The Latymer School

The Latymer School
Address
Haselbury Road Edmonton , London , N9 9TN England
Information
Type	Voluntary aided selective
Motto	Qui patitur vincit (Latin: He who endures wins)
Established	1624 (present site 1910)
Founder	Edward Latymer
Local authority	Enfield
Ofsted	Reports
Headteacher	Mark E.Garbett, MA, M.Ed, NPQH
Gender	Coeducational
Age	11 to 18
Enrollment	1400
Houses	Ashworth Dolbé Keats Lamb Latymer Wyatt
Website	http://www.latymer.co.uk

The Latymer School is a selective, mixed grammar school in Edmonton, north London, England. Approximately 180 pupils are admitted to Year 7 (aged 11 or 12) annually on the basis of competitive examination or (in the case of fewer than a dozen) musical scholarship. A prerequisite for application is that students must live within one hour of the school by public transport. Around 60-70 students join the sixth form in Year 12 (aged 16 or 17) per year, mixing with Latymer pupils who have made the transition from Year 11. External applicants to sixth form undergo interviews and must perform sufficiently well at GCSE (or equivalent) level, usually 6 grade As. The school underwent its most recent OFSTED inspection in January 2005[1].

Ethos

The Latymer School seen from Haselbury Road

According to official canon, the school aims: “To provide a first class, liberal education where pupils achieve their full potential and show consideration for others." This is in conjunction with nine other aims.

Latymer is strong academically, performing consistently at the top of national league tables, including coming first in national value added tables and achieving the highest proportion of A* grades at GCSE among state schools in 2006. In recent years the school typically produces around 20-40 successful Oxbridge applicants annually (roughly 10-20% of each year group). Its further strengths include a long-standing tradition in music, including several orchestras and many other voice and instrumental ensembles, as well as a well-supported programme of other varied extracurricular activities.

The school has strong links with other schools across Europe with regular exchanges to Institution de la Sainte-Croix, Tours, France; Heisenberg Gymnasium, Gladbeck, Germany; and School 316 in St Petersburg, Russia. In addition, there are trips to Italy for junior sports teams (these trips used to be in the Netherlands), senior sports trips to Barbados, canoe trips to the Ardeche and ski trips to the French Alps. There are also Geography expeditions to Southern Iceland and Classics trips to Sorrento, Italy every two years. Art trips go to New York City and Media Studies to Hollywood. Every summer the chamber musicians tour in Europe and in recent years have played to audiences in Berlin, Leipzig, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, Stockholm, Tallinn, Bavaria, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Belgium.

Latymer has a House system of six houses named Ashworth, Dolbé, Keats, Lamb, Latymer, and Wyatt. Two Houses take their names from local historical figures Charles Lamb and John Keats, while Richard Ashworth and Charles Dolbé are former headteachers. Edward Latymer was the founder of the school and Wyatt House is named after Anne Wyatt, a generous patron of the school. Staff are allocated to Houses and are form tutors to pupils in their own House. Much of the House activity is run by sixth form pupils, elected by their House, under the supervision of Senior House Staff. In the school's pastoral system, from years 7-11, form groups are split according to Houses, each form has a form tutor and each year a Head of Year. Upon reaching sixth form, students retain their House affiliations but join smaller mixed form-groups for registration. Each year, the Houses compete with each other for the Dormer Shield in events such as music, drama, debating, chess, cakes, arts and crafts, and sports. The winning House has their name engraved upon the shield, the runner up receives the Jones Cup. In 2006, the Dormer Shield was jointly won by the Dolbé and Latymer houses.

The PE department offers an extensive extracurricular programme in a wide variety of sports, and pupils participate regardless of ability level. 56 clubs run throughout the week and 300 pupils take part in activities in the average daily programme. Various fixtures occur every Saturday and most evenings.

The school is very active in charity work, with each House choosing one charity to support every year with various fund-raising events such as cake sales, non-uniform days and sponsored silences. One perennial fund raiser is the Dolbé-Keats Bazaar, run by the two Houses in December with stalls and live music (including performing member of staff). The school branch of Amnesty International has a strong following and runs a 'Cage Week' annually, wherein staff are locked in a small cage to highlight the case for human rights and to raise money. The Latymer World Community Society is active in supporting fair trade and the sponsorship of children in less economically developed countries. School policy encourages a large percentage of waste to be recycled.

File:SyedKamallLatymer.jpg

MEP Syed Kamall with student leaders of the politics society

Student societies in the school are very active and cover a range of interests including music (such as its jazz band and barbershop singing groups), politics, debating, psychology, philosophy, chess, animal rights, medicine, cryptography and film criticism. The politics society in particular has played host to a series of prominent guest speakers, including George Galloway, Syed Kamall, Joan Ryan, Stephen Twigg, David Burrowes, Andy Love, Vincent Cable, Danny Chalkley, and Gerrard Batten. The school has a tolerant view of religious societies, and there are firmly established student-led Christian, Islamic and Jewish societies.

In February 2007, the school was awarded the title of a Specialist Arts College in the UK government's Specialist Schools Programme due to its planned development of Drama, Media Studies and Art departments.

Facilities

Much of the north end of the school was built in 1910 after the Old Latymer Schoolhouse in Church Street was abandoned. The buildings on the present site were provided by Middlesex County Council at a cost of £6782, and accommodated 150 pupils. Twelve classrooms built in 1924 in the North Block allowed pupil capacity to triple.

The Great Hall, science laboratories and South Block were opened in a ceremony in 1928 by the Duke and Duchess of York (later to become by their majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother). Fully equipped with stage and seating for over 1000 people, the hall is used for school assemblies, concerts, drama productions and other major events.

The gymnasia, art studios and technology block were opened in 1966 by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The 12 science laboratories and 6 technology rooms (including facilities for graphic design, product design, textiles and cookery) were re-equipped and modernised in the late 1990s.

There is a suite of three ICT rooms containing in total approximately 100 computers (networked and accessible to pupils and teaching staff), which are used extensively in the teaching of a large number of curriculum subjects. The school network is accessible to students from the internet via the Latymer Integrated Learning Environment(LILE). Most classrooms have interactive white-boards. There are also 2 laptop trolleys each containing 30 laptops, which teachers can book for lessons. All staff are issued with their own laptop computer. The sixth form study area, careers library, learning resources centre and technology block also have computer workstations.

The Ashworth library holds approximately 20,000 volumes and is run by a chartered librarian. A separate Learning Resources Centre (LRC) contains a further 2,000 reference volumes, a vast selection of periodicals, and computing facilities. There is a Connexions Careers Library with facilities for accessing the latest information on university courses and future career directions.

File:Music dept.jpg

The music department corridor in the Mills Building, sporting many storage facilities

The sixth form study area was converted in 2000 from the Jones Lecture Theatre, which had itself been converted from a gymnasium to mark the retirement of Dr. Jones as Headmaster in 1970. The sixth form common room was built in 1984 to mark the retirement of Edward Kelly.

The 'Mills Building' (after the vision of Geoffrey Mills), a performing arts complex, was opened in the spring of 2000 to service the Music, Drama and Media Studies departments. It was funded by donations from former pupils, parents and friends of the school. The complex offers a range of studio-space, larger rooms for music and drama, and air-conditioned individual music practice rooms. This facility and the new Sports and Dining Complex, were envisaged by the then Headteacher Geoffrey Mills and the Governors in 1995.

The Ysgol centre

The school owns a residential outdoor pursuits centre in Snowdonia National Park, Wales. The centre, Ysgol Latymer, was established on the site of an old primary school situated in the small village of Cwm Penmachno (5 miles from Betws-y-Coed) in 1966. Since, the school has developed it into a well-equipped residential centre, accommodating up to forty staff and pupils. It acts as a base of operations for week-long trips in the first and third years. Activities include hill walking, orienteering, mountain biking, rock climbing, abseiling, canoeing, swimming, rafting and skiing. Students participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Award, GCSE AS and A-level PE also visit the centre. It is the heart of the annual ‘Fourteen Peaks’ challenge when staff and senior students may undertake an extensive programme of hill walks.

The school owns 12 acres of playing fields laid out for football, hockey, rugby union, cricket, rounders and athletics according to season.

The entrance to the Sports/Catering facility

A new Sports and Dining Complex was opened in a ceremony by Anne, Princess Royal on May 18 2006. It includes a fitness suite (complete with aerobic and fixed weight equipment), specialist sports science classroom, changing rooms with showers, and a multi-purpose gymnasium, which allowed the broadening of the sports curriculum to badminton, volleyball, table tennis and health and fitness. The facility is a brownfield development, occupying only slightly more area than the previous catering facility from the 1940s. Various environmentally friendly measures are incorporated into its design, including solar panels providing hot water, sun pipes reducing the need for artificial lighting and wind catchers to provide ventilation. Fresh, hot meals are cooked every weekday in the catering facility which seats 280, and sandwiches are prepared in site. A coffeeshop service is provided for staff and sixth-formers.

History and traditions

The original coat of arms

Latymer was established in 1624 on Church Street, Edmonton by bequest of Edward Latymer, a London City merchant in Hammersmith. Although most of his wealth passed to the people of Hammersmith and the Parish of St Dunstan's (now Latymer Upper School), he named certain properties and estates to fund the education and livelihoods of 'eight poore boies of Edmonton' with a doublet, a pair of breeches, a shirt, a pair of woolen stockings and shoes distributed biannually on Ascension Day and All Saints Day. Students were educated in 'God's true religion' and reading English to the age of thirteen at existing petty schools. The boys had to wear the red Latymer cross on their sleeves and were under a duty to carry out the provisions of his will "unto the end of the world."

The school has formal links with St. John's College, Cambridge (Edward Latymer's College) and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (the College of Edward Latymer's father, William Latymer) which have endowments which may be used for the furtherance of the studies of former Latymer pupils at those Colleges.

The modern coat of arms, blazon: Quarterly, I and IV: pale azure, a chevron argent, in the chief a cinquefoil senestré of three crosses bottony, in the base four crosses bottony, all argent, II and III: quarterly, I and IV; sable, a fess wavy or, three bear heads couped or, II and III; argent, a chevron sable charged with three cinquefoils or

In 1662, John Wild of Edmonton made a bequest, including £4 per annum for the maintenance of a schoolmaster and a similar sum to maintain a poor scholar at Cambridge. This was followed in 1679 with Thomas Style's request of Edmonton of £20 per annum for teaching "twenty poor boys ... Grammar and Latin tongue." Several similar benefactions produced about £550 per annum, which funded the instruction of more than one hundred boys, of which sixty were clothed. For more than a century, no further significant bequests were made until in 1811, Ann Wyatt, an eccentric widow from Hackney, left £500 5% Navy Annuities to build a new school, and £100 in the same securities for its maintenance. The school-room was built in 1811 in accordance to her will.

The school did not take on Latymer's name for some centuries, and has only been situated on its present site since 1910, when it also became coeducational. The school motto, Qui Patitur Vincit ('Who endures wins'), was also adopted in 1910 by Richard Ashworth, then headmaster.

Internally, Latymer history is propagated by school assembelies. It is traditional for headmasters to lecture students on the school's origins, and their personal interpretation of the school's motto during the first assembly of the academic year.

The Latymer School Song was written in the 1950s by Alice W. Linford, with music by Ronald Cunliffe. It is sung on Foundation Day and at the annual Awards Ceremony. Guests at the Awards Ceremony have included Robert Winston, Boris Johnson, and others.

Notable alumni

• Tim Pope film and video director.
• Bruce Forsyth CBE, Entertainer
• Johnny Haynes, Former Fulham F.C. and England football captain (Keats house)
• Syed Kamall, Conservative MEP
• B.J. Wilson, Original drummer of Procol Harum
• Claire-Hope Ashitey, Actress
• Albert Meltzer, British anarchist
• Richard Cook, British jazz writer, magazine editor and former record company executive

External links

• The Latymer School's official website
• A summary of Latymer's academic performance
• 2005 OFSTED report
• A detailed history of the Latymer schools at British History Online