Advice needed - long I'm afraid

[RosaLuxembourg]

We have had a letter from the secondary school DD1 will be going to next year - the open evening is in a couple of weeks.
We have no choice about sending her to this school as it is the only one in our town and it is HUGE - 1500 pupils. There will be 300 in her year group alone which seems ginormous to me.
Now I have several reservations about this school. Two friends have withdrawn their children this year, largely because of bullying. One has moved 150 miles to get her daughter into an all-girl grammar school. The other sending her son to private school. Neither of those are options for us.
Academically the school is slightly below average, although it got a reasonably good OFSTED last time round. It doesn't set by ability for English which is my DD's favourite subject and able pupils complain that they are bored and held back because of that.
We live very close to the school and the general level of behaviour in the street is not great - fighting, swearing, spitting smoking - the school says they have no interest in their pupils' behaviour outside the school grounds. One pair of enterprising pupils were recently spotted having sex in the park - in school hours!
So - can anyone suggest what I should be asking at the Open Day to help me make sense of this.

What I mean is - does this sound normal to people? Are all secondary schools like this? I don't want my DDs to go through the hell my friend's DD experienced but I have no way of knowing if she was just unlucky.

The size thing shouldn't be an issue - my children's school has 1700 pupils and still feels very friendly, community-like, and the school is red-hot on discipline and behaviour.

Definitely ask about setting, this should be the norm for many subjects at secondary school. Ours sets from Yr 7 in maths, English, languages, humanities and science.

The fact the school is slightly below-average academically wouldn't necessarily concern me, that might just reflect its intake.

I would however be very concerned about the school's lack of interest in how pupils act outside the school - ours acts swiftly and effectively if anyone claims about any behaviour which might affect the school's reputation.

Ask they how tackle bullying too - all schools need to acknowledge this as an issue and say what their policies are.

Behaviour of pupils, disinterest of school and the non-setting do not sound normal to me.

Thanks guys. Good to get some feedback - people here seem to accept that the school is fine as they have nothing to compare it with.
My problem with the below average results is that the intake is by and large not that bad - of the dozen or so feeder primaries many, including ours, are performing well and sending them well-behaved, nice children with above average KS2 SATs results. Maybe 10% of the intake have more difficult backgrounds, but the school uses its 'mixed' intake as an excuse IMO - I think it just has low expectations.
And the behaviour outside school is a real pain - those of us who collect from the primary school are sick of having to escort our children through hordes of swearing, smoking, fighting kids every day - it gives them such a bad impression of what big school is going to be like.

Oh dear - it certainly doesn't sound great.

Setting is a tricky one in KS3. Over the past few years we've experimented with:
no setting at all = impossible to effective target top 10% and bottom 10% of students
pure setting = set 7 of 8 usually ends up being a behavioural nightmare
identifying a true top set and a true bottom set, and mixing the rest = works quite well

I would want to know exactly which subjects are set. I would also want to know what options there are at lunch/breaktimes to get away from it all. (Our school has 1000 pupils, and it feels too large at times).

But beware at Open Day many schools will pretty much tell you what they think you want to hear, so phrase your questions carefully.

If you ask about G&T they will probably waffle some nonsense. But if you ask how many Level 7s they got in English this year (pretty difficult to get btw), and how many Level 7s & 8s they got in Maths/Science they can't fudge it, and it will give you a good idea as to whether or not they are targetting/challenging the brighter youngsters.

What about the school in the next town? There is only one school in our town, which sounds like the one you are describing, so I chose the school in the next town as my first choice. Even though it is heavily subscribed, we got in without even having to appeal.

No, it doesn't sound like normal behaviour to me, the school I teach in is not like this.

In our school, kids are deliberately not setted in English, and achieve stupendous results on the basis of this. It is a very very strong department with really good practice, and according to them pupils to better in English in mixed ability groups. Whilst the results are excellent, so are the "added value" ie kids who make progress beyomnd expectation.

As for out of school behaviour, schools are not resposible for what goes on outside the school gates, they are only responsible for what is going on in the premises. Behaviour outside of school is the responsibilty of the police. Whilst it is understandable that people expect schools to have some resposibilty in this area, and we lecture and tell the pupuils, it cannot be enforced, by the school. Also if schools got involved in everything outside their boundary there would be no end. Having said that I feel two pupils shagging in the park is a bit much!! They would have been temporarily excluded from our school for that, and parents bought in

Have just re read your post. Yes I would be concerned that the school is not interested in outside their grounds.

Schools are part of a community, and pupils should behave as such. Ours are always been warned in assembly about good behaviour outside school, and we maintain links with local shops police etc

Ok - you need to ask about pastoral care - how big are the tutor groups, what opportunities are there for one to one tutorials with the tutor, what extra curricular stuff is available and how is her progress going to be tracked against her known potential i.e if she's targeted a level 6 - how do the pastoral team (i.e her Head of Year and tutor) work with the teachers to make sure she stays on track. Good schools do this.

Also, what systems are in place to manage any bullying? We did a bullying questionanairre to the entire school and put systems into place based on the results.

I have never taught setted English in my 8 years as an English teacher. Our dept always led the school in terms of results. You need to know why the Dept teaches mixed ability and how they ensure all teachers are differentiating work for students.

The school are outrageous saying they have no interest in pupils behaviour outside the school grounds. The school is part of the community and should act as so. We used to have prefects on the buses, managing the bus queue, we had a school policeman and social worker; we used to invite local members of the community in at every opportunity -this sounds totally backward! So I would ask, in what way do the school work to establish and maintain positive links with the community. As part of the 'Every Child Matters' stuff, they have to do this.

x

Thanks for all the replies. I have a list of questions now for the open evening. The bullying is currently my major concern because of the number of families I know whose children have experienced it - out of the 20 or so families I know well whose children attend the school, five have experienced bad bullying incidents and none were happy with how the school handled it.

Actually I want to detail the behaviour and see what people think

Child 1: A consistent campaign of bullying over the course of a year - foul things written in her books, belongings stolen and hidden, lies told about her to teachers to try to get her into trouble culminating in a knife being held to her throat in a classroom.
The school gave the boy a three-day exclusion and after a lot of toing and froing and promising different things moved Child 1 to a differnt class and told her new teachers she was being moved because of 'friendship problems'.
The family have just moved 150 miles to get her into a grammer school.

Child 2: Spat on from a stairwell. Nothing done.

Child 3: Beaten up by two boys from the same year. Nothing done because it happened off school premises.

Child 4: Stabbed in the face with a sharp object. Permanently scarred. Short exclusion for culprit.

Child 5: Emotional bullying by other girls. Nothing done.

These children are all in the same year group by the way - all ex-pupils of DDs primary school. It adds up to about 25% of the children I know well who go to that school. Maybe my friends are more prone to have bullied offspring but I can guarantee that these are all nice kids who haven't contributed to their plight in any way.

I would say that, no, not all secondary school are like this.

I work in one which is a bit above average 60% 5 A* to C grades at GCSE. We have around 1300 kids.

Most of them are great but we do have some troublesome (and troubled) kids.

We set in English, maths, MFL and science at KS3. GCSE classes are also 'setted' across the board if there is more than one class at GCSE. We don't set until about half way through the first term, because we test the year 7s as well as using the KS2 sats.

Re the behaviour out of school, we do what we can, but we have no juresdiction over them when they are not on school grounds. It isn't that we are not interested, but unless wh know which children are doing what we can't do much. That said, we do whatwe can

Knife to a throat Nothing has ever happened like this in our school, nor a sharp object in some one's face.

Fights off the premises are unfortunately not part of a school's problem. There is not a lot a school can do about this, it is usually left to the police to deal with this.

Emotional bullying can be difficult to deal with, as it can be difficult to prove. However they should have done something if it was happening.

Also, I would be careful of what you are told by other people, especially if they are children.

Students do sometimes misunderstand how issues are dealt with. E.g, the child who was moved because of "friendship" problems. This could have been a parental request to not refer to the bullying.

Also the emotional bullying, again it would depend on how it was dealt with. We have a child in our school who frequently complains of being bullied, but actually she has problems with interacting with other students, and perceives their normal everyday behaviour as bullying, when it really isn't.

Not saying this is the case, but kids do sometimes over exaggerate!!

All the schools around here take responsibility for pupils behaviour outside of school because they say if you are wearing the uniform it reflects badly on the school. And if the school don't do anything about it the local paper get to hear about it and runs with it.

Good point Fizzbuzz, but - all this stuff has been told to me by the parents, not the children. The mother of child one is one of my closest friends and there was a period of about six weeks where I was having a long conversation with her every day so she could offload every minute detail of what was happening, as she was finding dealing with the school so stressful and upsetting. There was an awful lot more going on than than the brief outline I gave here, but everything I wrote I know to be true.

I would wait and see what happens to your daughter once she enters the school. If you worry, and she worries, it will make it an unhappy experience for you both before anything has even happened!

There are issues with this school I think - mainly to do with not great pastoral care - fighting on or off premises is to do with the school as the students who fight out of school will be fighting in school. School should be safe for everyone in it and good tutors and good Heads of Year and good teachers all working with parents can ensure this. I am not convinced this is happening.

I think you should arrange a meeting with the Head and speak to him about the 5 students you have detailed here, but proceed with caution. You do not know what the school have done exactly - I have had parents who have said nothing has been done and I show them reams of evidence to prove the opposite. Ultimately, they often want the child who has bullied their child to be kicked out of the school permanently and for most schools, that will not happen. We've had Governors overturn perm exclusions for things that would make your hair curl.

Good Luck and try to focus on the positive aspects of the school (if, like to say, you have no choice). Most kids enjoy secondary school despite having a few ups and downs in friendship groups.

x

Leo - thanks for all your very sensible advice. I will try not to overthink this issue before she even starts. She is a well-balanced, sensible girl with lots of friends and I'm sure she will be fine.