 Teachers and students alike speak many languages including Tamil (Thamizh), Arabic, Albanian, French, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Punjabi, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Shona, Somali, Spanish and Urdu.As Copland Community School, a foundation school administered by Brent Borough Council, the school was led by Alan Davies as its headmaster for more than twenty years from 1988.Speaking in Davies' defence at his later trial, his barrister said that in that time he had led the school "from the very bottom to very near the top"—the school had been on the verge of being closed for poor performance when he took over.