New hall School (Chelmsford)

[mumsworldd]

My DS (4) has been offered a place to New Hall School for reception. Whilst the grounds are amazing and the website seems informative, the Google reviews are terrible.

Has anyone had a recent experience with the school, particularly for primary age?

Agreed with terrible Google reviews.

Anya Hindmarch went there, it used to be for girls like her. Visited years ago and didn't like, seemed like a glorified comp to me. I'm sure reception/pre-prep is absolutely fine.

Remember seeing this thread as I was looking at job adverts.

New Hall will only take practising catholics as applicants for teachers. So the pool of talent will be very limited!

That would put me off.

I am not sure that’s true, is it? I think there’s some funny stuff goes on there, but I know someone who taught there recently and isn’t a practising Catholic.

Used to be good. Now I've known several people remove their daughters as the quality of teaching has gone downhill.

Lots of bright Dc leave at 11. I know Dc who did well there in prep but didn’t stay.

Hey where do you know most go to? Is it good for prep? I went to an open day and it seemed they were a little behind academically in comparison to my DS's current independent school

Hey what do you mean funny stuff? In terms of recruitment or otherwise?

They go to the local grammars.

Yes, sorry, not a worse kind of funny stuff 😱. They have a pretty high turnover of staff and they made a huge proportion of them redundant as soon as the pandemic hit (I presume in panic).

There's 2 job adverts at the moment that state that the applicant must be a practising Catholic. Maybe they don't apply that if the application pool is small?

Normally Catholic schools have certain roles that have to be filled by Catholics. Head of RE is definitely one and in most schools, head of PSHE would be too, along with the head and senior pastoral roles, so I think that’s just a coincidence of the current vacancies.

Nothing like reducing the pool of applicants! I never understand this. Get the best, irrespective of religion.

My friend's two children went to New Hall. She removed them in years 3&5 as she was not happy with the standard of teaching.

Her daughter had three different teachers in one year and friend felt it significantly affected her learning.

Her ds got a diagnosis of dyslexia and she felt they were not supportive of him at all.

She moved them both to Felsted and is much happier with that school.

My friend sent her DD there and pulled her out after less than two years. Poor teaching, turn over of staff etc.
There are some good state primaries in the area and the grammars are excellent. Use your money for eleven plus tuition and prep

They have a very high staff turnover and teaching can be inconsistent.
I know of several people who moved their children.

One of them has chosen Danbury and the other two trek out to Maldon Court.