St Catherine’s Bramley: current reputation for bullying and pastoral care?

[TicklishKhakiViper]

We have been looking at schools in our local area, we are renting a house near Godalming. St cats has been our top choice so far! However, I am concerned with the reputation it holds for bullying (from staff AND students?) and the competitive environment. We are aware they have installed a new head, I was wondering if this information is dated. Very curious to hear about the pastoral care as the facilities appear to be impressive.

I have had two daughters go through the school. Not come across any bullying and the teachers are fantastic.

Would also like to hear more about recent (2025-2026) experience. Sadly, this school is very well known for a lot of bullying among the girls themselves and from the staff. However, the recent change in leadership hopefully improved this culture, so we'd like to hear more. We're considering my DD Tormead or St Caths, the 2nd one being more rural and appealing to us more.

No first-hand experience of St Cat’s as we only looked around it and ultimately decided it wasn’t for us. I do have a friend whose daughter is there who had quite significant friendship difficulties in year 7/8 and ended up missing a lot of school. To be fair to the school, they were very supportive and put home/online learning in place for her. I did wonder, though, whether more could have been done to resolve the underlying friendship issues so that she could actually be in school.
Tormead and St Cat’s felt very different to us. Tormead is much more of a town school, with girls gradually getting more freedom and making use of Guildford, whereas St Cat’s has that lovely rural, more contained campus feel. Neither is necessarily better, it really depends which environment suits your daughter.

@mumoftwo1982 Thank you for your reply. It sounds absolutely horrible for your friend’s DD. I really hope she regains her confidence. TBH, this is probably the worst experience I’ve heard about so far… Wow. It’s a huge red flag for pastoral care and students’ wellbeing. Poor girl!
We hear a lot of good things about Tormead. Sadly, my daughter isn’t too keen on the location- a bit too urban for her! :) She’s so used to the open fields around her Surrey prep school that we might have a bit of a challenge getting her used to towns and cities! :)

How about Priorsfield?