UTCs in London

[xpecialkids]

Hi,

My DS hates the school he’s at the moment so we have applied for a UTC in central London. There will be the commuting and he is aware off this. Luckily we are 1 train away if the trains work properly.
I have read reviews about UTC and some are good and others terrible.
Does anyone know someone or have kids studying in one?
We visit the school and it looked good. Also because the school is so new, they don’t have a offeset report yet so I can’t use it as a guide.
Any info would be appreciated.
Thank you

Hi there, you’ll probably be more likely to get a response on the secondary schooling board - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary as this one is for people working in academia.

Thank you 😊

Not sure which UTC you are talking about but London Design & Engineering UTC has just got a "requires improvement" rating from OFSTED. First set of results don't seem too brilliant either. Read the report - available on the OFSTED website. Principal isn't too happy - timing of OFSTED visit was wrong!- but there appears to be a large churn in the teaching staff - never a good sign - & the Principal talks about 40% new staff in his complaint about OFSTED!

Hey. If it is the utc in Westminster then do not send. I worked right near the school at another school and was shocked by some of the sixth form recruitment e.g students with gcses of 2 and 3 on a level courses. Purely motivated by funding. Can't keep a head. Last one left mid year. Also asking to borrow staff for lessons as not recruited teachers.

London Design is in Docklands: Westminster sounds like Sir Simon Milton - which only opened in September 2017.

Worth noting that THREE UTC's have opened - & closed very rapidly - already in London alone - Hackney, Tottenham, Royal Greenwich - al beset with the same sort of problems you describe - poor results, poor OFSTED's, difficulty in recruiting both staff & pupils, & then putting pupils onto the wrong courses, setting them up to fail.

Thank you all for the advise. I told the school where my DS is that he would move and didn't choose the GCSE options. Now I'm afraid that we made the wrong choice.
DS loves IT and Technology and I'm find it hard to select another school for him. Not sure we can ask the school to let him choose his options now.

Schools want to keep their pupils. Talk to the school saying that you would like DS to stay with them - they are unlikely to say no.

And then address the issues of why he hates his current school. Children often have very unusual views: good friend's son rates teachers by how relaxed they are about letting them onto their mobiles/ipads etc etc!!

Good luck - hope he gets settled & sorted for Year 10