Concerns at Wychwood School, Oxford - seeking other families

Just looked up the website: 112 pupils? I spoke to the head of a private school recently who felt that anything under 200 pupils was not financially.

@Shelefttheweb Again, I'm not a parent, we only toured the school but certainly looks like it is ideological if not financial. I can't imagine they're expecting a huge influx of boys, their accounts aren't great but not, we're shutting tomorrow bad. There's been very sudden changes in the school in the school even when we toured it last year, and I suspect this is probably more to do with the type of school they're trying to create than any significant financial problems.
As already mentioned by someone else, their twitter is very quiet about this. Their marketing for this is shoddy at best, that popup is so ugly and doesn't match the rest of the website. It just doesn't feel like they're marketing it. I can't put my finger on it, it doesn't seem like they are trying to attract boys, just changing it to being able to take boys.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think their current model is financially viable, their enrollment is tiny and by the sounds of things, only getting smaller but this feels like it's the end of a preempted plan, especially as they're treating parents with such a lack of care. I refuse to believe someone would put millions into a school and be this careless with the investment. Just doesn't make sense.

Which makes me wonder if it was ideological. Especially with a ‘beyond binary’ type tagline. How can you believe gender identity is most important and remain a single sex school? Who owns the school/made the decision? Is it privately owned? A charity? If a charity can you object to its change of purpose?

@Shelefttheweb The slow introduction into lower years is the norm. This was sprung on at parents out of nowhere with no consultation whatsoever.

I would assume financial difficulties. If so then don’t assume that, if these aren’t solved, the school would close at a convenient point (like the end of a year) or that you would get notice. When I was young a nearby school closed a week after Easter - which really stuffed up their pupils’ exams. And I know another school that closed at the end of May a few years ago. Though suspicion around finance would also make me question which boys would choose to attend,

i do know a girls school that went co-Ed - for financial reasons but not immediate pressures. They introduced boys into the youngest year group (4/5 years old) so it took over a decade before the whole school was coed as the boys aged up through the school. If there is time, that seems a much better way to go coed, also means you only need to invest in boys toilets/changing rooms for primary to begin with.

You mention trans a lot. Do you think they might have had boys identifying as girls wishing to join? That this could be driven by ideology rather than finance? In that case I would still run just as fast.

A lot of people like to promise to "vote with their feet" in various situations and then, when push comes to shove, decide they can't be bothered, or that things weren't so bad as they feared after all.

It is possible that the school has reached the conclusion after a great deal of careful consideration that this is the best commercial decision for them to make. After all there are plenty of successful mixed independent schools and single-sex schools may be seen as rather old-fashioned. Perhaps they are in some financial trouble and this is the best option for them - other than putting up fees which might well annoy parents even more.

@pasturespastures its catholic (but the diosces [sp?] thinks it’s not that good at being catholic). There is chapel and everyone has to do RS GCSE.

Is Rye quite religious?

We liked Rye a lot. Nurturing but seemed eminently sensible and supportive.

@SchrodingersUnicorn When we did tours last year in the area, we found Rye the most similar to Wychwood with a bit more religion and a lot less trans stuff.

Wychwood as it is doesn't really have a good business model in the Oxford private school market. But given the excellent boys' schools in the area I'm not convinced it will do any better co-ed, and will lose many families who chose single sex intentionally.
If you want girls single sex, the obvious places are OHS for bright girls, Headington for sporty and/or confident or boarding, St Edward's for co-ed boarding and all rounders, MCS for bright and musical sixth form girls, Rye St Anthony for nurturing, and then Tudor Hall is near enough for nurturing single sex boarding but bigger, and HelKats in Abingdon as an alternative to OHS. D'Overbroeks co-ed nurturing day.
Most families I know don't consider Wychwood and those that do have very much been looking at single sex

I can also confirm the shift came as a surprise to the local private school community…

*clearly my summary is tongue in cheek.

But the overall takeaway was that there must be money issues, that people have already been put off the school due to its deep dive into trans issues, it’s too small and seems to have developed a Reputation as a school for those who just can’t cope in other schools, that it has failed utterly to consult on this change, and that it’s gaslighting the students by telling them that transboys are actually biologically male (because otherwise it has to admit it’s single sex and this is a Massive change).

@SeasonFinale I don't think anyone is denying this, but the way this particular school has handled it is pretty atrocious.
@pasturespastures My jaw is on the floor. I bet when parents raised concerns about trans kids being admitted they probably said they are girls. Now they're not? This gaslighting and manipulating of kids is disgusting. I wouldn't want my child in a place like this even if the cohort of boys that came in was a group of cherubs.

I think the school is so small there that statistically there probably aren't many parents on here willing to post. You might get some DM's!

At least last week you could still find cached copies of the old thread via Google.

summary: run

@SeasonFinale I think you might be right, and it may well be the case that Oxford needs a highly pastoral co-ed school, which is a gap in the market here right now. The way it has been handled here feels rushed, clumsy and almost inexperienced.

The reality is that more and more single sex schools go co Ed. They may simply be looking at keeping numbers up so they survive in an increasingly competitive market and with a cost of living crisis meaning that some of the target families may choose state education.

Vote with your feet if you don't want your DD educated there.

Both DH and I went to single sex schools and I thought I wanted the same for DS. By the time he went to secondary both boys schools in our region were co Ed. So glad they were he has a lovely mixed group of friends.

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We're voting with our feet. As the school has been very clear that this is not up for discussion, then there is little point in discussion - so we're sadly leaving at the end of the year. (Not a boarder, so no insight there, I'm afraid.)

The current leadership structure has not given the new head a chance to do her job as well as she could, I think.

This change has been rushed on her during her first year, and now she is wasting her time on endless meetings with angry parents instead of settling into a great role at a lovely school, getting to know the girls with a lovely cohort of teachers at her back, and working with her marketing team to raise the school's profile sustainably with the benefit of financial investment to really build up the school. But that was not to be!

I also strongly object to the trans kids, who have been safely exploring their gender identities at the school, being used as tools to justify this change.

A teacher asked my daughter's class (when they were raising objections to going co-ed) if they thought that [several names of their trans friends] should not be at the school in that case, and if they should be made to leave if single sex is so important, which felt horribly manipulative and unnecessary. Why drag them into it? The ones I know of are also coping with autism, and being ably supported by their lovely teachers, and it just feels mean to load this "responsibility" onto them as well.

I worry about the timing too, and the nature of the incoming cohort of boys. At this point in the year they're likely to be the boys with the fewest options.

Focussing earlier in the year on a vigorous campaign to bring in boys from year 7 only would have gone better. It feels rushed, and I think the new leadership has pushed this on the head too fast.

And oh god that popup!? It really makes it look like the site has been taken down.

You'd never know it was going co-ed from the Twitter account, btw, and the content it retweets from itself and other accounts references it being a girls school.

Ah I wish you'd seen the other thread. There was a lot of discussion about the 'beyond binary' slogan.