Brighton Girls

We took our daughter out. There are a couple of very good teachers, but most are mediocre - teach to the middle, not really interested in the individual - and sadly there are a handful who are just awful.

Learning support is a part-time PE teacher who has a nice chat now and then.

The academic results this year are very poor, for both A Level and GCSE, which suggests it's not just down to a weak year group.

Numbers on roll are plummeting. This must be having a financial impact and I suspect this may be underpinning a lot of the problems.

And sadly, the persistent rumours about a bullying culture are true. You might be lucky - your daughter might just keep her head down and dodge the worst of it - fortunately ours did - but if she doesn't, she will get no support. Some girls have a truly horrible time. There just doesn't seem to be any effort to create a kind and inclusive culture. It is *very* cliquey, very hierarchical (if you are uncool, you are dirt) and the staff just seem to shrug. I was inclined to shrug too (what can a school do?), until I see how our new school deals with it - there are things that can be done, but the school has got to want to and...Brighton Girls just doesn't seem to want to.

The one area that was quite good, was the extra-curricular clubs. There are lots of these and they seem fun. It wasn't enough to keep us there.

We had to move our daughter due to bullying. The teachers were uninterested in resolving - they only care about academic results. So if the bullies have good grades (which in my daughter's case they did) then their interventions are lacklustre and half-hearted. In the end, it was actually spelt out to us by the new (ish) head that our daughter represents one lot of school fees, while the gang bullying her were six lots of school fees. They suggested we could find another place for our daughter.

After leaving, our daughter soared, made new friends and became a straight A student. Wish we'd never sent her there.

Some of the teachers were nice and tried to be supportive and some of the teachign is excellent. But the culture from the top is to turn a blind eye to behaviour of their 'favourite' girls.