George Watson's bullying culture -- has it improved?

[invisibleflamingos]

My child was lucky to be accepted to Heriot's, Watson's and EA for P1. We're making a big list of pros and cons to each place.

There are positives to each school. One big 'con' that is coming up under Watson's is their approach to bullying based on my reading of historical events.

I read the story of what happened to the primary student who triggered the inspection in 2017, and I was truly appalled by the messages from the teachers and the headmaster's eventual response after the inspection report. There seemed to be no real apology acknowledging how wrong they had got it.

This has given me serious pause. Can anyone with recent experiences speak about whether they've reflected and truly changed the culture? My nephew was bullied horribly at school and it has profoundly affected his confidence, so I'm keen to send my child to a place where it is taken seriously and addressed from the start.

I cant say specifically on their bullying culture other than whats been reported. There are a couple of posters on scotsnet who had experience of issues at Watsons but im not sure whether they predate 2017. Hopefully they will come along. There has been a few articles recently on children transitioning and how the school are handling it in both the telegraph and the times most recently. The old head seemed to be taking advice on the matter from people connected with Mermaids! I found his opinion quite concerning. The school had a new head towards the end of last year so im not sure whether she plans to follow the same path. There is no doubt that the school has fantastic facilities and lots on offer though. Congratulations on all of the offers!

i can only report on our experience where our S1 boy was getting shoved from some other boys. He’s particularly sensitive so we reported it and they had snuffed it out within 24 hours, all friends again now. This was a year ago, and we were very impressed.

DS is in his last year at GWC having been there since nursery and he loves the school.
I think the best thing you can do is ask them for their written procedures for bullying. There's also a new head starting for the new academic year and I suspect she will be an improvement on the current one.

The other thing I would say as whilst I don't have a lot of faith in current head, both the junior and senior school heads seem like very competent and compassionate individuals.

The new head doesn’t start until August and is still at Gordonstoun, but I have hopes she will bring about a bit of culture change. We had cause to report bullying in my child’s form class a few months ago and it was dealt with swiftly and fairly robustly by the year head and form teacher.

My bad, iv no idea why i wrote the new head had started at the end of last year. The article in the times with the current head that i was referring to was only printed a couple of year ago. New one definitely not started!!