A college in London, Ashbourne was founded in 1981 by its current Principal and Director Mr Mike Kirby.

Many of our current competitors were established at the same time and all of us were predominantly involved with A level resits with a soupcon of Oxbridge Entrance. (In those days, if students wished to try for Oxbridge they, in effect, had to take a compulsory gap year after attempting a ‘seventh term’ entrance examination in mid November). Ashbourne specialized in Mathematics, Sciences and Economics and still maintains good teaching provision and student numbers in these subjects. In those earlier days, modules were still a gleam in the Departments for Education’s eye, so in re-sitting students had to redo everything. Ironically, most of our students only stayed with us for one term so that we regularly lost over half of our students after January. Great fun! Things have definitely changed.

We began to offer Common Entrance in 1984, which eventually demised and led to the college beginning its GCSE programme in the early 1990s, which we still retain today. Our two-year A level programme began in earnest at the same time and now forms the backbone of our college.