Biddick Academy

When I attended Biddick Academy, my experience was disgraceful. Although the school building is large, the corridors are extremely narrow. When lessons ended, all students were released at the same time, which caused severe overcrowding. Students were squashed together, and people were pushing one another. During the COVID period, this situation was especially terrible.

While I was a student at Biddick Academy, I was treated very badly. I was body-shamed on multiple occasions by teachers and was told that I was “going to go nowhere in life.” I also experienced two separate incidents involving different male students. I informed teachers about both incidents, but no action was taken.

In one incident, I was placed in isolation after I pushed a boy who had called me overweight in front of my entire class. When I was called out, three teachers came out shouting directly in my face. Prior to this, the Head of Year had come out of his classroom and shouted at me. When I shouted back, he stated that I would be put into isolation after the lesson. After the later incident occurred, he said I was being placed in isolation because of that, even though all I had done was push a student who had verbally insulted me.

Another serious incident occurred in Year 7. A boy kicked me numerous times and pulled my hair very hard in the playground. Many students witnessed this, and a teacher also saw it happen. I reported the incident to my Head of Year, who said he would deal with it. However, nothing happened to the boy. The school claimed that CCTV footage showed I had thrown a small empty water bottle at him first, even though I did not have a water bottle at the time of the incident.

Overall, the school itself is a disgrace and should not even be operating as a school. The environment was horrendous. On one occasion in the cafeteria, a teacher approached me, put their hand into my pocket, and removed my empty water bottle. I felt extremely uncomfortable and awkward in that moment, which is completely understandable given the situation

I would also like to mention that during my time at Biddick Academy, I witnessed numerous incidents of students being bullied where the bullying would often get out of hand, with teachers failing to intervene or take appropriate action. In some cases, the behaviour escalated to serious physical violence. On one occasion, a girl smashed another girl’s head into a pool; however, the only consequence she received was a short suspension, followed by a single day in isolation. This appeared to be the school’s primary method of punishment. Relying solely on isolation as a disciplinary measure did absolutely nothing to address the behaviour or protect students.

In addition, the school’s management of basic facilities was unacceptable. There were originally three sets of toilets on each floor. However, later in the school year, two of these toilet areas on each floor were chained shut and made unavailable. As a result, all students were forced to use the middle-floor toilets only.

This created an extremely unreasonable situation, particularly during break and lunch times. Thousands of students were expected to share a very limited number of facilities: four female toilet stalls, four male toilet stalls, and one gender-neutral toilet stall. This led to severe overcrowding and long queues.

On one occasion, while I was being sent home from school, three doors in the area were locked. Students normally had access to the school office through this area, where two teachers were stationed at a window to assist with requests such as timetables or basic medication. However, while a group of us were waiting to be sent home, staff refused to allow any students through these doors, stating that they did not want students to leave the area.

There was a toilet located directly next to this window, and as it was unlocked, I attempted to use it. Due to the doors being held shut by staff, I had no other option. As I was about to lock the door, one of the female teachers waiting with us forcibly opened the door and attempted to hold it open, preventing me from using the toilet. This was both inappropriate and humiliating.

Despite this, teachers frequently refused to allow students to use the toilets during lessons, stating that students “had time during break and lunch,” even though the majority of toilets were not accessible. Students were often lucky to be able to use the toilet at all.

Furthermore, if a student had skipped even one lesson, they were not permitted to get food from the cafeteria during break or lunch, nor were they allowed to use the toilet. This policy was both inhumane and damaging. For example, students who were menstruating were forced to hold in period blood for over five hours without access to toilet facilities, while also being denied food, simply because they had skipped a lesson.

This policy escalated to a point where I was forced to wait approximately five minutes after lessons had begun, once other students had entered class and the toilets were no longer overcrowded, in order to use the facilities. However, staff members were stationed outside the toilets to prevent students from entering. On multiple occasions, I had to push past staff members simply to use the toilet.

In these situations, teachers—most often male teachers—would bang on the toilet doors and attempt to unlock them, threatening to open the door if I did not exit immediately. This occurred regardless of whether I was menstruating or not. These experiences were extremely humiliating and made me feel unsafe. Being denied access to basic facilities, particularly while male staff attempted to force entry, was deeply distressing.

As a result of being repeatedly forced to hold my urine and menstrual blood for extended periods—often exceeding five hours per day—I developed a urinary infection. Despite this medical issue, I was still not granted a toilet pass or reasonable accommodation

Remember if your child goes to this school they are not safe, The teachers will lie out of anything instead of owning up to their actions but want their students to own up to their actions, I still think about this school on a daily basis not because I miss it because trust me I do not but because I was failed in their school system and in their eyes I was a troubled student but really I was just sick of the constant hate from them, leaving this school made me realise how much they destroyed my mental health and my self confidence

When your child tells you what happened at school believe them because they are not over exaggerating its what happened.

dont send your children to this school!
this school is such a bad school then turn a blind eye to everything, they dont even care about mental health, my mam rang up and asked if they could help and she never got a response back, the so called teachers have there favourites and dont care about other students and if you come down late to the cafeteria they dont let you get food they send you away and if you are sitting with your friends while they eat and you have nothing they send you out of the cafeteria, and they dont let you go to the toilet 5minutes before the lesson starts, during lessons to even if your desperate, and even some children have to walk out of their lesson because the teacher wont let them go to the toilet, and the teachers blame students for everything, for example if there whiteboard pen goes missing they go straight to the students but the teachers actually left it on a desk, if you want your children to be respected dont send them here, from a student who is at biddick academy, im giving my honest opinion i wish i never joined this school, i was getting bullied for 3 years straight and i begged the teachers to help and they didnt care they turned a blind eye, my maths teacher turned around to the class and said she hopes we all fail our gcse just because we were all confused on one question.

Hello frainds it’s benn brought to my attention as a father that some fatso wood is bullying my daughter fatso wood If you’d like to continue this kind of behaviour I will kick you to mars you chubby little mamle

My two children currently attend this school My oldest has had a positive time she’s a positive learner, great at all sports and is a positive pupil that represents the school well . However my youngest didn’t adapt so well to the changers from primary school to comp and has had the worst experience throughout all her time at this school she is now in year 8 and has barely seen a full week in school as she feels bullied by her head of year . Head of year is terrible when it comes to any sort of support. Unless your child can be a robot and fall in line with the others, they 110% have to be getting extra funding for any and I mean any support at all.

Would not recommend, does not handle bullying or other problems. Only good points are: LGBT+ club, Student Support (handles autistic children)

Never rewards or helps the hood children, only focuses on bad children. There are multiple homophobic, racist, anti-semetic, sexist children in the school and they have never been expelled. It’s absolutely disgraceful.

When I first went it was great, they were really helpful at helping get me into school since I'd struggled for a while. After about a year all help seemed to cease. I've been through staff members lying to me about my parents, claiming they consented to things they didn't, lying to my parents about me. There's a lot of pretty nasty students in my experience, homophobia, transphobia, etc. Was just ignored and I was often told that they were just 'upset and being a bit rude'. Overall was a very negative environment and has taken a big negative effect on my mental health in all honesty. To be fair, there were some lovely staff members and I miss them greatly, but they were in the minority.