil the admissions criteria.

Admissions criteria are often complicated, and may change from year to year. The best source of information is usually the relevant local authority website, but once you have set your sights on a school it is a good idea to ask them how they see things panning out for the year that you are interested in.

Many schools admit children based on distance from the school or a fixed catchment area. For such schools, the cut-off distance will vary from year to year, especially if the school give priority to siblings, and the pattern will be of a central core with outliers (who will mostly be siblings). Schools that admit on the basis of academic or religious selection will have a much more scattered pattern.

*The coloured areas outlined in black are Census Output Areas. These are made up of a group of neighbouring postcodes, which accounts for their odd shapes. These provide an indication, but not a precise map, of the school’s catchment: always refer to local authority and school websites for precise information.

The 'hotter' the colour the more children have been admitted.

Children get into the school from here:

regularly
most years
quite often
infrequently
sometimes, but not in this year


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