Help! I don’t want to send my DD to WHS anymore

[SWMum345]

There was an article in the Mail, Times, Telegraph and Tatler about an open letter written by the ex head girl of WHS about KCS school being a hotbed of sexual violence (there is another thread on this with a link to the letter). We have just accepted a place for DD to start at Wimbledon High School in September but having read this letter and the testimonials I don’t think I can do it. While the focus of the letter is about the behaviour and culture of the boys at KCS most of the experiences are from girls at WHS (or those from WHS who transferred to KCS in 6th form). Just to be clear I am not victim shaming here and I believe that no girl should ever have to endure sexual assault but I have serious misgiving about sending my daughter to a school where so many girls have been victims of sexual assault. The letter claims that “everyone knew” what the KCS girls were like - but if this was the case why did girls from the school continue to go to parties with them? Why did girls from the schools continue to get so drunk they were unconscious in the presence of known sexual predators? Where were their friends when they were being abused - why do so many accounts reference the fact that female friends of the abused (WHS girls) laughed off their stories and implied it was their fault for being too drunk? What were the parents thinking, letting their daughters go to these parties? Why did WHS not intervene if so many girls were being assaulted? So many alarm bells are ringing in my head and I honestly don’t know what to do. Part of the reason I am paying for private school is that I (clearly erroneously) thought it would provide my DD with a better chance of finding friends who were well behaved and whose parents were maybe stricter about what they did and who they were hanging out with. I have a decent state option that thankfully I have held on to (as there were questions around DHs job security in the pandemic). Should I cut my losses with the deposit and just run?

OP - I really wouldn't worry - back in my day we used to have Gatexcrasher balls for rich kids - I was completely oblivious to that scene - I was such a geek as were a lot of my friends - privately educated.
What I'm saying is it's only a small proportion of girls and boys who are on this 'party' scene. Tbh they didn't necessarily become high flyers later
Also, suggesting this doesn't happen at grammar schools is deluded - i have friends who have taken their kids out of all local girls grammars in sw London and Surrey because of various issues/pressures and sent them to other sixth forms.
The ethos has to come from home as much as from school

@SWMum345

There was an article in the Mail, Times, Telegraph and Tatler about an open letter written by the ex head girl of WHS about KCS school being a hotbed of sexual violence (there is another thread on this with a link to the letter). We have just accepted a place for DD to start at Wimbledon High School in September but having read this letter and the testimonials I don’t think I can do it. While the focus of the letter is about the behaviour and culture of the boys at KCS most of the experiences are from girls at WHS (or those from WHS who transferred to KCS in 6th form). Just to be clear I am not victim shaming here and I believe that no girl should ever have to endure sexual assault but I have serious misgiving about sending my daughter to a school where so many girls have been victims of sexual assault. The letter claims that “everyone knew” what the KCS girls were like - but if this was the case why did girls from the school continue to go to parties with them? Why did girls from the schools continue to get so drunk they were unconscious in the presence of known sexual predators? Where were their friends when they were being abused - why do so many accounts reference the fact that female friends of the abused (WHS girls) laughed off their stories and implied it was their fault for being too drunk? What were the parents thinking, letting their daughters go to these parties? Why did WHS not intervene if so many girls were being assaulted? So many alarm bells are ringing in my head and I honestly don’t know what to do. Part of the reason I am paying for private school is that I (clearly erroneously) thought it would provide my DD with a better chance of finding friends who were well behaved and whose parents were maybe stricter about what they did and who they were hanging out with. I have a decent state option that thankfully I have held on to (as there were questions around DHs job security in the pandemic). Should I cut my losses with the deposit and just run?

I feel your pain at having to make a decision in the midst of all this media frenzy. May I offer some insights from living locally.

All parents I know at KCS and WHS are hard working professionals who pay a lot of attention to their children's education and social well-being. I've never heard of any house parties unattended. Particularly with KCS where the catchment is so wide that house visit would mean parent driving and hanging around as driving back and forth would take so much time.

At the very core, both schools are absolutely exceptional in pastoral care, I have not heard from a single parent who disagreed, not because they pay so they protect their face, but because they do care and do want that pastoral care in return for their money.

I haven't heard from any parent withdrawing children from either school for pastoral care.

I do notice something from living locally. SW London has a large number of girls school, while boys school are much more scarce. In Wimbledon alone, KCS is the only boy school in the same direction with 3 girls schools (one private, one Catholic, and one comprehensive). Most young boys at KCS on the street are very shy being outnumbered by the girls, however I can only imagine at 17-18 when attending parties naturally the boys would be in "short supply" and "in demand". That might breed entitlement. Just my imagination while trying to explain the girls' horrific experiences so so so remote from what I see and hear everyday.

Education will help. However labeling, stereotyping, online shaming the schools are WRONG.

Do you also think the attitude of girls is now changing? Why would they want to associate with boys like this? At parties or anywhere else?

I went to a top girls’ grammar that I often seen mentioned on these threads as it’s so desirable. Being single sex there was less involvement with boys even though there is a boys version down the road (not for want of trying on the part of many of the girls). There was alcohol in the later years and sneaking down the river to smoke, there was even an ambulance called to meet the ferry back from a trip to France as Y11 girls were so ill with drink.

There weren’t tons of drunken sex fuelled parties though, instead we had very high levels of mental health problems. Lots of anorexia and OCD which resulted in girls going to stay at residential facilities and dropping back a year at school. A lot of it was put down to the pressure to achieve high grades. Lots of pressure also to drop GCSEs if A grades were not expected so some girls ended up with only 5-6 GCSEs but the school kept its high academic results.

@GoingOnce Exactly. I honestly think many people's perceptions of private schools come from films. There are no huge unsupervised mansions and kids being left by neglectful parents with access to unlimited cash to spend on drugs.

My experience of private education is very different to many of the posters on MN.

Is it just me or is it a bit odd that all of this is coming out now - seeing as for the past year it’s been practically impossible for young people to get together and party like they usually would and so I would imagine this stuff isn’t happening as much?. Instead there has been a huge amount of activism and “protest” from young people about things like BLM, LGBTQ rights and now “rape culture”. Has social isolation made young people more angry?...or more bored?

When I was at a grammar with boarding, a new girl arrived mid term. She had been expelled from another grammar around 30 miles away so she came to our school to continue to be in a grammar. Her crime: she had not got on the coach back to the UK from France. She had met a boy and stayed in France with him. The teachers were frantic but left without her. I learnt a lot more about this because her mother was a friend of one of my aunts.

The BLM protests are hardly something that is contained to young British youth missing a party or two. This recent anti ‘rape’ culture activity surely has its roots in ‘me too’ and is an extension of that which predates lockdown. Is there greater LGBT activity than there is usually as it’s always an active & vocal community? Young people’s involvement & concern over environmental issues seems no less than before.

Perhaps lockdown has given younger generations more of an opportunity to sit down and reflect on what is important to them and what is no longer tolerable. And perhaps seeing others in society speak up about racism or violence against women has encouraged them to feel more free to voice their own concerns and experiences.

@XelaM, as an ex Private school pupil I definitely did go to more than one party in someone’s parents huge gaff where there was minimal supervision and both booze and weed. I have vivid and very cringeworthy flashbacks of embarrassing myself by throwing up most of a bottle of gin down a friends extremely nice parents staircase. I’m 50 so while things might have changed a bit in the interim, I’m sure they haven’t that much. And having heard some of my now 26 year old State educated then teenager stories, there wasn’t a great deal of difference in the State sector either.

@presentingpercy the first wave of feminism was all about the right for women to enjoy sex and have casual hook ups without being branded a s@@@.....being able to say “no” or “yes” on our terms. Today girls are brought up to believe it’s normal to want and enjoy sex outside of marriage - it’s generally viewed as prudish and frigid to think otherwise. Oh how we all mocked the “true love waits” movement in the US when teenagers were declaring that they wanted to save themselves for marriage. Clearly we don’t want to go back to the 50s where women were told to never let a man anywhere near her but maybe we need to emphasise more that choosing not to engage in sexual behaviour outside of a committed relationship is a perfectly acceptable choice too?

I actually think all choices made by women are fine. As long as it’s their choice! teenage pregnancy is well below what it was. There’s plenty of contraceptive support out there.

I didn’t find girls were coerced into anything much years ago. And I’m 65. You had choices even then. The bigger fear was getting pregnant. Two or even three did in my state grammar school year group. We only had 45 girls! None had their baby. So teenage sex isn’t new.

Don’t ever believe women didn’t let men or boys near them. Since when do people do what they are told? I’m afraid that’s total rubbish and the stories from Ireland in that period would tell you that mantra didn’t work. Let alone all the mum and child reunions you read about from that time.

I don’t pay much attention to what goes on in the USA. True love really does not have to wait. That’s probably what was wrong with that mantra. All girls do need to think about whether a casual approach to sex is for them (the pill ushered in that freedom) and definitely question whether that’s true feminism for the majority. I wasn’t aware of my friends having casual sex in the 70s who didn’t want it. There was plenty of under age sex too. It seems to me that girls and women should have choice but one version of feminism laughing at other women with differing views isn’t on. Certainly all women and girls should not be prey to men behaving badly.

@ProfessorPootle , @PresentingPercy and @SJaneS49 I agree that those things happen, but they happen at schools across the Uk and are not confined to the top private schools.

Parties, drink, drugs, inappropriate behaviour happen everywhere.

@xelam I would second that - inappropriate behaviour goes on everywhere.

@presentingpercy I 100% agree that a girl should be able to decide on her own sexual choices. I was pointing out that societal norms can sometimes make girls feel like it is expected of them to be these feisty, sexually assertive, liberated women. Sometimes this is a scary ask for a young girl attending her first party.

If you are going to worry about sending your dd to WHS because of potential sexual abuse, then you need to worry about sending her to ANY school, any sports club, any friends house for a sleepover. What you can do is talk to her, keep talking to her and make sure she has conversations with her friends about keeping each other safe. This is not new, this is not one school, it's not a state or private issue and it is not just girls who get groped.
Yes we all need to make sure our kids are aware of this and schools are aware of this, but if we all took our kids out of every school that this had ever happened at, we would all be home schooling and I think we have all had enough of that!

@XelaM
Yes. Anywhere. That’s what I’ve been trying to say. It isn’t just privately educated dc who behave this way. They get publicised because it’s a media story. What media outlet cares about the behaviour at the comp down the road? They might if the DC went to
Michaela! Otherwise it’s not newsworthy.

@XelaM yes, my point exactly, I was at an all girls state grammar. My sisters went to catholic girls’ state school and they were equally as bad.

@thekidstaxi I'm not sure thats quite true tbh. I have a dd in one of the grammars that the OP is probably considering and the chance of her going to any parties at all is slim.

A lot of her friends are from backgrounds where they simply wouldnt be allowed. This has a really big bearing on the culture of the year group.

@ChristopherTracy, so the answer is to lock up our daughters? don't let them learn to trust their instincts, learn to know when it's time to call for a lift home? What will happen to those girls then go off to uni, where they can't call home for a lift or know when it's time to leave the party?

However, my point is that, sadly, it makes no difference what school you go to sexual assault can happen anywhere, not just at parties. We shouldn't have to change what schools our girls go to but educate them and boys about the wider issue. If you think your dd is safe from this type of abuse because of the school she attends then you are not seeing the reality of this.

Eh? Of course not. I was adding some specific local context. I actually do think it does make a difference which school you go to in this case and was expressing that.

OP am glad you have resolved this for yourself. It's a great school. Changing to a different school or going coed could never ensure an 'escape' from any kind of abuse unfortunately.

I'm actually confused as to what your real question is OP? I'm struggling to believe that you are so naieve to be shocked by this. I'm not shocked by any of it. It all goes on. Has done when I was at school. Has done for years.

You are honestly thinking that anything's gonna change/ get better any time soon. Get real. The naievity of some people. FFS.

Good grief the OP put absolutely everything into this thread - well done.

"I always felt safe and it is very sad that things have changed so much and we are not making a better world for our children." Eh? You felt safe? More fool you.

Huge late dripfeed that OP went to the worst school is England and are practicing Muslims, whose dd will therefore be very sheltered.

Saying that the way op writes its clear that she too has led a very sheltered life. Clearly not a white middle class public school girl who smoked a joint at Reading festival in her tent after her o'level's. (not that this is me, just teasing)

I read here years ago that the only difference between public and private schools was the quality of drugs.

Hi OP
i’m so glad you took the grammar school place . Have sent you a PM, - before I saw your update. Good luck to your daughter with her new secondary school next year, I’m sure she will be very happy.