Cams Hill School

I cannot praise this school enough. The lengths they have gone to support my daughter with complex SEN is cannot be put into words. The staff are caring, understanding and they go above and beyond. I don’t know where I would be without them.

Absolute horrible school and has ruined my child education

New head teacher is horrible and has changed a lot of rules do not come here as it offers a bad education

This is stupid because they put me into a isolation because I said a word that isn't offensive DO NOT GO TO THIS SCHOOL

I left this school last year and i’m very glad i did, as they’ve now added ridiculously harsh policies regarding everything except learning, which i would have thought would be the main priority. Apparently, according to them, having opinions about people if now an offence that requires taking year 11s out of their lessons 3 months before exams to send them to another school and then refusing to let them in lessons for 6 weeks, however it is totally ok for teachers to say things about past and present pupils: in my year 11 psychology, Miss Robinson took it upon herself to talk about a student that used to be in her year group and called them ‘irrelevant’, and today Miss Cutler (who for some reason has not liked me for a few years) was talking to my sibling in nexus and told him he was going to fail his exams, and turned to another teacher and said my name as if it was a piece of dirt. Not only have i been bullied for five years at this school by both students and teachers, but still after 8 months of me leaving, they continue to talk about me in a derogatory tone, and in a place where students are supposed to be encouraged and receive support. The majority of the HOY team are vile and only support those who they like (particularly Miss Kendall who accused me of lying when i repeated to another teacher exactly what she had told me). Even though my mental health was really bad at that time, she completely ignored me until i left school, even though this happened in year 10. If you value your child’s mental health and imagination please do not send your kids here. They are forced to line up in silence every morning and have whistles blown at them, each of them meaning something different, the attendance officer constantly harasses you and your parents if you are ill, and the school much rather cares about reputation than pastoral support and the quality of education.

Excellent school , I ve a son going into year 8 and my other son just finished school, found the teachers to go out of their way to support the kids doing GCSEs with extra classes durning mid term breaks and after school , lots of feedback from teachers . My sons both enjoyed the school and have done very well there .

i only joined cams this year and already the experience has been quite shocking. they care about the uniform more than they do the students. they punish girls for not having knee length skirts but the pe skirts are more revealing than anything. seeing a girls butt cheeks is extremely unhygienic especially for a school environment. and even worse the school CHOSE these as a part of their uniform. a pe teacher shouted at my friend for having nike socks yet there girls wearing nike pro leggings. it makes no sense to me. apparently piercings are distracting too, we are only allowed to wear one small pair of stud earrings. no bracelets or necklaces allowed. that’s distracting too of course. we aren’t allowed any form of self expression (no hair colour, nail polish, makeup, jewellery, brands, skin) nothing at all. half the people i know in that school struggle, and the school won’t do anything about it, they give you a safe space to sit at break and lunch, they allow you to be out of lesson for no more than 10 minutes and SLT are extremely harsh too. the academic and educational side of things are brilliant. they make sure your working hard in lessons and the teachers put a lot of effort in to make sure you are working at your very best. but they don’t care about their students well-being. they’re a lot of fights and bullying too. however there are some nice teachers and nice people that are there to help. overall very poor school and i wish they did better to make the school experience more enjoyable.

Amazing school. Supported my child well.

Please don’t send your children here. In general the school staff care more about the presentation of the school rather than the children themselves.this is really shown by the quality of teachers they are employing they constantly fail to do anything about the poor quality of teachers there is multiple incidents that looking back it was not okay to let them get away with and thinking that’s normal. The students are not treated like humans they are treated simply like statistics. They claim to care about their pupils mental health but fail time and time again to spot warning signs. Nearly everyone i know struggled at some point and nothing was done the teachers are almost alway terrible about this as in a test once I had a panic attack and the teacher said “I don’t care be quite or I’ll give you a detention”. And for the few decent teachers there are there is little they can do. The school is also very strict on uniforms having girls punished for their skirt not being knee length and their ankles showing when wearing trousers however when it comes to the pe skorts they are the most revealing piece of clothing with girls bum cheeks hanging out of the bottom and these were chosen BY THE SCHOOL for the girls. Pupils are not allowed any kind of self expression through what they wear (no jewellery, hair colour anything but your earlobes pierced) apparently it is distracting for your education. meanwhile while there is a teacher with bright red hair their hole ear pierced and wears an excessive amount jewellery

this school doesn’t care about students education they mainly care about uniform they don’t stop bullying/ do anything about unkind comments and definitely have favourites, unreasonable punishments and don’t care about mental health teachers don’t even follow their own rules like jewellery etc which again is a ridiculous thing to ban pupils from wearing .

My experience at this school was appalling the academic side is great but bullying / harassment is appalling and the teacher to pupil realtionship is terrible

Myself, my 2 siblings and 2 cousins of mine went here. The mental health of everyone I knew, as well as my siblings, their friends, cousins and their friends, was terrible - when I got to college I realised that this was not normal and not 'just' a generational 'thing'. The teachers were either amazing (short supply) or quite the opposite. Even the best teachers were powerless in helping you, as were your friends, parents and as far as yeargroup leaders. I was lost. I'm still in touch with friends from here but none of us enjoyed it, all of us suffered in some way and no one spotted the warning signs or helped us. If you send your child here keep an eye out on their mental health, spot the warning signs because the school won't. Don't be ashamed to move them out if they are declining and that's whats best for them. It's a good school academically and somewhat with opportunities but it isn't worth putting your child's mental health at risk for.

Current year 10 pupil, cams likes to act like a huge advocate for mental health but from my experience and friends', this just simply isnt the case, with my anxiety the school does absolutely nothing to help me unless I beg, suffering anxiety attacks, they let you sit out of lesson for 10 minutes, no more and the SLT team can be very insensitive and disregarding, other than this most teachers are fabulous at what they do and try to help where and when they can with the obvious exception of a few.

I was enrolled in cams for the full five years and it was partially enjoyable. Teachers care more about how the school looks instead of the well-being of their students. On multiple occasions teachers have singled people out and made them feel bad for not passing specific tests or not doing well in general. Students were told multiple times “you need to try harder” “you need to do better” and the teachers saying “it’s not up to me to get the grade you need”. And that’s understandable but the teachers are at blame too. They care more about how the school looks and passing blame on people. In a lesson I was doing my work and when I asked the teacher for help they just replied “you should have been listening” with no help whatsoever. All teaches favourites those who misbehave and don’t do any work and when they do they’re amazing!! When people who work hard all the time don’t get any recognition? They don’t care about the well-being of students and just tell you to get over it and forgot about it because soon it will be nothing? I would definitely look into other schools before cams. 50% of teachers are so lovely and kind and have helped me loads, but others are horrible and don’t care properly.

Kind and helpful staff always there to support you. Got above my target grades in my gcse.

I know that many people have a bad experience at this school and it is in no way perfect however there are many kind and caring teachers who have your best interests and will go out of their way to help you if you are struggling academically or mentally. On the negative many find that teachers are more occupied with appearances than the well-being of the students which to some level is true with many focusing too much on uniform. Despite this there is still an effort for conflict resolution though sometimes not great but the best part of this school are the teachers so many are so kind and supportive always being there whenever needed and willing to help this is why I believe that cams despite its flaws is just as good if not better than the surrounding schools.

I was a student here for the full 5 years, I have never been treated so badly. Teachers didn’t help with my struggling grades and I was told to prepare to fail my gcse exams instead of receiving help and support.- yes I was trying extremely hard and never missed a day because I wanted to improve and not fail. The anti-bullying is absolutely atrocious and they will not do a single thing other than tell you it’s petty and to make up, I was beaten up a lot and nothing was done. If you care about your child’s mental well-being and education please look into other schools, I truly didn’t realise how awful everything about cams is until I’ve moved onto college and seen how disgustingly they treat their students. My siblings currently attend here, one has special needs and is basically treated as a ‘classic problem child’ instead of getting any specialised help and my other brother is depressed. Please do not send your child here, they will be treated as a statistic instead of a person.

In my opinion cams has been really great. In handling the pandemic they’ve done really well, and so far there have been three student cases in different year groups, none of which have spread very far. We have to wear masks at all times when inside, which I think is a very good decision, and we have a one way system which generally works pretty well. The only comment I would make about this is that teachers can be seen quite frequently going against the one way system which defeats the purpose of it, especially since it is teachers that are more at risk then the students. In terms of academics, the vast majority of teachers that I have had have been very involved in ensuring that i have achieved my goals, and am understanding what I’m being taught. I personally haven’t experienced bullying, but my friend has and they said that the school handled it well. We have anti bullying ambassadors who do their job very well.

Teachers care more about the uniform, hair colour and piercings then grades. Think grades are 100% down to the student but how are we meant to get a good grade if some of them don't teach us things. Some teachers have favourite students so when others aren't as good as that student they will only help them. No contact with very few after COVID happened. They emailed us but once you emailed back they wouldn't respond some teachers did really good and replied and some just ignored you. Wouldn't let you go to the toilet unless you embarrassed yourself by telling them about periods and sometimes they wouldn't let you even go then.