Up to date opinions on Sancton Wood please

[1busybee]

Has anyone got any recent opinions on Sancton Wood school please? My son is bright enough - not super bright but in top sets at current school but he really hates his current school and is desperate to leave. He has enough friends but finds the teaching quite stressful. He is very sporty but does a lot out of school. Would be nice to have some school competitions though obviously covid aside. I think I’m after a school which has good quality teaching and allows children to have an active interest and discussion in the subject they are learning. Positive teachers. Somewhere which is not a hot house but extends the children to be the best they can. Somewhere where the students are encouraged to look out for each other and take care of themselves and each other. SW looks to take a very mixed intake and that considered seems to get good results at gcse. My son is currently year 8 and is on the waiting list for an alternative state secondary but came across SW and thought it may be a viable alternative. Thanks

[Katrin4]

If you're looking for a very relaxed approach with reasonable teaching then it might work well be for you. I think some parents really rate it as a school. I certainly didn't, but I was expecting something more professional and better organised. They also didn't follow up concerns very well. My impression was that how things looked was more important than ensuring that each child was well supported in their education. But I am a disgruntled parent who didn't like the school, so maybe other parents have had better experiences.

[1busybee]

Thank you. All opinions are useful. Sorry it didn’t work out for you. Lack of follow up on concerns doesn’t sound good.

[cams33]

Another disgruntled parent here! They do offer small classes, the new building is impressive, and they are very organised with the online learning. However, the care for the kids is all talk and no action. For us, that was more important than a shiny website/cafeteria....

[Anguillagirl]

Didn't rate it, removed my child from the school after serious behavioural concerns about other children in his class. Staff didn't take concerns seriously (issues around bullying, racism, homophobia, online grooming) - pretty shocking. We had been warned that this was a school that took on kids with behavioural problems but we were impressed with the small class sizes and look of the place. But after two years we realised we should have listened to those warnings from other parents.

[Appoline]

Hello, can you provide recent reviews for Heritage, Sancton Wood, Stephen Perse, and Comberton regarding entry into Year 7? I'm interested in the atmosphere, kindness, bullying prevention, academic focus, GCSE results, selection process, and testing. We are looking for a school that is anti-bullying and adheres to the national curriculum. Thank you!

[SallyMcCarthy]

I would strongly advise against sending your child to Sancton Wood. The behaviour of the teachers, particularly those who run the place, is genuinely shocking. My friend's son went for a trial day there and was refused a place because 'at playtime he played with children who weren't in his year group'. Another friend's son has serious special needs and the head of upper school consistently failed to answer any of her emails about this very serious issue - just no reply at all. Same teacher was heard shouting at a pupil, 'I'm going to yell at you in front of everyone to humiliate you as much as possible' and the headmaster apparently screamed at some boys that they were 'dickheads and shits' after they were messing around with a salt cellar on a table in the dining hall. Head of Upper school is also English teacher who left the classroom for at least twenty minutes of every single class. Her classes kept a tally and she missed at least half of about 110 lessons one year. My husband currently uses the same gym that Sancton Wood pupils have some of their PE lessons in, and he says that the PE teacher ignores the kids completely for the whole lesson, letting them wander around aimless and unattended, doing her admin on her computer instead. My friend said that at the very first parents' evening she ignored the warning signs: she heard the modern languages teacher telling a parent how well her son was doing at Spanish and his mum said, 'But he's never taken Spanish'. She calls it the 'Fawlty Towers' of schools.

[Appoline]

"Thank you for your response! Oh la la, it's not at all for my child! Any reviews on Stephen Perse and Heritage?"

[Appoline]

Thank you for this feedback. My child is currently at St Faith, and based on my experience and investigations, I'm starting to wonder if private schools are not just a business where privileged children gather rather than a sign of excellence. What interests me in private schools are mainly the small class sizes and their anti-bullying policy. We've taken the heritage test and will soon be attending SPF for entry into Year 7. But honestly, today I'm questioning whether a state school and the support of a good tutor might be better for achieving excellent results in the GCSE. What is your opinion?

[WouldLoveSunshine]

Hi Apponline,

I have a couple of DCs at SPF Senior School and I've generally been happy with the school. Both my DCs have special needs and the SENCOs have been very responsive. The school does have quite a strong exam focus but that seems to work for my DCs as they respond better when goals and expectations are marked out clearly for them.

On the question of cost, I have also wondered if it would have been better to go down the state route and engage private tutors where needed. Unless your DC really needs the smaller class sizes, my advice would be to seriously consider a good state school. For 6th Form, there is Hills Road to which many privately-educated kids switch anyway so that they can get the 'state school' whitewashing for their Oxbridge applications.

Good luck with your decision-making.

[cams33]

Thank you InspiredLearning for such a thorough and articulate response to an earlier poster. I think this is the most engaging post I have ever read about schooling on Mumsnet!

I think the only thing missing from your post is the potential negatives of private education (notwithstanding the financial cost and moral concerns about education inequity). I work in higher education and therefore come across a lot of privately educated young people (including those who switched to state sixth-form to whitewash their university application - as mentioned above).

These are the key negatives I experience with privately-educated students (of course, not ALL privately-educated students display these traits, and while these negatives can be mitigated by well-meaning/inclusive parents, the group-ethos of private school is hard to counter at home):

1. From a pedagogic perspective I find that privately-educated students struggle to adapt more than bright/academic state-educated students to the independent nature of University study. I once had a privately-educated student ask me when I would be handing out the revision sheets for their exams like they were used to receiving at school, and another telling me that they found it impossible to structure their time to study without the school-enforced 'prep' time they had become dependent on. In both cases I had to explain to these 18/19 year olds that they are responsible for their education - not me (I am here to facilitate/inspire/teach, but the responsibility to learn is theirs). This is a shock for virtually every privately-educated students I have taught, many of whom have been 'mollycoddled' by their schools. And while most privately-educated students do eventually adjust, our data demonstrate that state-educated students academically out-perform privately-educated students at university (of course, this is only comparing students with an equal academic capacity to gain university entrance).
2. From a social-life perspective, the fact that most privately-educated students have attended school surrounded by people 'like them' (so eloquently explained by InspiredLearning above) means that they have little experience of how to socialise with people from other backgrounds and with other life experiences. In practice this often means that the privately-education students only socialise with other privately-educated students (this is exacberated by the high-concentration of privately-educated students in certain clubs and sports). More seriously, it can also sometimes translate into a very low tolerance or understanding of 'difference' - I see this at University in terms of privately-educated students displaying a low acceptance (and often making disparaging comments) regarding different class, educational ability, physical disability, neurodivergence etc. More worryingly, I see this in adults and society more broadly - e.g. the privately-educated UK government has no tolerance for reasons that people may fall into poverty and no understanding of what it's like to be reliant on public services.
3. Over-confidence: a high proportion of privately-educated students arrive with very high confidence in comparison to state-educated students who are of the same academic ability. While confidence is something we want for our children, I find that the privately-educated students use this (perhaps unwittingly) as a strategy to criticise or denigrade those who are 'different' to them.

[Appoline]

Thank you Cams 33 and Inspiring Learning for your feedback. As an expat unfamiliar with the British system, we chose the private KG sector for our son. Our priority was to place our child in a small class and a school with an anti-bullying environment that intensifies during adolescence with social networks. Over the years, being a rather attentive parent, I've noticed that teachers in academic subjects in the private sector are not qualified. There's also a high turnover, and a music teacher one day can become a history or mathematics teacher the next, which raises concerns.

Regarding the children, there are expat children whose parents made the same choice for similar reasons, and then there are English children from privileged families whom I've discovered over the years to be arrogant, capricious, overly confident, disrespectful, and completely ignorant of what's happening in the world, often being mean-spirited despite courses on kindness, etc.

Today, my choice is wavering between a state school for Year 7 with tutoring to achieve good GCSE results and Heritage, which I find transparent, academic, with small classes (and no cafeteria). It is certain that from the sixth form, we will opt for a state school, but it is daunting to put him in a class of 30 now. Being naturally discreet and reserved, I fear that he might get overwhelmed. Choosing a good private school to help him mature could also be a good option. The decision is truly very difficult, but your opinions really make me reflect. Many Thanks !

[snurtifier]

When we lived in Cambridge I was involved in a sports club which had a large junior section. Many of these kids came from The Perse and, in the younger age groups, St Faith's, and I was honestly dismayed at how entitled and arrogant a lot of them were. Something about those particular schools seemed to cultivate an unpleasant over-confidence that wasn't apparent elsewhere.

[IndependentSchoolTeacher]

@Appoline
“ Over the years, being a rather attentive parent, I've noticed that teachers in academic subjects in the private sector are not qualified. There's also a high turnover, and a music teacher one day can become a history or mathematics teacher the next, which raises concerns.”

You surprise me. This may be true in small prep schools, in a similar way to state primary schools having a class teacher who takes their class for almost everything, but it’s not what I’ve experienced teaching in three independent secondary schools in Cambridge. You might get a Physics teacher teaching some Maths, or someone teaching both History and Politics, for example, but not less closely related subjects such as History, Maths and Music.

[Nenen]

@cams33 would you mind me sending you a pm about the post you responded to that got deleted by admin please?

[Appoline]

And yet.... May I ask why you wandered through three independant schools in Cambridge? What was your turning point for wanting a change everytime? It will be interesting to know it.

[IndependentSchoolTeacher]

1 Moved away from Cambridge with DH’s job
2 Returned to Cambridge, new job, became pregnant, was a SAHM for a while
3 Back to teaching part-time.

OK?