Schools in Croydon, London

Victorian market-town streets at the centre give way to post-war office towers and glass-fronted regeneration blocks as Croydon extends across 87 square kilometres of Outer London's southern edge. The borough took its present boundaries in 1965; Croydon Airport, opened in 1920 as London's first major international airport, left behind a Grade II listed lodge that survives as a local landmark today. Close to 398,000 people live across the borough.

East Croydon station puts London Bridge around fifteen minutes away and Victoria around twenty, while the Tramlink network threads west to Wimbledon and east to Beckenham. South Croydon is widely regarded as one of the borough's most competitive postcodes for state secondary and sixth-form places, and Purley draws families competing for primary catchments further south. Coombe and Selsdon extend the residential belt toward the Surrey boundary, with Thornton Heath forming the denser northern quarter.