Eastbourne College- my experience

[ebo123]

I want to start off by clarifying that I am not a mother of a student at Eastbourne but a former student. I graduated upper sixth 2 years ago and I have still not been able to fully get over my treatment and the treatment of many others at Eastbourne college. I myself suffered from an eating disorder in my last year of school which I received no support for and ended up having to spend 5 months in an inpatient treatment centre after my graduation. The head of pastoral care even went so far as to refer to my eating disorder as 'a silly little game' when my mother expressed her concern to the school. As a full-time border since year 9, I was shocked at this lack of empathy and support from a school that receives such excellent reviews. I know many other people who have suffered from self-harming whilst attending the school and it was never taken as seriously as this sort of issue should be. I also remember the whole of sixth form female students being called to a meeting where we were told we looked like 'sluts' 'tarts' and 'whores' for the way we dressed. This is not an exaggeration these exact words were used. One of my friends in my boarding house was told she could be a school prefect if she stopped being friends with me and changed her friendship circle. I think this is a horrible message to be sent to both myself and her. Eastbourne, in my opinion, was not a school that encouraged individuality and personal growth and there was a real lack of sensitivity and care from most of the staff and many of the students, as bullying and hierarchy among students seemed to dominate the school. Of course, there were positive aspects to the school. I had many teachers who were clearly passionate and highly qualified in their fields of teaching and the facilities are excellent. I do have some happy memories at Eastbourne and I don't want to disregard those. I made some amazing friends and gained a lot academically, but overall I felt that Eastbourne College had very little tolerance and empathy for the very serious problems within the school and the student body, and instead put a lot more energy into very trivial components such as uniform and sports performance. I know many people who have been very happy at Eastbourne but I felt it was important to share my experience because I would hate for others to have suffered the same experience I and others did.

Thank you for posting. I'm sorry you had such a bad experience.

Well done in posting this. I was a boy at Eastbourne College in the first half of the 1980s, and other than the fact that we had very few girls, everything you have said applied then. The reason for you being called all sorts of names is very simple. The school is obsessed with its reputation and image. You will see a post on this forum about bullying at the school. Bullying was ignored, so it did not exist. This particularly concerned boys who bullied that were from the right background. Living in East Dean was a huge plus. There was the same hierarchy amongst students then. Leaving the school with very little confidence was something that affected me into my mid-30s. So do not expect to get over it anytime soon. Above all I want to emphasize that private education in the UK is the biggest and probably the oldest scam we have. I want to make it clear that I am not thick. I have a BSc (HONS), an MSc and to memberships of two professional institutions. I achieved all of that before I was 30. But none of these achievements were owed to EC. The entire school was and still is obsessed with those who were outstanding academically, at sport or in the performing arts. Those who are considered mediocre were overlooked and not encouraged. The best teachers were reserved for the top S and A sets and lowest set: D. Sets B and C received the worst teachers. We had a French teacher who spent lessons talking about birds. There was a chemistry teacher who taught the S and A sets well, but when it came to teaching the B and C sets he adopted a different attitude. He even hit one boy. I never realised the significance of the periodic table to chemistry equations, because in 3 years it was never explained to me. Despite the fact that I never had a day off school. The periodic table was on a wall at 90 degrees to the students and nowhere near the blackboard. So why would I think that it was significant? I eventually worked it all out by myself 2 weeks before my O levels, which probably makes me a genius ))). What parents do not understand is that of course the school's results for A levels look fantastic on paper. But that is not because the school gets the most out of its pupils. It is because the mediocre pupils are culled at every level. To start with you must pass common entrance. Common entrance used to be 60-75% of O levels. So we had 3 years to cover only 25-30% of the syllabus. Moreover, if (like me) you are considered thick, then your parents get a letter asking that they take their child from the school. You must never appear in their all important statistics for O and A levels. I eventually found my letter in some papers that my Mum gave me in 2014. My parents and I really had to fight to keep me at the school. I passed 6 O levels and went on to A levels. But my parents still received that letter. I even had to tell my Mum "to have faith in me", because she was becoming convinced by what the school was telling her about me. As it was, A levels at the school were the same: we had an Economics teacher from a working class background in Yorkshire who hated us and who spent most of his time talking about anything other than economics. None of my Eastbournian mates have good memories of the place and none go back.