Fulford School

Good as its strict in a good way.

It’s not great but it’s not bad, the food is above average and transportation can be unreliable l, learning is decent and behaviour is not the greatest because you get positives and negatives, the only ones who care about that is the year 7

Quite a few negatives about this school. Used to be fine until new head teacher came along and all the things they say about their so called good grades and good teachers aren't really that true anymore. Way too much of the funds go to the sports department even though things like the food tech, drama and art departments are the ones that need work. The uniform policy is ridiculous as it basically sexualises all those who feel uncomfortable having a full length skirt and prefer to have it rolled up. The uniform shops don't offer many sizes, and as a relatively petite person, the skirt does not fit around my waist and I have to roll it up for it to fit. There are many other people who have the exact same problem. I myself have experienced many male teachers (head teacher, deputy head) telling me to roll my skirt down after laying eyes on me for a split second. It isn't and will never be appropriate to be staring at someone's legs. They have also commented on trousers. A friend I know was told her trousers were way too tight and she needed to get new ones. The only reason they were tight is because of the shape of her legs. The trousers were bought from a school shop and ones that would be deemed "appropriate" for school would be too long or not fit around the waist. The amount of attention they call to the uniform is ridiculous as there are so many other more pressing issues. As there are many with learning disabilities in the school, they should focus on that rather than people's legs. Another issue is the diversity in the school. They keep saying that they are doing everything to help those part of the LGBTQIA+ community, those with different pronouns, and those who identify as non-binary, but there is an ongoing situation at the moment where a pupil was being extremely homophobic towards a group of people, the people talked to the teachers about it, and one of the main pastoral people basically defended the homophobic person who had apparently "been bullied all his life" and "needed someone on his side". This resulted in the people being extremely aggravated and made to feel as if it was their fault that they were being called slurs. Another personal experience was a time last year when I was in a personal development lesson. The topic was same sex marriage and various other lgbtqia+ related topics. We were around halfway into a class discussion when a certain pupil was saying something about how he didn't think same sex marriage was OK and repeatedly calling them slurs underneath his breath. The teacher heard and they said something along the lines of 'that's not very nice (pupil name) ' me and my 2 friends who had overheard, decided to talk to a member of pastoral staff about it as we thought the teacher hadn't done even close to enough for the situation. I went to have an individual chat with the head of pastoral staff and he basically told me that it was never okay to say a slur, but after they said so, said the slur to my face. They said that apparently it had been used a long time ago as a word for a type of fried fish. It was absolutely awful of the person to say this because when they said the word, it felt as if he was calling me it. Being part of the lgbtqia+ community I was extremely upset and felt extremely unsafe if that's really what happens when you try to call out a serious issue in this school. I'm not sure how and when change will happen, but so far it isn't looking good at all. There are a few positives about the school which I will list here, but the list is quite pathetic.
A few lovely teachers who have been wonderful to have in my lessons and have really helped me
Amazing friends who make every day at this school bearable for me
This really sweet teaching assistant
The person who is helping me with my learning difficulties. Thankyou so much.
Overall, the negatives completely outweigh the positives and every day I still wish for things to be resolved so that everyone, no matter who they are, gets a good education and truly has a better school experience than that of mine. Thankyou for reading this.

Complaints: My assistant head of year is incredibly homophobic, when she found out a person in my year was lgbtq+ she called home and told the parents. Luckily their mum already knew so it was ok, but imagine if it wasn't. Also, head teacher doesn't listen to any feedback.
Positives: Nice big field for summer and has a school counsellor. A lot of the teachers are lovely, of course some aren't but thats to be expected! Has a good drama department - school play on our stage every year, but in my opinion the budget is spent far too favourably on the sports department over music, drama, art etc. This should be a lot more even. Canteen is fine, and campus isn't bad.
Day to day: I preferred it before the headteacher came and changed the form system, I liked the mixed year forms better than the single year ones, but that's preference.

horrible place unless u have privilege, it's a disgusting environment for anyone who isn't what they want you to be. they constantly make empty promises about how they care about equality and how they will support people but as soon as anything happens it's your fault for speaking out about it. funny how the school indirectly targets neurodiverse kids and minority groups by doing nothing to make their school a more accessible and not stressful environment for the people who are going to need the most support and help to be comfortable in school and get the dumb grades that schools care so much about so they can fill in their silly little spreadsheets and make themselves look good. so yeh unless ur kid ticks the boxes of extroverted, neurotypical, cis, straight, white then don't send ur kid their cos all ur doing is sending them somewhere where they will be made to feel like sh*t and unable to learn