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Secondary education

Gillotts School in Henley On Thames - your views?

6 replies

ducdo · 04/07/2015 21:05

Hi all, does anyone have children at Gillotts that can give any feedback as to what they think of it. Appreciate everyone has different views/opinions on schools as such a personal choice, but would love to hear from anyone with any views please. Many thanks.

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LL12 · 05/07/2015 09:50

I have a friend with children there. From what I can tell she finds it a caring school who will build up your child's confidence if needed.
Education wise I think if your child is a high achiever you may find they won't stretch them as much as you would like. I also understand that some of the teaching can be a bit hit and miss, but then that is probably the case with a lot of schools.

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ducdo · 06/07/2015 14:04

Thanks for your response.
Do you happen to live locally and if so do you know if its possible for the children to get from Wargrave to Gilotts school by public transport?
From what I can see it's proving really tricky - they can get Wargrve to Henley Station, but then its a LONG walk so need to find a local bus that will take them but the bus times just dont seem to work.
As I don't know the area so well, need someone with local knowledge!

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LL12 · 07/07/2015 11:38

My friend doesn't live in Henley, more to the east (Marlow direction) she said it's best to contact the school as they should have all the details about the buses from Wargrave.

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ducdo · 07/07/2015 16:10

thank you - have spoken with the school and contacted the council to see if our children can use the bus service.

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Steff1912 · 10/01/2019 00:12

Hi there, wondered if your child went Gillotts in the end?

Thanks

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Natalia74 · 18/09/2021 16:08

Gillotts School, Henley

I hope this review will be read by all parents with SEN kids. My recommendation is to stay away from this school at any cost. If all you want from the school is to get perfectly written excuses of why they failed your child, then, the school has certainly mastered that!
Briefly, our story below.
First year, they placed our daughter to a 'special intervention' class where they promised the right support for the dyslexic child, from which my daughter used to come back in tears, saying she could not focus as the teachers could not handle discipline in the class. All our conversations with SENCO and the school finished up in great promises, the result was our daughter dropped in marks, and we know for the fact, none of the other SEN kids gained any benefits from the 'special intervention' class. Finally, after one year, we decided that no support is much better that 'the support' she received at school so far, so she was transitioned to a normal class, she was heavily tutored anyway, with regular visits to dyslexia specialist and speech pathologies from the age of 2, I did a few courses in dyslexia myself to help her at home, so we knew that the support is entirely on us. I wish we made a decision to take her out f this school early on, but we were assured every time that she is progressing well and we thought that the support we provided outside of school will see her progressing in the key subjects.
For some reason, school is marked as 'good' in regard to support for SEN kids, would be good to know who performs the assessments, who is assessed and what body graded them as 'good', as our daughter has never been assessed by any independent body (apart from very expensive assessment we have done on our own outside of school), and only once internally (30 minute test to confirm her reading abilities), neither as parents we have been approached by any formal independant body for feedback on the support she received from school. On the contrarily, we kept raising our concerns about her progress and begged the school to work with us and our tutors to ensure our daughter's progress. All they gave her at some key tests and exams is additional time that she was entitled to and sometimes a reader (not always, very often we heard another yet excuse that they don't have enough TAs). 1,5 years of online schooling (due to COVID) resulted in many subjects barely covered, lessons cancelled last minute, teachers just posting material in Google classes with no formal teaching whatsoever, leave along our daughter receiving any additional support from school, tough we already had experience of the 'support' she might receive from school, so we would not even question it as all we would receive is another yet excuse.
Here it will be fair to mention that some teachers did put a lot of effort and did provide the support (interestingly as we discovered during our interaction with these very supportive and mindful teachers, that one of such teachers has a dyslexic husband and another dyslexic brother), which actually proved that a dyslexic child can achieve quite well with the right support and strategies, and we will be forever grateful to these teachers (sadly we only had two of them teaching our daughter!)
But with all the help of home teaching, tutors in all key subjects and dyslexia specialist strategies, it was looking okay leading to the final exams, at least, we got this sense from the reports and parents consultation meetings. Big mistake and just an optical illusion! Little did we know that the school decided to disregard 5 years of education, effort, hard work (and if you have a SEN kid, you would know what it costs to the SEN child to get to the right level, at least double amount of home work with lots of overlearning, huge effort to memorise the material, tears, sleepless nights, massive anxiety before each test, as a result of lack of confidence and difficulties they have to face while studying!) So, the school decided to get the kids to sit complex assessments (in some key subjects) that the kids had only 2 weeks to prepare for with unfamiliar structures (the excuse was the teachers won't have time to check student's work!) and most of the material not even briefly covered. All GCSE mocks or any other assessments were not taken into account!, though even the government guidelines were for summer 2021 ‘to ensure that the grades represent a holistic judgement’! The final results were far far away from the predicted Grades or any progress reports we have received from school (in one key subject, from predicted Grade6 was just Grade2! As far as we were told by our daughters tutor in English, who sits on the examination board, a student only has to spell her/his name correctly on the exam paper to get this Grade!). Once we asked the school why the teachers never highlighted the issues to us and why we were constantly assured that our daughter is progressing well, and how on earth, the assessment of the teacher could be 4 grades wrong (in just a matter of a month our child fell significantly behind!), we received an open answer from the head teacher that any assessments from the school cannot be trusted at any time and 'just indicative', not too sure indicative of what? Seems to be an indication of the teachers 'great assessment and professional skills'? Truly just an optical illusion of the education! I hope that will serve a good example of the professional level of some teacher of this school.
So, if you have a SEN child and don't want to see the shock, distress and crash of all hopes in your child's eyes when they open up their final exam results, consider other schools and don't even come near this school. Even all our tutors were shocked at the results, taken our daughter achieved good marks in mochs!
We wish every child and every parent success alongside every step of your child/children in education as every child can thrive regardless of their abilities and choose the school that can support your child rather than fail him/her.

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