Dartford Grammar School

About the School

Dartford Grammar School was founded in 1576 and is one of the oldest schools in England. For nearly 450 years, Dartford Grammar School has enabled young people from Dartford and its surrounding area to achieve great things. It is proud of the confident, thoughtful, energetic global citizens that leave the school, fully prepared to contribute to the community, and to rise to the challenges of an increasingly complex future in the wider world.

Dartford Grammar School’s students are extremely successful. They enjoy doing remarkably well – both at their academic work and in the team work associated with the widest range of co-curricular activities. They value the talents, ideas and successes of others.

Judged outstanding in every OfStEd inspection, Dartford Grammar School provides a broad, balanced international education, following the principles of The International Baccalaureate both in the Middle Years and the Sixth Form. Every student studies either Mandarin Chinese or Japanese from Year 7 and an additional European language from Year 8.

It is rare to be a school within the British education system that offers the IB curriculum exclusively, and the school is proud to say that they now offer the opportunity to study the IB Diploma in the Sixth Form to more students than ever. The School received The Sunday Times IB School of the Year award in both 2017 and 2020, and then became the Sunday Times IB School of the Decade in 2020 too, paying testimony to the ongoing excellent results arising through the focus and energy of students and staff in maximising the opportunities the Diploma supports.

Dartford Grammar School believe that the learning benefits and the prospects for university admission are palpable and justify this unrelenting drive to secure a modern international curriculum. Parents do appreciate the opportunities offered to their children through the co-curriculum and the personalisation offered by an almost unlimited choice of subject in the Sixth Form.

As one leading and reputable educational commentator concluded recently: ‘This is no bastion of educational privilege, but one that has achieved its notable success through hard work, inspired teaching and free-thinking. It is one of the country’s truly exceptional schools – and one to be treasured.”

The school’s mission statement, ‘A learning community developing international citizens’ reflects the purpose of an IB World School; ‘to develop young people who help to create a more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect’ and ‘to encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people , with their differences, can also be right’.