Please can Someone Explain What Happened to My School (QEGS Blackburn)?

[janeeire244]

I attended Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School (Blackburn) which is a school in Blackburn, Lancashire that used to be a private school and is now a state school.

I never actually attended it while it was a private school but I started a couple of years after it became a state school. However, when I first started in Year 7, it still felt very much like a private school as there was a lot of formality with teachers wearing gowns; there being cathedral services; there being a massive prizegiving service at the end of the year; Latin and Classics being taught; the students being well-behaved; and the teachers being much more ambitious.

However, as the years went on and by the time I left in Year 13, it had changed so much to becoming just a bog-standard comprehensive. The teachers were increasingly unambitious for their students (though the older teachers from when it was a private school were noticeably more motivated for their students); the students were much more poorly behaved; the demographic had changed massively as previously most students were middle-class and white but by the end of my time, most were South Asian and working-class; the school no longer was able to afford renting out the town hall for prize giving and had to cut back on things like teaching Latin; and increasingly students and even newer teachers began to ridicule the formality and traditions of the school like wearing gowns which previously they had taken pride in.

I am so nostalgic about Year 7 (when I first started and QEGS felt sort of like a private school and I felt like I had a good education).

Is the QEGS that I’m nostalgic about how private schools tend to be: much more well-behaved students; more ambitious teachers; more traditions etc?

Fundamentally, why did QEGS change so much? Yes, I know there was a poorer demographic of students but that doesn’t have to mean that they would be less well-behaved or less motivated than the prior demographic? Why were new teachers less appreciative of traditions and less ambitious? Why did QEGS increasingly have less resources and funding.

This is something that I have been thinking about for a very long time and would appreciate an answer from from people who know QEGS personally or know about what could have happened.

I think you’re answering your own question? It became a state funded school that’s the difference?

It went from getting £15k or so per year per student to £5k, of course things will change

State funding definitely not the ethnicity of the students, the south Asian parents were the most pushy ambitious parents at my dc’s school and far better behaved

But why wasnt there much impact when I first started?

Maybe because with years of collecting fees they had a small buffer of money “saved” maybe also certain items were paid in advance.

Funding.
Simple.

If you considered the teachers had something to do with it, presumably more of the original teachers retired or changed jobs over the time you were there. They may have had a period post the transition of eg three years where they kept the wages higher, and then dropped them to “local” levels.

I’m not sure when you left, OP, but the ofsted indicated improvement between 2017 and 2019:

In November 2012, the school announced its intention to apply to become a free school by 2014.[4] In June 2017, the report from Ofsteddetermined the school "Requires improvement".[5] However, in October 2019, the report from Ofsted recognised the school as "Good" with "Outstanding" features in Personal Development and Early Years Development. The report commended the "broad and ambitious curriculum" that pupils study and that highlighted that pupils benefit from a "stunning range of opportunities" to enhance their personal development.[6]

Bit late to the party here but that school became a free school because parents weren't prepared to pay for the standard of education they were offering. It was declining as the state schools in the area were rapidly improving. I knew professionals who were drafted in to provide support and they were horrified at the low standards there when they first converted. The school has had a lot of outside support, including from local state schools, to improve to where is today.

I think you were over impressed by a few traditions and incorrect associations with quality of education. Your, frankly unpleasant, references to ethnicity and class has no impact at all. Anyone who familiar with national school performance will know why you need to go left than a mile in either direction to prove otherwise.

As above but also parents who pay for schools usually (not always!) value education and kids therefore do also. There are usually cliques of families in poorer areas who seem to actively despise education and do their best to disrupt it for everyone else. Once kids start falling behind it is harder to catch back up so they all lose interest as a result.

Out of interest, do you come from the area, or indeed anywhere in the north West?

With respect, and for obvious reasons, I don't disclose my location to strangers on a public social media media site, especially when I don't have enough context from the request to know if it is disingenuous or not.

I do know the area well and like it very much.

You like Blackburn “very much”?!! 😳😳

You sound a delight OP

Tell us you don't know the area without telling us you don't know the area.

@ForPearlViper I was just wondering if you knew the area well and the amount of severe deprivation there as a result of the post WWII decline of industry, and the move of schools to the state, meaning that the catchment area massively changed from the wealthier areas surrounding Blackburn to the much poorer areas of the conurbation

Yep, you got me. I enjoy going on social media just to say I like completely random post-industrial towns I know nothing about. Excuse me now, I've got to get over to Reddit to say a few kind words about Grimsby.

I used to know it very well indeed, but not in recent years, so I was surprised to learn that QEGS was no longer private.

OP, if all your posts are genuine, you are putting a huge amount of identifying information out there on the internet -- school, school year, A level predictions, disabilities and family situation. I think you should consider asking MN to take some of the posts down.