However, it does allow external candidates from primarily local schools to apply, with a growing proportion being accepted due to a year-on-year increase in intake in sixth form students since the 2016/2017 academic year.

[citation needed] The school specialises in humanities and sports (geography, history, RE and PE).

[citation needed] It has had many sporting and other successes, including national championships in hockey and winning Havering Young Chef of the year.

The school was situated in Ratcliff, on the north side of the River Thames between Shadwell and Limehouse which is now a district of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Schoolhouse Lane is still there and marks the place where the School and the Coopers' Company's Almshouses were located for over three hundred years.

Prisca Coborn (née Forster), the widow of a brewer (Thomas Coborn/Colbourne), established a coeducational school in Bow in 1701 as a result of the terms of her will, registered in the year of her death (1701), investing the school with lands let to tenants in Bow, Stratford and Bocking.

The Coborn name most frequently (as shared officially) referred to the girls school at 86 Bow Road which closed in 1886 until amalgamation with the Coopers' foundation (see below).

The Coopers' Boys' School in the transitional period took over the Tredegar Square building.