Secondary schools are causing me anxiety

[Freelotowbehejswv]

my Daughter was severely bullied in year 5 and this has caused her to have such bad anxiety that I have looked in to private school for year 7. This would have meant using savings and me working full time but if this would have been the best for our child we would have done it. Any way she went for the open day loved the school and they said she needed a assessment I asked if they were going to do a test as I knew due to her anxiety she wouldn’t perform well and they said no!! Well that was a lie! It was a test and she failed! I was so upset firstly because I had put her through that and also because I had told people that’s where she was going!! Has anyone else had this experience? X

Look at it this way -better that you've found out now that the school wouldn't have been as supportive of your DD as you'd hoped.

It's odd that they didn't explain what assessment they were doing - private schools normally explain their admissions process.

Did you not look on the website to see what the admissions procedure was before you applied?

Have a look at other private schools in your area. Many won’t have started admissions test yet (October is very early in our areas) and there will be an opportunity to discuss your daughters needs in advance.

Pretty sure bullying still happens in private schools anyway. Best off trying to build some resilience in your daughter that will serve her much better in the long run.

Tests are usually called assesments in secondary school. I agree with a previous poster that bullying still happens in private schools. You need to find a school with Good pastoral care which can be in mainstream. You child will have to get used to assesments (tests) because they can happen every half term in secondary .

If bullying is your issue private school can be as bad or worse, due to small cliques and money/status-based bullying. There's nowhere to hide in smaller private schools.

Investigate your local state schools properly and talk to the Heads about how they prevent and tackle bullying.

I agree bullying still happens. I thought a smaller school with smaller classes would suit my daughter more. Especially due to the anxiety caused from some nasty girls. My daughter has amazing personality with great resilience unfortunately some parents don’t know how to bring up their children so we have to deal with the consequences of bullying.

Resilience is all very well but it doesn't take the place of a no tolerance approach to bullying on the part of the school.

I guess you keep looking OP - most private schools do vet their pupils (the less academic schools will have less stringent criteria) but remember they are looking for an easy ride - nice bright, well behaved pupils with minimal issues.

State or private good pastoral care is probably more important than class size or school size, although some children do thrive in smaller settings.

Yes, year 5 my son went for a taster day and nobody mentioned the assessment. He failed and scored in the same percentile as a "severely disabled" kid. the SENCO even spoke in a loud whisper to the teacher how awful his results were. Of course he overheard and was gutted. Funnily enough, he did a similar test in his current school and scored well above average. It was all incredibly stressful as we ended up questioning our son's abilities, and his teachers tbh were horrified. We were advised to get an Ed Psych report by the private school and nothing unusual showed up. However the school said only a child with an emerging dissability could score so poorly on a test (from perhaps misunderstanding instructions) so they gave him an offer ith a get out clause that at some point in the future he may need one-to-one support and have to leave. In the end we decided it wasn't the school for him.

I should probably add that the worst bullying DS1 ever experienced was at an elite private school and this is because for all their fancy policies and procedures they couldn't bring themselves to admit that they couldn't control the bullying and certainly were not willing to ask the bullies to leave. The bully left only after we removed our son at considerable cost because private schools don't return fees to you. He moved to two state schools where he was bullied again, and then finally went to a small private day school where at last the bullying stopped.