Tottenham Hotspur teams up with top school to open new academy

Football club Spurs is to open a school
Shaun Botterill/Getty Images
Aanna Davis12 May 2016

A leading London independent school and Tottenham Hotspur football club will open a new school together next year, it was announced today.

Highgate School and Spurs will launch a sixth form to help bright local teenagers get into the best universities or land top jobs.

It will be based on the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford, nicknamed the Eton of the East end for its success in getting pupils into Oxbridge.

The new school will follow the same model, be academically selective and prioritise applications from local children and those from poorer backgrounds.

It will be known as London Academy of Excellence Tottenham (LAET) and will open in a building currently occupied by the Tottenham University Technical College.

The £18,000 a year Highgate School will supply the equivalent of five full time staff to the new school and help to run it. Tottenham Hostspur will provide financial support and the school premises.

Adam Pettitt, head of Highgate School, said: “Although Highgate School is situated in an affluent area of London, some of the least affluent and most challenged parts of the whole city are on our doorstep. With LAET, we want to enable bright, local children, especially those with disadvantaged backgrounds, to access a high-calibre academic education and first-rate preparation for university and employment.

“We want to create opportunity at the heart of Tottenham, in what is the most stunning educational building. This kind of collaboration is our way of being both a charity, which fundamentally we are, whilst remaining true to our educational ethos”.

He added that the prospect of working in both a private school and a state sixth form is appealing to teachers and Highgate’s links to state schools has already attracted talented staff.

He added: “Physicists and mathematicians don’t grow on trees. We may get them to come into teaching because of models like this.”

A consultation about LAE Tottenham’s admission arrangements and curriculum will be available on www.laet.org.uk from May 18.

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