Kings' School

Im currently a year 9 at Kings and im going to say, my experience hasnt been the best . Recently lunch queues have been so long that ive gotten lunch at 1pm, the food is okay but they should add updates to our lunch. The bullying handling is alright but most of the time the bully always does it again

Currently a year 10 student at the school as of September 2022. On the surface, it's a very good school. The students achieve much higher than the national average and there is a lot of extra curricular content to support and facilitate that. The school has recently gone under new management, however, and there's a general consensus of unrest about it. Our last headteacher, ML, who left just under a year and a half ago, was a much more active member of the school's community, interacting with pupils around the school and actively helping teachers wherever he could. The new head, DA, never seems to leave his office, delegating every responsibility to someone further down the staff heirarchy. Furthermore, although I understand that new headteachers often implement changes to facilitate the way they work, however DA seems to be trying to undo the work ML did.

We've had an Outstanding Ofsted rating for at least 10 years and our behaviour is on average much better than that of other local schools, and yet the first change he implemented was a completely new system of isolation to take disruptive pupils out of class, and to be held in the "Removal Room" until the period ends. Ignoring the implicitly threatening name, giving teachers a toolkit of 3 reminders then a removal leads to the lines being quite blurred and a double standard with certain teachers. For example, I know of multiple pupils who have been given reminders without being told and subsequently sent to the RR for continuing doing what they were told off for. Additionally, several teachers are not willing to accept that they are wrong in certain situations, so when a student attempts to explain the situation, the teacher sees it as "talking back" and removes them from class. I estimate that around 10-15% of all removals are due to some kind of misunderstanding like those listed above

After completing this, DA turned his attention to the staff. He decided to interview each staff member one on one, and while I have no idea what discussions were had I remember teachers coming back in a significantly dimmed mood. Evidently this got to such a point that around 20-30 of the teaching staff resigned at the end of the year. A beloved science teacher, MG, was by his own admission "forced out" by DA and was having his job threatened. This is a shame as multiple members of staff who were part of the core community, including Heads of House, those responsible for organising Prom, Sports Day or the School Fete, were sadly lost to the school forever. DA seems entirely unfazed by this.

Crucially, DA has a lack of communication. He's unwilling to share information about decisions until after they've been announced or even put in place. There's often massive unrest as he puts in place a new system because we have no idea why or how it's going to happen, and often it's to deal with a negligible issue with a minute portion of the community.

I could go on and on about DA's unreasonable policies, like insisting pupils stand up before class to have their uniforms inspected, spending masses of the school's budget just to slightly modify the logo and colour scheme, put massive 30m murals of the logo everywhere, completely rebuilding the tutor group system (in a new way which, by their own admission, does not prioritise helping wellbeing and mental health in KS4 whereas they welcome it wholeheartedly in KS3; your KS4 tutor is not there for you to form a bond with, they're just there to teach), and to create a new (completely unnavigable) website, checking only girls' skirts when around the school and ignoring boys' uniform entirely, cutting down massively on the school's opportunities including getting rid of Psychology and Sociology (of which we were to my knowledge the only school in the county to offer it), but I'll condense it down to this summary:

Kings is a great school with amazing facilities and good resources to get the best grades you can. The school has a slightly too heavy focus on uniform, and often you find that instead of dealing with behaviour issues directly the SLT or Head of Year team will just put a pupil in isolation so it's no longer their problem. The Welfare department (i.e. counselling and helping with pupil wellbeing and mental health) is in line with the county standard of being ineffective and ignoring or dismissing legitimate issues without considering them. And, finally, beware DA, the unreasonable headteacher who seems to prey on punishment, chaos, and girls' skirts. Have fun.

it was alright overall, socially( in regards to bullying, cliques etc) it was bad and the support for mental health was awful. felt very alone at times and school didn’t help, however the teachers were good in helping me get back on track.

Really great school. Amazing facilities (swimming pool, Astro, climbing wall, bouldering wall, three fields, wooded area) and supportive, kind and caring staff. I enjoyed my time there.