William Ellis School

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William Ellis School was first established in 1862 in Gospel Oak and catered for girls and boys of a wide age range. In 1889 it was reconstituted as a boys' secondary school. The school moved to its present site, backing onto Hampstead Heath, in 1937.
Since then classrooms have been adapted and extended, parts of the building have been converted and there has been a great deal of building to provide the specialist classrooms required. The most recent building program gave us a new school hall and fully computerized learning resource center, library, and office.
The school has been fully comprehensive since 1984, having admitted its first mixed ability intake in 1978. It has a large joint sixth form with Parliament Hill School, which is part of the highly regarded La Swap Consortium with La Sainte Union and Acland Burghley School. The school has a long history of success and in 1997 became one of the three boys’ schools in the country to earn specialist Language College status.
William Ellis is unusual in being a non-denominational ' Voluntary Aided' school within the London Borough of Camden. There are not many of these schools, and they are mostly attached to the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, a Jewish community, or a Livery Company. We stand on our own, supported by the William Ellis and Birkbeck Schools Trust, a registered charity whose funds are sole to assist the school. The Trustees work closely with the Governors and appoint the Foundation Governors. Many of our Governors are parents of current or former students of the school, and a few are former students.
Our purpose is to develop in our students the knowledge, skills, and qualities, strengthening their character and resolve, so that they are well qualified and prepared for their future success and wellbeing.
William Ellis is a distinctive, dynamic, and diverse school where there is a strong sense of pride and belonging in the school community. Our vision is to create an environment built on success, self-discovery, developing leadership, passion for learning, and acquiring effective skills for life. We are concerned with the development of the whole person: intellectually, physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. We emphasize the dignity of the individual and promote respect for others.
Our school was the last he founded but unlike all the others it bore his name. This was in October 1862. One of the chief aims of the Birkbeck Schools was the development of the thinking powers of children, quite radical at the time, rather than merely cultivating their memory.
William Ellis stood out as an innovator on a grand scale in founding schools where the sciences, including social sciences, formed the main basis of tuition and the development of the faculty of reason was regarded as the basic function of education. He valued, as he said, his conscience and his feelings for human wellbeing above all else. William Ellis School

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