[1] The school was founded by Elizabeth Rendall and Ivy King in 1930 after a visit to the Church of St Anthony of Padua in Rye, East Sussex.

Miss King continued as Headmistress until 1976 and, unfailing in her interest and encouragement, spent her retirement in a house in the school grounds until her death in 1993.

The school grounds include a Victorian house built by Alfred Waterhouse, the Architect that designed The Natural History Museum, both in Oxford and London.

[4] The school was criticised on social media[5] for the wording of its 2020 exam results release in the midst of the controversial government algorithm used to determine grades,[6] which was criticised by many for using the prior performance of a school to help determine results, causing pupils in low-income areas to achieve significantly less than similarly-performing students in more affluent areas.

On 13 August 2020, the day the A-Level results came out, Joanne Croft, the headteacher, posted on Twitter; “#ResultsDay I’m so very proud of all our girls today for their #alevels2020 Ambitious and determined, no pandemic was going to stop them!

[7] Her tweet caused substantial backlash on social media and was even covered by the Financial Times,[8] which commented that the algorithm led to the school "overturning its normally below-average performance with a stunning set of grades this year.

This originated after the girls knitted clothes for the WW2 soldiers and in return they sent gifts like fruit, especially tangerines to pupils whilst rationing was enforced during the Second World War.