Croydon - Education

Education

The town is home to Croydon College, with its main site on Park Lane and College Road near East Croydon station. It has over 13,000 students attending one of its three sub-colleges. The sub-colleges were created in 2007 to allow for more students and to ensure that the courses on offer, the style of teaching and the way the college is run are right for the students that attend each college. The three sub-colleges are the Croydon Sixth Form College, Croydon Skills and Enterprise College and the Croydon Higher Education College. The Higher Education College offers university-level education in a range of subjects from Law through to Fine Art. Croydon Skills and Enterprise College delivers training and education opportunities designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes, across different sectors within London and the south east.

The town has five well-known fee-paying schools, three of which are part of the Whitgift Foundation. Two are boys' schools. Whitgift School was situated near the Almshouses until 1931 when it moved to its current site in Haling Park in South Croydon. The Middle School (renamed Trinity School of John Whitgift in 1954) remained on the site until 1965 when it moved to Shirley Park. A direct grant grammar school until 1968, it is now a member of the Headmasters' Conference. Old Palace School, an independent girls' school situated in the old Summer Palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury, joined the Whitgift Foundation group of schools in 1993. Accompanied by vociferous protests from parents, Croham Hurst School, an independent girls' school in South Croydon, became part of Old Palace in 2007 and its buildings are now used as the Old Palace junior school. The site of the old Whitgift grammar school is now the Whitgift shopping centre and the freehold is owned by the Whitgift Foundation.

Croydon is also home to three high-performing and oversubscribed single-sex Catholic state schools. The (formerly independent) The John Fisher School in Purley; this school has not charged fees since the late 1970's but during the 1990s was highly selective; selecting boys via exams, interviews, tests, previous school reports and written statements. John Fisher ended it's selection policy in 1999, and now takes boys with a points-system; which dicriminates in favour of boys who have high mass attendance and whose family's are most involved in the Catholic Church.

Another school is St. Joseph's College for boys with a mixed sixth form located on Beulah Hill in Upper Norwood. The exam results for this school are very good.

Coloma Convent Girls School is one of England's top performing Catholic girls schools. Formerly a Grammar School; like John Fisher, it uses a points-system to admit girls.

Croydon High School for Girls is an independent girls' school in Selsdon, and a member of the Girls' Day School Trust.

Royal Russell School is a co-educational independent boarding and day school in South Croydon and is a member of the Headmasters' Conference.