[1] In 2001, Kingsford became one of the first schools in the United Kingdom to introduce lessons of Mandarin to its curriculum.

In 2007, the school became the first Confucius Classroom, a centre for promoting Mandarin Language and Chinese Culture, in London and the South-East.

Subsequently, the school has worked closely with both the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and Hanban (the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language), now CLEC (Chinese Center for Language Education and Cooperation) in order to develop its own Chinese learning programme and also to promote the teaching of the Chinese language and culture to other schools in the capital and South-East region.

[citation needed] On 22 January 2010 Kingsford hosted the 100 Group's second annual conference, on the subject of social mobility.

In October 2022, Ofsted rated the school as "good" with many areas, including Leadership and Management and Behaviour and safety of pupils being graded "outstanding". "