North London Collegiate School (NLCS) is a private day school for girls in England. Founded in Camden Town, it is now in Edgware, in the London Borough of Harrow. Associate schools are in South Korea's Jeju Island, Dubai, Vietnam, Singapore and Kobe, Japan, all of which are coeducational day and boarding schools offering the British curriculum. It is a member of the Girls' Schools Association.
North London Collegiate School is consistently ranked among the top independent schools in the United Kingdom. In the 2025 edition of The Times Parent Power league table, NLCS was ranked within the top 10 schools overall in the UK, and among the top 3 girls' schools nationally, based on academic results at GCSE and A-level.
In the 2026 The Sunday Times Parent Power Guide, North London Collegiate School was named the "Independent Secondary School of the Year".
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Location
North London Collegiate School is at the western edge of Edgware near Canons Park. It is accessed via Canons Drive from Edgware High Street. Stanmore tube station and Canons Park tube station are within walking distance.
History
Formation
North London Collegiate School was founded by Frances Buss, a pioneer in girls' education. It is generally recognised as the first girls' school in the United Kingdom to offer girls the same educational opportunities as boys.
The school opened in 1850 at No.46. later renumbered No.12 Camden Street, London.
Buss believed in the importance of home life and it remained a day school. In 1929, the school bought Canons, a modest villa built by William Hallett Esq, on the site of a palatial residence originally built in the early 18th century by the Duke of Chandos, and relocated to the property (designed by Sir Albert Richardson) in 1940.
Lucinda Elizabeth Shaw, mother to George Bernard Shaw was a director of music at the school, followed in 1908 by Lilian Manson, J.B. Manson's wife. Her ambitious revival of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in 1910 gained coverage in The Times.
Second World War
The school was evacuated to Luton High School, a girls' school, what is now Denbigh High School, Luton.
Expansion
Today the school takes girls from ages 4 to 18. It has a junior school (reception to Year 6) and senior school (Year 7–13).
The co-ed boarding North London Collegiate School Jeju opened in Seogwipo, South Korea in 2011.North London Collegiate School Dubai opened in September 2017 as one of NLCS's international schools and its first campus in the Middle East. The school was established in Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum City, within the Sobha Hartland development, as a co-educational day school offering the International Baccalaureate curriculum. Daniel Lewis, who had worked at North London Collegiate School in London for fourteen years, was appointed as the founding principal of NLCS Dubai and led the school during its launch period.
Following an investigation into allegations of alleged malpractice in setting teacher-assessed grades A-levels in 2021, the school announced that "there [had] been no finding of [school] malpractice" with The Guardian reporting confidential sources that "while some of the malpractice allegations have been dismissed, others have been upheld by the [exam board] committees".
Curriculum
North London Collegiate has been an International Baccalaureate World School since October 2003. Girls may choose to take the traditional A Levels or the Pre-U or the IB curriculum.
Headmistresses
Frances Mary Buss (1850 – December 1894)
Sophie Bryant (1895–1918)
Isabella Drummond (1918–1940, previously Head of Camden School)
Eileen Harold (1941–1944)
Dame Kitty Anderson (1945–1965)
Madeline McLauchlan (1965 – December 1985, previously at Henrietta Barnett School)
Joan Clanchy (1986–1997) previously Head of St George's School, Edinburgh
Bernice McCabe (1997–2017, previously at Chelmsford County High School)
Sarah Clark (2018–2022, previously at Queen's School, Chester)
Vicky Bingham (2023–present, previously at South Hampstead High School)
Notable alumnae
Catherine Alice Raisin (1855–1945) (geologist and educationist)
Sara Burstall (1859-1939) (teacher, headmistress) (headmistress of Manchester High School for Girls)
Clara Collet (1860-1948) (civil servant and promoter of women's education and employment)
Margaret Theodora Meyer (1862–1924) (mathematician)
Ethel Sargant (1863–1918) (botanist)
Amy Horrocks (1867-1919) (composer)
Lilian Lindsay [née Murray] (1871–1960) (first female dentist)
Gabrielle Howard (1876–1930) (plant physiologist)
Agnes Arber [née Robertson] (1879–1960) (botanist)
Eva Germaine Rimington Taylor (1879–1966) (geographer and historian of science)
Marie Stopes (1880–1958)(palaeobotanist, birth control advocate)
Margaret Calkin James (1895–1985) (graphic designer and artist)
Eleanor Graham (1896–1984) (publisher and children's writer)
Stella Gibbons (1902–1989) (novelist)
Stevie Smith (1902–1971) (poet)
Peggy Angus (1904-1993)
Helen Gardner (1908-1986) (academic/writer)
Notable former staff
Edith Aitken (founding head of Pretoria High School for Girls)
Peggy Angus (artist, tile and wallpaper designer), teacher 1947-70
Edward Aveling, teacher of elementary physics and botany (1872–1876)
Hannah Robertson, led middle school, later tutor of women at Leeds University from 1905 to 1921.