Bad press for Eton, St Paul's School and Latymer Upper

[Siblingrivalries]

The Telegraph is carrying a horrible story about “Eton College, St Paul's School in Barnes and Latymer Upper School” having a culture of sexual assault.

St Paul’s of course has been through this before and is now paying compensation after tutors were found guilty.

This seems to involve pupils and the allegations were posted on Instagram. No doubt more will come out in time.

Would you consider sending your child to these schools?

@XelaM

I think it's very dangerous to just assume posts are fake or from students who hold grudges against their schools. No pupil I know would make up anything against their school simply because they didn't get the grades! Very dangerous and worrying attitude. And I would be very concerned about that Boys' WhatsApp group at LU.

You are dealing with teenagers, all of this needs proper DD.

I think accounts in this thread are important in tackling how we socialise teen boys and young men how not to be creeps

@AuntieStella I agree entirely. But it’s critically important that it is done in a way that doesn’t affect the mental health and ‘identity’ of boys, who in the vast majority, are in fact not creeps! The balancing act is a tough one.

Hi @Siblingrivalries
Its not just these schools ..... social media all about Fine Arts in Belize Park yesterday too!

doesn’t affect the mental health and ‘identity’ of boys what exactly do you mean?

@pico1234 I’m really interested in why you’ve said this.

Deciding on secondary for dc now and the EI site has left me horrified. SPS and LU were main choices, but now very hesitant apply. However, what are the other good options??? Where can we send our boys to avoid this type of behaviour???

Honestly the focus on the schools misses the point: this isn’t created by the schools but by the boys/patriarchy/porn culture/sexism. Fixing it starts at home. Glad to say the schools seem to be taking it seriously too which will help. But don’t kid yourself that this only happens at these named schools. It’s everywhere.

@Raisingtwins Maybe email the schools concerned and ask what they are doing about this?

Also, the Good Schools Guide is a great place to look for schools.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Latymer was well known for a bullying culture (it was even addressed in the good school guide). It makes you wonder what the heck is going on, where a hideous behaviour culture is allowed to develop.

@toffeebutterpopcorn

It wasn’t all that long ago that Latymer was well known for a bullying culture (it was even addressed in the good school guide). It makes you wonder what the heck is going on, where a hideous behaviour culture is allowed to develop.

Do you actually have kids at the school? Many parents have said they and their children don't recognise the school that's been portrayed in the media. @Raisingtwins - all the schools will have some element of what is being discussed- you can't avoid it it. It's how the schools are dealing with it which is more important. You will be able to visit the schools hopefully and you can then ask them questions etc. I have DCs at a couple of the schools that have been in the spotlight in the last couple of weeks and I can honestly say that a) what you read is not an accurate portrayal for the vast vast majority of students and b) the schools have been amazing in their communications to parents, students, staff and alumni and are certainly not brushing anything under the carpet.

Friend boys went there (about 10 years ago) - and this was commented on by the head in the good schools guide - I remember reading it in Waterstones. They. It’s said there was some ‘cliques’ that were pretty nasty (sounds pretty much like the school I went to.

Ds is at school now (not one namechecked) and there is a huge discussions going on about this.

Been reading the times today and it’s grim reading - I can’t say it’s worse at one school or another (a classmates brother was a sex offender when I was a school).

But what can we do - what can we say to our schools? I worry that they have been so busy chasing the stonewall school scoreboard (oh that’s been launched for this year now - so do ask your schools if they are lying for this privilege) that they have actually forgotten about the girls.

All the ‘inclusivity’ and ‘tolerance’ lessons and projects - with a focus on ‘what is a woman’ - in my opinion - it makes a girls seen as lesser in status. A commodity. A mode.

Sorry not very eloquent today. Very angry. Ready to fire emails off to heads and ask what the hell have they been doing for girls when they spend all their time (and money they keep saying they don’t have) doing ‘other things’?

Have just looked at the Times this morning online- have a DD and DS at Latymer. Last week was horrible for them with all the newspaper stories on top of COVID, exam stress etc. They thought the papers had moved on a bit but DD has just read the headline about ‘girls being too scared to walk in the corridors etc’ and cried again because of the total ridiculousness of it. DS - a bit younger- is just really confused.
DD (and DS) is of course concerned about the whole discussion about the culture of these schools and wants change all this but the demonisation of certain schools just isn’t helpful to the wider discussion. A quick look at the website of testimonies shows many many more schools all over the country are now mentioned yet still the papers are fixated on the London schools.

They seem to be fixated on London private schools. I was just remembering a discussion with a friend who moved her daughter from a ‘outstanding’ catholic (state) school (that they killed them selves to get her in to)... because of the treatment from the boys. She moved for sixth form because of similar.

^Reported my post for not having RTFT

There will undoubtedly be some fake testimonials for all the schools ( i think the poster quoted above clarified at length about her post).

All I can say in defence of LU is that judging by the correspondence we’ve had is that they assume all posts are real unless proved otherwise and are full on engaged in dealing with it. Remember some of these posts relate to things that happened a long time ago.

Will sign off now but would just say would have no hesitation in sending another child to LU and both my children are extremely happy there ( as are their friends- lots of discussions with parents this week!). I’m sure it’s not perfect, nowhere is, but my kids do not recognise the school being described.
They’ve heard the stories of some ‘London parties’ but they’re not in that scene, which seems to be made up of a small number of kids from lots of different schools.

@gatewaysands

yes very strange to comment that the girls are lying. I think *@WarrenBird* you should be very careful about making those accusations. However I know the police and H&F council are now involved, so perhaps wait for the report first.

There was one on there regarding my sons' school. I went on to the site to see what it was and frankly I'd say many of them are fake, and moreover they are on dodgy legal ground as most alleged incidents happen outside the named school.

The one brought to our schools attention has since had the link to the school removed, as it was posted by a now adult who was unidentifiable, about an incident outside school with a non-pupil. The only school related link was that the person reporting was a pupil at the time. The school have sent a letter out but the bottom line is "we teach them consent (with lots of detail about content)" "there is very little we can do when something happens outside school" "we encourage people to report this to the police".

If I were Latimer Upper, I would be bringing out some very heavy legal support and putting together a libel case. I find it hard to believe the publishers think its ok to name a load of private schools which have (basically) nothing to do with the allegations.

Lastly I think this is a magnet for people looking to get off on this kind of thing and can't believe they are publishing it. Unfortunately anything real in it is getting drowned by the salacious nonsense

I am very sceptical about the motives of setting this site up as it seems "primed" against private schools. I'm thinking it's one of these worthy organisations that believe everyone should be in state school "equal education". If it aim is to highlight sexual abuse of women it's not and these seem like calculated slurs against private education.

This is actually better than my first thought, which is that it was salacious material aimed for the enjoyment of its clientele I'm still not convinced it isn't. Written graphic SE experiences are a bizarre thing to publish to "raise awareness" as it will attract the "wrong sort of reader"

I hope people don’t think it’s just private schools and sit back ignoring the same behaviour elsewhere. It’s society not the schools.

As a student at LUS and having just read this thread, I felt compelled to create an account and respond with a student's perspective.

I should make clear that of my many years at the school, I've seen no (zero) cases of sexual assault take place at the school – of the single case I heard of having occurred outside of school, it was dealt with swiftly and the perp punished. That's not to say these occurrences don't exist, but the degree is being hugely expanded in the media with an agenda.

Events like these really happen at parties – for schools to receive a bad rep for these is not just – lessons on consent are clear but alcohol outside of school, which the school cannot control, often has a strong influence.

Regardless, I'm just here to provide a different outlook. I know my school has been proactive, and the number of complaints on EI mostly stem from both the spread of EI across the school community, and historic events (10 years ago or so) – with much having changed since.

@1864now I think most people in this thread are agreeing with you...

I think EI will be "taken down" at some point soon as now the schools are aware of this they will be having their names removed - its my view also this has little/nothing to do with the schools named and is potentially libellous as the intention is to make the schools look bad.

The interview with the founder in The Times was very poignant - she was at Wycombe Abbey. Why would they take the site down? The schools seem to be using it as a good opportunity to engage with pupils and parents about some very important things so surely it can only be a good thing.

It won’t just be private schools, this stuff goes on everywhere there are teenagers unfortunately. But of course it’s more newsworthy when it is private schools because the parents of children there are forking out vast sums of money often to ensure a particular peer group for their children, one that doesn’t include rapists.

My ex went to SPS in the early 2000s. He and all his friends were on the face of it presentable young men, academic high flyers, but they were used to getting exactly what they wanted and that did play into their interactions with women unfortunately. Some were worse than others. One of the benefits of private schooling is supposedly instilling confidence in the students, but in SPS at that time certainly among the people I met, there was a pretty fine line between confidence and entitlement.