It’s that time of year when the 11 plus is looming so I thought I’d offer my thoughts on Luckley House School in Wokingham in the off chance that anybody’s looking to send their child there, and enquire about Salesian in Farnborough. Our DD is currently at Luckley but we are undecided whether we want our younger son to go there or to Salesian.
Luckley is a very good school, academically solid and the new Head has made some big improvements but there's still one major factor that holds Luckley back. Some of the teachers there are very definitely looking more and more out of place in what a good school should be these days, for example there's one who has the reputation as being something of a 'legend' for eccentricity and irascibility - a good teacher to the kids who manage to get into his good books but frankly a bit of an old bully to those who don't. Also a few of the shall we say older members of staff seem unable to deal with the pupils by using common sense, rather they just hide behind a mindless enforcement of discipline. These same teachers seem to think that this approach also works with parents who dare to question their attitude - which simply makes them look even more ridiculous and past it, and virtually impossible to deal with from a parent's point of view. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is important for schools to have a good level of discipline, but some of these teachers really are on another planet when it comes to dealing with teenagers in this day and age.
Is Salesian any different? Or are these ‘out of touch and past it’ teachers a common problem among the well established independent schools in the area?