After many years of underperformance, culminating with Ofsted's decision to place the school in special measures and the resignation of former head teacher Phil Barnard in December 2006, Westminster council controversially voted in March 2008 to transform Pimlico into an academy.

[5] In 2013 Labour councillors called for an inquiry after the new Pimlico primary school where Nash was co-chairman of the governors appointed an unqualified teacher as headmistress ahead of its opening with 60 pupils in September.

[9] Daniel Smith, formerly a deputy at Ebbsfleet Academy, who was appointed headteacher in September 2020, made a series of unpopular changes to the school ethos, syllabus and uniform code and flew a Union Flag in the grounds, which some opposed.

[10] Students expressed concern that the school's revised syllabus taught too little about Black history and that a strict appearance policy banning colourful hijabs and hairstyles which "block the view of others" was racist.

[12] By March 2021, relations between staff and leading trust members were said to have deteriorated, resulting in protests in which students tore down and burned the Union flag.

[19] Sir Michael Wilshaw, the former chief inspector of schools in England (2012-2016), was drafted in by Future Academies to support Smith.

[22] The previous school building was designed by John Bancroft of the Greater London Council's architecture department and was built in 1967–70.

A contemporary critic likened it to a battleship, describing it as a "100-odd metre long, turreted, metallic grey thing lying in its own sunken rectangle".

In the face of opposition from the Twentieth Century Society,[25] and that of prominent architects and critics including Richard Rogers,[24] RIBA president Sunand Prasad, Stephen Bayley,[26] and John McAslan,[27] the last remaining part of the old building was demolished in summer 2010.