Canford school

[sixthformerfulltimemum]

Hello Parents

we are considering Canford for DS for lower sixth form (full boarding). I heard that this school is not very selective and there’s not much supervision of students during weekend. Do you have DC studying sixth form in Canford have insights of whether the teachers, learning environment and support for applications for universities are good? Is the school caring ?

are most boarders locals or international? DS is Chinese and loves more exposure to english culture and improve his english. Many thanks

I believe it is selective. Have a few friends who have children there and it has a great reputation. I will ask a couple of people.

Many thanks. Did you have any information from your friends

We are sending DS to Canford. It is selective - the most academic selective independent school in Dorset.

Our feeling from speaking to students and parents was that the teaching and pastoral care are excellent. Some boarders are local and quite a few are overseas ( plenty from the Channel Islands). I think the sixth formers get quite a bit of freedom at weekends.

Sorry for the delay. Haven't heard back from the parent in question but speaking to another friend who has children there and similar experience as above.
It does have a great reputation. I didn't look at it at the time as I really needed flexi boarding and it was one or the other.
Have you considered Sherborne? When my son was at the Prep there was a good few chinese pupils. It does feed into the senior school.

My daughter attended for 6th form and there are definitely pros and cons. The academics were excellent and the university support provided was very strong. They have a good community volunteering program and her HsM (Housemistress) was kind and caring. She quickly found a good group of friends and expressed that many of her teachers were warm and supportive. Unfortunately, my daughter experienced very manipulative and cruel treatment by one of her teachers which severely undermined her confidence and made her a very sad and different girl to the one we had sent off. She came home twice in her final term as she was so unhappy and uncomfortable. When she raised this as a concern they did not investigate properly as since leaving she has run into another girl who experienced mistreatment from the same teacher. The teacher is still there and did not apologise or explain herself to my daughter at any stage, which added to her distress. Of course, there may well have been discipline or education of the teacher that we are unaware of as they would be unlikely to tell us! She tried to reach out to other former students and found it had been an issue with one or two others too. Unfortunately it got back to the school and they sent her an extremely unpleasant and threatening letter which was retraumatising for her. She is doing better now but naturally watching this unfold as a mother has been very painful for me. She is a good student and a kind-hearted girl (now at Cambridge), not a troublemaker, and to see her being treated like this is - in my view - indefensible on their part. I would say that they have excellent facilities and provide many wonderful opportunities to the students but they need to seriously rethink how they treat whistleblowers and it is clear that when push comes to shove, protecting their image is extremely important to them even if this comes at the expense of the pupils. Then again, this is likely an issue with boarding schools in the U.K. in general (they are not nearly as widespread in my own culture). Their safeguarding and mental health support lapses placed my daughter in a deeply vulnerable and unpleasant situation and I am yet to receive any indication that they will learn from this. I don’t want to dissuade anyone from enrolling their child as, the teacher aside, my daughter would have had a very positive experience there and Oxbridge support was very strong, but I feel it is only fair to show both sides.

Hi overseasboarding, are you able to name the teacher, my daughter has just been offered a place…thanks for any advice