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George Green's School is over 150 years old and is currently occupying its third building. The school was founded by George Green, a successful ship builder from Poplar. George Green began his career as an apprentice at the Blackwall Yard in 1782, and in 1796 married his employer's daughter. He was later taken into partnership and prospered, thanks to the period of great growth and prosperity in shipping in the early nineteenth century.
George Green became a wealthy man, but he spent the bulk of his wealth on charitable works. He founded almshouses, sailors' homes, a chapel and, in particular, schools.
In 1828 the first George Green's School was founded at the corner of Chrisp Street and East India Dock Road. This building was replaced in 1884 by one at the corner of Kirby Street and East India Dock Road. Finally, in January 1976 the present George Green's came into being at the southern tip of the Isle of Dogs, facing the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. The second building is still in use as part of Tower Hamlets College.
It was not only the buildings that changed. George Green's was originally an Elementary School, it then became a Grammar School, and in September 1975 the first Comprehensive intake of pupils joined the school. George Green's thus became the Isle of Dogs' own neighbourhood secondary school. After ILEA's abolition in March 1990 the school's LEA became Tower Hamlets.
The demise of the docks in the 1960s and the establishment in the late 1970s of the Isle of Dogs as part of the Enterprise Zone being developed by the London Dockland Development Corporation have radically altered the local environment and community.
The school now ensures that it has an ethos with which all pupils and parents can identify, and that it offers a curriculum appropriate to the needs and aspirations of all its pupils, whatever their cultural and economic background.
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