Altrincham Grammar School for Girls

Delighted and DD very happy.

Word of caution about the staff this school employs and their ability to turn a blind eye to the wrongdoings. A teacher and his accomplice from this school squatted in someone’s home , verbally assaulted, harassed and threatened homeowners and refused to leave before being taken out by police. Be very careful since this is the environment that is apparently nurturing students.

this place kinda sucks
i have some positives and negatives tho
✅pros ✅
1.the outside area is pretty
2.the students are friendly
3.crumpets are AMAZING
4.some of the teachers are nice
5.i love the library
6.the sixth form cafe is great
7.lots of nice little bake sales
❌cons❌
1.pe kit is uncomfortable and ugly
2.the pasta `sauce’ is literally just water
3.why aren’t we allowed to take paninis outside?
4.there are very few teachers that are genuinely nice (kudos to all the teachers that are 👏)
5.some of the inside rooms are nasty and the changing rooms have NO ventilation whatsoever
6.the school is infested with karens
7.they NEVER,EVER clean the bathrooms
8.we’re not allowed ANY INDIVIDUALITY AT ALL.
9.they hardly ever talk about diverse history
10.the most boring assemblies ever
11.all they ever do is hockey and netball.i mean COME ON.i don’t want to do only hockey and netball. i wanna try out new sports.
12.why aren’t we allowed to roll up our skirts???
13.they hardly ever sell those good cakes with the hardened icing
14.they act like they care about mental health when they don’t.
15.they never clean the gum under the tables.i realised that in year 7.
overall this school is pretty lame and there are lots of better schools out there

positives:

there's a great range of extracurriculars here and the buildings are pretty too. some of the teachers are lovely (shout out to mr humphreys especially he genuinely cares abt his students) and the food is pretty good if overpriced.

negatives:

class divide. about half of students have tutors in more than one subject - it really puts pressure on those who don't. some cultural issues are sort of impossible to fix because everyone here is reasonably smart which creates a lot of competition. yet the staff could easily discourage students from sharing test results and reminding everyone of how many days it is until their gcses but they just don't. 7 = bad grade: not many teachers tell students to be positive about a 'lower' score either. the in school resources aren't great and teachers don't really help with revision either. the trips are literally thousands of pounds. i really don't understand why aggs will spend so long talking about racism, sexism + homophobia (and make the students talk abt transphobia lol) but not mention the intersectionality of all those things w/ poverty. it's insane. teachers also seem to have about no training on recognising and dealing w/ students who are neurodiverse, instead preferring to embarrass students who have difficulty concentrating in lessons. liberty is just a concept here: the school force you to do specific revision and wellbeing activities as if those will work for everyone. the response to a certain petition created a few years ago was shocking, and the school effectively used their power to silence its students. but im sure they'll ignore all this anyway lol

Daughter very happy there. Lovely friends, lovely parents. Very mixed demographic - some from prep schools and others from state primaries.
Highly diverse - love this - life is diverse, work, university and society is diverse so prepares children well.
Very aspirational culture so suits able, conscientious children who want to do well.
Daughter feels very proud to be there and whilst she finds it academically stretching, she rises to the challenge but has the confidence and drive to do so.
I am sure it wouldn’t suit everyone for these reasons but as a parent I couldn’t be more impressed or happy with the quality of teaching, the drive, variety of subjects, fantastic sports facilities, careers provision and aspirational culture.

AGGS really do not care about any type of diversity.
The pastoral care is non existent and they favour the rich that can afford to spend 1000s on tutoring to get the high grades. Otherwise you’re asked to leave if you are getting.low ones.
Teachers have faves and there’s only a few teachers that really care.
The head is so scary and is only bothered about results and her new building.
Results are paid for by parents but the suicidal tendencies, mental health, cutting, drugs, anorexia, bullying is paid for by us.
Be prepared to lose your confidence and feel bad about yourself.

this school made me want to literally kms, and i was in y10. the amount of pressure put on every student here is actually insane. y10, the year before gcses and all of my motivation was stripped from me because of aggs 😭😭 everyone preaches inclusivity and diversity, and expressing your identity but as soon as someone actually does anything to differentiate themselves from others, theyre shut down instantly. racism? oh no they dont give one. coloured hair/piercings? told to dye it back instantly or risk suspension or expulsion. we have no free will to do anything. the only good thing about this school is the very few amount of teachers that actually do give one (shoutout dr stutchbury) and the fact that lessons arent too disruptive. but again, imo, the silence in lessons is purely out of fear of punishment. we’re being taught to be literal robots 😒😒😒😒😒😒😒 theres no subjects that could be quite interesting to some people in sixth form, eg geology, but its taught in the boys school? teachers most of the time teach u something once and expect u to remember it forever. and when ppl dont understand a topic, we hesitate to ask for help out of fear of being shamed, or scared that the teachers will think we’re stupid. also the constant tests. why the hell am i being given multiple exams EVERY WEEK??? and then being rude to us when we get bad scores. AND ALSO THE EXPECTATIONS THAT EVERY STUDENT SHOULD GET ALL 9S OR WE WONT DO WELL IN THE FUTURE?? im sorry but i want to go to college, and for that, i need 4s. literal 4s. and from there i can even go to uni?!! THEY ACT AS IF ANYTHING THAT ISNT SIXTH FORM IS BAD. THATS SUCH A LIEEEEE!! i cant wait to get out of this TERRIBLE school. ruined my mental health, my family relationships, AND my friendships. another thing, they dont give one about us students mentally. being told to have a bath to cure my depression yeah thats gonna help isnt it. unless it affects ur grades, they wont do anything. and even then, they only try to ‘help’ so that the schools reputation doesnt get ruined. i have so much more to say, about teachers, facilities, uniform, everything but i actually cba rn theres too much. IF U HAVE ANY COMMON SENSE, DONT COME HERE.

lets start w the positive (haha)
- everyone wants to learn to atmosphere is not disruptive
- students are diverse and usually nice
- some teachers work really hard esp during lockdown (shoutout to dr yong)
- women in stem!!!
- lots of extracurriculars
- disciplined
- nice outside area centenary garden's kinda cute and breezehill has heated floor in that one room
negatives
- assembly twice a week ab the most useless topics...and we have to sit on the floor. When the topics are good, they are often poorly explained and not given by someone who has necessarily experienced those things basically i'm saying straight white ppl expressing their white guilt through an assembly to a very diverse group of high school pupils (mrs clearie)
- bro can some teachers stop w the pedophilia i don't need to be sexualised in my pe kit thanks
- hypocrisy from teachers.
- making it seem like an average grade is bad, like yes it's important to push yourself but belittling someone's worth just because of a bad mark?? this way of thinking is set by teachers but very much fuelled by students and also parent's expectations. competitive and toxic atmosphere asf
- sick of the way pastoral team treat sensitive situations like bullying, sa and mental health issues are handled so badly i want to cry. dont trust school w ur problems it only makes it worse. then they take the littlest things seriously like bro focus on the bigger picture pls.
- people pretending to be bi (i like girls but would never date one). please stop.
- school tries to control its students sm like why are we not allowed to wear our coats around school and . calm urself lol
- students not taken seriously and useless rules. phones and letters home for the stupidest stuff
- only cares ab science they get all the funding
- teachers are smart but dk how to teach
- some teachers don't put the effort in because they know we will so don't bother to teach us instead the just say 'do pages 10-15 and you will get what to do' nah bro that's not how it works
- food is overpriced we get that youse are all capitalist loving tories but really??
- tastes shitee aswell barely and vegetarian, jain, vegan and halal options

went here all the way up until sixth form and finally left this hell hole in 2019. 7 whole years all i got was depression, anxiety and undiagnosed autism, sitting both GCSEs and A Levels with all of these and no support!!! (the councillors were terrible). also so much bullying, being a girls school it was so difficult as girls were very nasty. solutions in this school were to sit in a room with the bully and a teacher and "talk it out" which usually just made matters worse as you'd be bullied for reporting the bullying. teachers were very hit and miss, it's a teaching school so they also get a lot of trainees and boy, if you get one of these during your GCSE or A Level lessons, good luck! some teachers were fantastic and others just couldn't teach for the life of them. there was definitely a lot of favouritism with some teachers blatantly doing this, Ms Mayall was... yikes, as well as some of the PE teachers. there was also a few teachers that were lowkey a little racist, not entirely obvious but it was clear that they did sort of favour white girls a little as opposed to the girls of colour - considering there were a lot of girls of colour it wasn't right at all.

sodexo brownies used to be so good before they charged more for brownies a quarter of the size, extremely depressing as they were the only things that got me through those seven years. the lady who worked the canteen in the sixth form cafe though (i'm so sorry i don't 100% remember her name but i believe it was Liz) was very lovely to us once we reached sixth form and the food was nicer there!


i had a bad experience here but the biggest shoutout goes to Mrs Langridge, she was an absolute angel - she was my sixth form form tutor and she was so sweet, really helped me through some tough times even with the most simple conversations, even though she probably doesn't realise it 😭 Mrs Downing was also an absolute queen of a biology teacher all the way through, so sweet yet so good at teaching so i'll always appreciate her a lot too ❤

It could totally be worse, but it SHOULD be so much better. They pay no attention to mental health unless it's causing harm (that they can see) to a student's grades, but LOVE giving assembly after assembly and lecture after lecture on why 'we care' and 'you can talk to us and ask for help'. If those things were true? Great. But nooooo. No matter how obviously a student is struggling (and sometimes even when the school have been explicitly told), they only ever provide help when our academics are being pushed to below a level they're okay with. The level of virtue signalling and lack of care is frustrating at the best of times, and outright harmful at the worst.

Some of the teachers are amazing, sure, and they work really hard to support everyone, but loads don't teach us the material we need to know, and expect us to self-teach the material in our own time - not mean homework to reinforce previous learning, but teaching the material to ourselves having never been taught it in the first place. They advertise themselves as one of the highest achieving schools in the country, but that's basically due to the students going above and beyond reasonable expectations, not the school itself.
Most of our learning is completely geared towards how to pass a test, rather than with any intention of truly fostering knowledge and understanding. I don't have a problem with learning information that is not strictly speaking 'necessary' at all, I know knowledge and learning are important in their own right, however there's no point in simply 'learning' to pass a test, in such a way that it realistically gives no indication of our actual understanding of a subject, and we are more likely to just forget the information after the test than to remember it long-term. I get that this is really a problem with the education system as a whole, but the school takes it to extremes.

They also REALLY want us to be machines. Like, they'd probably rather we literally all looked identical, sat silently through lessons, and had absolutely no opinions of our own. Piercings or hair dye? Forget it. People get harassed for refusing to remove healing ear piercings with literally NO regard for their mental health. Assemblies could be taught by teachers with actual experience of the issues, because our staff is pretty varied, but nah, always the same 3 teachers who really have no clue. Oh, and a trainee teacher stopped me going to the loo for no reason even though I was literally on my period. No 'sure you can't wait for the end of the lesson?', just a straight up no.

The school don't provide enough indoor space for younger years to eat lunch, and although there are some outdoor benches, they aren't usable for many weather conditions, especially because students aren't allowed to wear coats around school during school hours. Most of the benches are unsheltered, and even if they all were sheltered, there wouldn't be enough for everyone. People end up eating standing up or hiding in locker rooms/toilets. The only indoor spaces where they can eat or even go to stay out of the rain are the dining hall or any lunchtime clubs they might attend, and the dining hall has time restrictions placed on when people can be inside it, meaning that before a student enters or after a student leaves, they usually have to wait outside in horrible weather or hide in the school toilets. It's unfair to expect students to either attend a lunchtime club every day, hide in the toilets, or wait outside in weather that is often some combination of rain, freezing cold, and wind, it being England and all. This is less of a problem for students in older years, as they are allowed to eat in their form rooms, but they are stopped from socialising with friends because they aren't allowed in other form rooms, and it's still not okay to expect students in younger years to deal with this.
This is also something that has been repeatedly brought up to teachers for years, and the student body has been ignored or brushed off with no compassion or understanding by senior leadership, even when other teachers have agreed with us.

Recently, several students have been made very uncomfortable by some of the teachers making comments about their bodies. I don't know what happened or what was said, but it doesn't really matter. When most of the student body was super uncertain and on edge, instead of taking the time to talk to us, they tried to end any and all complaints and told us to change the uniform that they had previously had no problems with us wearing, for reasons that they completely failed to communicate to us, but feel a lot like a reiteration of the message that someone should change their outfit to stop someone else making them uncomfortable, rather than the other person just not taking clothing as an invitation or excuse for their actions.

There are teachers who ARE amazing though. There are some teachers who go above and beyond to help students, and I can't say enough how important they are to the school as a whole. They are so, so appreciated by the students, and it is so valuable for individuals to have teachers that they DO feel comfortable going to when they have a problem or need help/advice.

The school as a whole gives so little value to (read: doesn't give a shit about) student wellbeing compared to academic performance, and desperately needs to reassess why they are actually academically high-achieving, and it needs to listen to students on a much larger scale, as well as not pick and choose which feedback they follow through on based on what they care about or what is easiest for them.
Unfortunately, my opinion doesn't matter. Or the VERY similar opinions of almost everyone else who has left Alty a review on this site. Because the school don't care. They'll continue to lie about caring and blame us for problems they cause, because that's what they always do. If it works, right?

Also, they flaunt that outstanding Ofsted rating like a 6 year old who just won a medal of participation at their first gymnastics competition.

crappiest place Ever they ruin your mental health and expect everyone to be geniuses. Create family problems don't know what privacy is and will hunt you down until you're ruined. the school is so broke you'd be glad your child didn't go here.

1 - i've been bullied multiple times here and the school did nothing but make it worse.
2 - my mental illness got so much worse when i came here, school didn't care until i started failing classes, even then did nothing
3 - lol yeah there are so many pro-ana students here
4 - continue to call us girls when many students aren't even girls
5 - (SOME) teachers will ignore you if you ask for help
6 - offer basically no good subjects for gcse / alevel
7 - you will have to teach yourself everything lol and also if you even want hope of passing ur gcses u better get a tutor
8 - racist as hell but will ofc preach abt how diverse they r online
9 - smells bad tbh
10 - so many p3d0s. at least 5 here and only like 2 got fired after AGES.
11 - true the whole school is infested with wasps
12 - !! TW SH !! the mental health team here is so bad. one of the nurses literally taught me how to s3lf h4rm. and also a teacher literally yelled at me when my scars were visible because it was a 'bad influence' on the y7s??

1. everyone here is privileged and obnoxious
2. so many pro-ana mfers
3. sixth form is shite and the pastoral team there are patronising
4. transphobia
5. half the schools brown yet the staff cant address racism
6. they pressure u into going to the sixth form
7. B = bad grade
8. rubbish subject variety
9. r4pe culture.
10. heteronormative terfy feminism
11. they only just shut up about jk rowling as a feminist icon
12. west wing smells dutty
13. the schools a greenhouse mannnnnnn
14. they aren't lying when they said u will come out mentally ill. i was fine before i came here
15. they don't take student voices into consideration and the headmaster is practically inaccessible

Awful treatment for students’ mental health. Care more about the results than the students, and even then, the good results come from the intense pressure applied onto the students to excel- the teachers are rarely particularly outstanding. The resources are limited and distinctly underwhelming and the school relies upon the students to put in their own money and extra effort to receive the books and resources necessary to complete the courses for subjects. I would like to reiterate how AWFUL the mental health is at this school.

the teachers kinda hot though

AGGS has a generally great community. There's lots of fun events, and many clubs so there's always something extra-curricular thing to do, if you're into that.
Yes, it is an extremely academic school, which means that we receive top notch education - however this ctestes a pressured environment which is nothing short of toxic. most of the teachers are great though so you can like vent to them.
AGGS will affect your mental health, more so than many other schools. If you don't want to deal with that, don't come.
However, if you reach out, you will ultimately end up with amazing friends who will make AGGS worth it. there are cool trips. subjects are boring and limited. some of the buildings are nice but most are not. food is okay. accessible by many means of transport. very diverse community. nice teachers.