Latymer Upper School
 |
|
| Motto | None used since 2004; formerly Paulatim ergo certe (slowly therefore surely) |
|---|---|
| Established | 1624 (current site 1890) |
| Type | Independent school |
| Headmaster | Peter Winter |
| Location | King Street Hammersmith, London W6 9LR England |
| DfE URN | 100370 |
| Staff | 98 full time, 28 music staff |
| Students | 1,284 |
| Ages | 11–18 |
| Website | www.latymer-upper.org |
Latymer Upper School, founded by Edward Latymer in 1624, is a selective independent school in Hammersmith, West London, England, lying between King Street and the Thames. It is a day school for 1,130 pupils – boys and girls aged 11–18; there is also the Latymer Preparatory School for boys and girls between 7–11. The Sixth Form of 340 is one of the largest in London and offers 40 academic courses as well as extra curricular activities. According to the Good Schools Guide, the school "aims to set new standards for co-education in west London."[1] As of 2011[update], the school charges fees of £14,955 a year per student.[2]
Contents |
Student body
Pupils come from a wide area of London. The Sixth Form has been co-educational since 1996, and the main school became fully co-educational, with the introduction of girls into Year 7 for the first time in 2004. With that year's entry moving into in Year 11 it became fully co-educational in 2008. 25% go to Oxbridge, in 2011 74% of A levels taken were graded A* or A, with 31% at A*. The Good Schools Guide said "This is an urban inner-city school that still has a grammar school feel and parents value the social mix that comes from taking in plenty of state school children at 11."[1]
Activities
The PE department offer extracurricular programmes. Optional sports include rugby, cricket, rowing, athletics, football, tennis, cross-country, fencing, karate, scuba diving, table tennis, squash, badminton and swimming. Over 700 students are currently learning to play a musical instrument, with 175 involved in the school's two full orchestras and five string orchestras and around 150 in the choirs.
There are over 40 clubs and societies at Latymer, including the J. S. Mill, Literary and Latymer Societies. There are also clubs for bridge, chess, debating, philosophy and photography. The Drama Society holds several productions each year.[3] Two students in Year 10 won the International Debating Competition in Cambridge at their age level. The final consisted of four other London based schools that included St Pauls and Westminster.
The school has links with other schools across Europe with a joint orchestra, as well as other trips (such as work experience), with Godolphin and Latymer School. There are trips abroad throughout the year, such as skiing trips, language exchanges, work experience in Paris, Berlin and Stockholm, Classics trips to Italy and Greece, sports tours and expeditions. Latymer Upper also participates in the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme.[4]
The school is active in charity work: the annual "Charities' Week" raised £3,000 in 2006. The school branch of Amnesty International is involved in fund- and awareness-raising campaigns. A student-led environmentalist group has led to each classroom being equipped with a recycling bin.[citation needed]
Latymer contributes to local music, art, drama, dance and sports projects, as well as acting as venue for a Sunday School and Scuba diving for the disabled. Sixth Form students are encouraged to help in local primary schools and old people's homes as part of their general studies program, as well as with groups helping the homeless and disabled. In addition, the school offers all students a trip every year in 'Activities Week'. Destinations have included Spain, the Ardèche gorge in the south of France.[5]
Facilities
The school's sporting facilities on site include a boathouse with direct access to the Thames, a sports hall and an indoor swimming pool. The school also maintains playing fields about a mile and a half away, on Wood Lane, with a sports pavilion and changing rooms.
The £4 million Latymer Arts Centre opened in January 2000 with a 150-seat recital hall, music practice rooms, art galleries and studios, a cafe and atrium area.
150 computers are provided for pupil use, networked and with e-mail and internet access, and ICT is taught in one lesson a week in Years 7 to 9. A library/old music building, costing £11 million, providing students with drama, art, and music facilities. A science building opened in September 2010 supplies the students with science labs for the three sciences, and a library with seating for over 200 pupils.[6]
Pupils are permitted to cycle to school, with storage space provided for their bikes. Meals are self-service in the lunch hall, and there is a café in the "atrium".
History and traditions
In 1624, a wealthy puritan, Edward Latymer, pledged on his death-bed to educate and feed "eight poore boies" of Hammersmith. For the next twenty years, local boys were educated in a school erected in Fulham's churchyard, moving in 1648 to another school built in Hammersmith. Later, in 1657, a parochial charity school was set up, which served as the Latymer legacy for the following century until it was rebuilt in 1755. A new facility was built on what is now King Street in Hammersmith in 1863, and was replaced in 1890 with a new building between King Street and the Thames. This structure persists to the present day as the core of the Upper School.
Each year, the school gathers in the nearby St. Paul's Church for "Founder's Day", an annual reflection upon and celebration of Edward Latymer and other beneficiaries of the school.
Coat of arms
The school for many years used the armorial bearings of the founder, Edward Latymer. This included his motto, paulatim ergo certe ("Slowly therefore surely"), which doubled as a pun, including the word "latimer" (spelt thus due to there being no letter y in Latin). An intermediate coat of arms was taken from one of the quarters of the original coat of arms which combined that of the Latymer Foundation and of the Latymer School. The motto was dropped in 2004 along with the coat of arms, and a new, much simpler, shield (described in the school literature as a "new crest") was adopted.[7]
The original arms continue to be used, with a different motto, by the sister school, The Latymer School.
Old Latymerians
Film
- Hugh Grant, actor
- Christopher Guard, actor
- William Hinds (1887–1957), jeweller and owner of Hammer Productions film studios
- Imogen Poots, actress
- Alan Rickman, actor
- Mel Smith, actor, comedian, film director, producer, writer
- Will Theakston, actor
- Augustus Prew, actor
- Alix Wilton Regan, actress
Music
- Andrew Hale, founder member of Sade
- Dom & Roland, drum & bass DJ/producer
- Ils, electronic music producer and DJ
- Jack Lawrence-Brown and Harry McVeigh, White Lies
- Walter Legge, record producer and classical impresario
- Matrix
- Charlie Morgan, Tom Robinson Band and composer of theme tune to The Bill
- Optical, drum & bass DJ/producer and Matrix's older brother
- Alex Phountzi, member of Bugz in the Attic
- Thomas Porter, DJ based in the north of Scotland
- Jay Sean, singer
- Cliff Townshend, jazz musician, expelled from Latymer, father of Pete
- Raphael Wallfisch, cellistq
In sport
- Andy Holmes, Olympic gold medal rower (1984 Games and 1988 Games)
- Simon Hughes, cricketer
- Hugh Jones, London Marathon winner
- Dan Luger, rugby player
- Dominic Waldouck, rugby player
In politics
- Alan Hunt, former British High Commissioner to Singapore
- Sir John Killick, former British Ambassador to Moscow
- Sir Ian Percival, former Solicitor General
- Kulveer Ranger, Mayor of London's Director for Transport Policy
- Joshua Rozenberg, legal affairs correspondent for the Daily Telegraph
- Andrew Slaughter, Labour MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush
- Keith Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East
- Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester, former Conservative Cabinet Minister
- Lord Whitty, former Labour Party General Secretary
- George Walden, former Conservative Party Education Minister
Other fields
- Heston Blumenthal, TV chef and owner of The Fat Duck
- Ajahn Brahm, Buddhist monk
- Lily Cole, model and actor
- Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist
- Sir Andrew Haines – Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
- Sir Harold Spencer Jones, Astronomer Royal 1933–1955
- Hilary Jones, GMTV in-house doctor
- Giles Milton, author and journalist
- Tim Moore, travel writer
- David Shoenberg, physicist, researcher into supercooling
- Eric Simms, natural history broadcaster
- Professor Lord Stern, ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank and author of the Stern Review on climate change in October 2006
- Zbigniew Szydlo, historian of chemistry
- Fred Vine, geologist and co-discoverer of plate tectonics
- Adrian Weale, writer and historian
See also
- 1620s in England
- Godolphin and Latymer School
- The Latymer School, situated in Edmonton, which was also covered by Latymer's bequest.
- Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums (twinned school)
References
- ^ a b "Latymer Upper School, London". Good Schools Guide. http://www.goodschoolsguide.co.uk/school/latymer-upper-school.html. Retrieved 2010-08-31.
- ^ School Fees Information
- ^ Clubs Latymer Upper School
- ^ Clubs, Activities and Trips Latymer Upper School
- ^ Activities Week Latymer Upper School
- ^ New Music Building Building, Latymer Upper School
- ^ Old Latymerian News, October 2004 (PDF document). Accessed 15 December 2006.
