Terrible school

[starfiyah]

This is the last straw. My brother has endured year 7 in this school and I’m pulling him out to homeschool him. Today was sports day and they decided to be extra and make people sign up for what activities they had to do on the Friday, of the week before. My brother was among the unlucky ones to be absent on Friday and so, come sports day on Thursday, they did nothing to make sure every child was aware of having to sign up to be able to participate on Sports day. They didn’t tell us parents in the email about it nor was it mentioned to the children on any day after Friday. My brother was forced to endure sitting in the sun the whole day and being denied any participation. He was so hurt and upset. This school for the past year has, hands down the worst communication to parents and students of all schools and organisations I have witnessed. The management is poor and aloof to the needs and issues of students and is an all-in-all a horrible school. I can provide more info for anyone wondering. I do not recommend this school one bit. I’d rather my brother go to a school further away than this place.

You don’t need the headteacher’s permission - or anyone’s, unless he has an EHCP, in which case you’re talking a different kettle of fish.

If you home school with an EHCP then you’ll be monitored the entire time by the EHE team at the Local authority.

If you take him out for a year, you may well have trouble trying to find a place for him in Year 9. It’ll be seen as an in year admission.

Most parents (and big sisters) have very little to do with secondary school, apart from the odd parents evening, as children are expected to be self sufficient, independent and resilient by then.

Even with an EHCP, the OP wouldn’t need permission to deregister and EHE.

Are you at college op ? If so, how will you home educate ?

You can definitely as others have said apply for an in-year transfer. You don't need to see the head about any of it. To be honest in secondary school you don't need to see the head about anything. There are heads of each year and usually pastoral etc for each year group who should get to know the students really well. Have you made them aware of your concerns? Possibly gone down the EHCP route etc? It sounds like you need advice about this. Sorry this is happening you sound as though you are a bit overwhelmed by it all.

I think OP just wants to vent about their school.
get the name of the school deleted OP. If you hate school, start another thread, I’m sure someone would be able to advise. If you’ve just finished your education, then don’t give your school another thought, enjoy some free time!
if this is genuine you’ll have to off roll your brother / son. The LEA can refuse home education in certain circumstances, so check your LEA policies.

As pp have said be really sure this is the right thing for all of you. Once that email has gone to school you have sole responsibility of all education, incurring all expenses, including examinations. If you plan to send him back to school in year 9 I would suggest you consider what school so you can start thinking about which exam board they will be sitting (some schools start gcse content in year 9). If you live in an over subscribed area getting another place won't necessarily be easy.
Unless you have pr it will be your parent/s that need to take him off role.
I'm not saying don't do it but think about it carefully.
Fwiw your description of sports day sounds pretty standard at lots of secondaries, the onus is often on the young person to figure out what they have to do if they've been absent.
Best of luck

Secondary schools expect pupils to be proactive.

If it was a whole school sports day, the PE staff likely had 800-1500 pupils to organise.

Those who missed the sign up day should've been emailing staff to let them know and ask what they needed to do - just as they should be with other teachers in terms of chasing what work they've missed. It is not up to staff to chase kids who've been absent with catch up work.

Unless he had PE on Friday, the PE staff won't even know he'd been off.

If you had an email about it, you knew it was coming up and he knew he hadn't signed up to anything. Surely one of you could have done something about that before the day?

Most people who EHE do so because the child has needs which aren’t being met in school, for whatever reason. Generally, they research extensively before taking the decision to do so. This seems like quite a sudden decision. If the intention is to return to school for year 9, why not apply for a place in Year 8 at a different school.

You’ll be relying on your parents financially, at a time when, presumably, you are the age to develop your own career and independence.

Playdates organised by big sis? At 12 or 13?

By clubs I mean sports clubs, robotics clubs etc
I don’t think he’s too old for that.
maybe the word “playdate” was off. What I mean is, facilitate for him to meet up with friends he has already made at an online club he already is on. They’ve met in person before but only a few times.

Everyone has their unique journey in life. I’m taking enough responsibility by homeschooling my brother and the best way our parents can support is financially.

Well I only went on here so that I could post a bad review of the school. If I saw reviews like this, we wouldn’t have sent my brother to this school.

This is SUCH an odd thread.

OP you have not answered questions about why you are making decisions for your brother when your parents are alive a supporting you financially.

you will be earning £38 per week?

Unwatching this thread now. There have been a few helpful comments, the best one imo being by TrainGame so far.

the main reason I posted was to get an honest review of Richmond Park Academy(RPA) out there.

I think you’re over-reacting massively and have been quiet rash in your decision making. There is more of an expectation of independence and the worst that happened was he watched his class doing races. Making it opt-in is kinder for the children that hate sports day.

This may sound harsh but I also think if you can’t cope with setting up a meeting with a head teacher, you’re in no position to effectively homeschool. That is a very small barrier and should not be the reason to home-school. Are you sufficiently qualified to teach secondary level? Is there funding available for all the books, clubs etc you mention? Quite frankly, if you are going to only be bringing in £38 a week you should be focusing on your own future.

OP - if you chose a school based on the fact that children who missed the sports day sign off (or indeed the sign off for any other activity) weren't proactively contacted to see if they wanted to take part you would be excluding a lot of schools. Possibly all of them.

My experience is that schools are not as great as communication as they might be, but they are not as bad as some students say they are.

There is a parents whatsapp group for children in my DD's year. I would say that roughly half the posts are from parents coming on and venting that nobody told them/their child about x thing happening only for other parents in the group to point to notifications they had missed, tutor sessions that had covered it, assemblies that had been had, letters that were screwed up in the bottom of bags.
I think it's highly unlikely that the only mention of the sports day sign off was on the day itself and there was no discussion of arrangements at any other time. But even if this was the case, is taking part in one race at sports day really such a big deal?

I'm sure there are reasons apart from this that you want to withdraw, but sports day shouldn't be one of them. At DDs' old school, children were selected to take part, so if you weren't brilliant at sport, you didn't get to take part.

You don't have to speak to the headteacher to move schools. You apply to the new school accept the offer and can then notify the old school via email. We have had to move schools multiple times for my children both primary and secondary and I have never had a meeting with the head teacher

But you haven’t given an honest review. You’ve simply said you’re not happy with the way Sports Day was organised, even though it’s pretty standard for all secondary schools to organise it in exactly that way. That’s not a review.

on replies to people’s comments I have given more information.
An example of aloof management is to the issues of students is that my brother’s jumper was stolen by his classmate who is often rude to him. My brother reported it to the teachers and they made him spend all of break time writing a statement, only to do absolutely nothing about it in the end. Our father has emailed the headteacher multiple times only to be ignored. My brother tried to find the headteacher in his office but has never found him there… other kids report getting their belongings stolen such as pencil cases and when asked why they won’t report they reply that they will get the same response “we’ll investigate it.” Only for it to be an empty statement.

My brother reported that three or four weeks ago a clear incident of SA happened by a student to his friend and that friend and his parents reported this to management. All the offender got was one day of isolation and things were back to normal.

There are more incidents which speak to the inadequacy of this school but I can’t fit them all into one post.

My brother, not having friends, wishes to spend his lunch at the library but the library is closed to some years and open to others on different days, so he is only allowed access to it for some days of the week. In my secondary school, the library was almost always open to everyone all days of the week.

A month ago, I emailed the school about the fact that my brother is mentally drained from this school and unhappy, and asked if there were any provisions they could arrange for him, no response.

Please see my other replies where I give more information about why I am unsatisfied with RPA.

OP I assumed you had parental responsibility for your brother and it’s clear from your recent posts that you do not. Why are you joining your father in emailing the school? It’s for your parents to sort with them not you. The school won’t engage with you if you don’t have PR. Leave it to your parents- they and your brother need to decide re the home schooling and not you.

You’re assuming quite a lot there about OP’s parents. There’ll be a reason why OP is this involved and she has no requirement to disclose it to us.

I haven’t asked her to disclose why she’s so involved but I have asked her why both she and her father are emailing the school. It’s an important point to make because if she doesn’t have PR, the school will ignore her emails and not liaise with her, not out of rudeness but out of protocol.

I initially assumed she must have PR because her first few posts insinuated so. Her recent ones mention the involvement of her parents. So if her parents have PR and not her, it explains a lot about why school won’t respond to her and also has a huge impact on who makes the decisions around her brothers schooling