Millais School

I am a former Millais student who left this year and all I can say to describe what this school is really like is I wouldn’t send my worst enemy here. This school is awful beyond words they do not care about your child’s safety or wellbeing at all. All they care about is how the school looks in every situation and not how there students actually feel. All this stuff you see at open evenings about the school is complete rubbish. I have experienced so many awful and some can even be classed as traumatic events at this school. The bullying from students AND teachers to the daily toxic shouting from teachers, to situations I cannot even speak about on here. It is a disgusting place. For instance if your child is struggling with mental health or just in general the school will take no notice to it at all and it will be forgotten about within a week. Another point I would like to address is how they lock almost ALL the toilets and baring in mind this is an all girls school. Girls have periods and need the toilets to be open. But they have been shut because of vaping and ‘vandalism’ it is not good that children are doing these sort of things in schools but that does not mean everyone else should suffer. For example when I was attending this school they gave 1 small toilet area to years 8,9,10 AND 11 and gave year 7 a massive toilet all to themselves. Absolutely unbelievable. The teachers in this school are dreadful most of them will not listen to your child if they are struggling with the work and will just say “we’re you not listening?!” Or things like “This is not good enough” very very horrible comments would be made and this is a daily occurrence I saw happen with loads of students including myself. However, if you have a child that is smart they will get treated completely different to the ones that have more of a difficult time learning and picking up things. If your child struggles at learning they will be the ones that receive them down grading horrible comments. Another thing I would like to add on is the whole skirt situation. I get that there is a limit to skirt length and some of the girls skirts are stupidly short however that does not mean letting male teachers look at our skirts daily is a good thing and should not be happening. If your child receives bullying at this school the school will take hardly any attention. And if they do it will be more towards the bully then the actual victim of the bullying. They do not know how to handle ANYTHING in the right appropriate way at all and they never have. This is why the school went from outstanding to good and why there were hardly any new year 7s. Do not go to this school please it was the worst choice of my life. I am so beyond happy to be out of that horrible miserable place.

Lots of focus on drama, which is fine apart from the fact that they claim to focus heavily on STEM even though they do not offer engineering or computing GCSE (just IT national award level 2). Not great with dealing with behaviour/bullying.

i thank god every day that i left this school for my own sake. i struggled for 18 months with my mental health and i was in a crisis. they just continued to dismiss it and not take me seriously. then i couldn't attend class anymore so instead of addressing a problem and listening to me, they put me on my own in a different section of the school for a year. ive now left the school and im at a new school where my self asteem and self worth is being lifted and im finally being taken seriously. i wish every student at this school the best and remember it gets better.

girls here get away with everything no punishments. bullying and fights happens all the time.. safe to say this school is the worst place ive ever been. staff couldnt care less about sorting issues. please dont send your kids here xoxox biggest regret was coming here all girls schools dont work.

This school is awful! I hate it so much! I go here right now and hate it! The teachers don’t care about anything and bullying is so common! Every year it gets smaller and smaller and that shows how rubbish this school is!!!!! Don’t send your kids here pls!

This school is terrible, honestly it is. My daughter was in the bathroom being sick then she went to tell medical and they gave her a bag! She had headache and felt dizzy they gave her a paracetamol then sent her back to lesson. The school food is now running low, and my daughter has had multiple time when she'd run low on her account and she couldn't get to finance in time as she was busy. So she'd just walk in the house and go straight to the kitchen to eat whatever she could find. Students should be allowed to use there phones! Also go to the bathroom whenever they need to!!!

My daughter went to Millais for 5 years and I feel she had a really well balanced school experience. She had a few issues but the staff were really supportive and responded to well to any concerns. She has a medical condition and the support with this was outstanding. She also needed some help with her learning and again the support was fantastic. The balance between resolving disagreements between students and developing resilience and the skills to manage falls outs independently is so difficult but I feel the staff here managed that fantastically!! In her time here, my daughter become strong, confident, resilient, kind and supportive of others and she achieved better grades than we expected. Thank you to the staff who supported her and helped her to become the person she is today.

I am a student at millais school in horsham. The only thing they care about is their reputation and how parents view the school. When trying to talk about my mental health to a high member of my years pastoral team she shut me down and instead decided to talk about how i’ve made things “difficult” for her all because one of my friends mum sent in a complaint about teachers making comments to other students about her daughter. Most of these teachers just deny deny deny but if multiple students are all saying the same thing they STILL don’t believe it. A year ago they used to be quite good with mental health but it’s all gone down hill now ever since ofsted didn’t give them the review they wanted. I’ve been through suicide, self harm, depression and an abusive manipulative friendship with another student but still if I were to ask them what support they give me they wouldn’t be able to say anything. Their reaction to bad behaviour is calling home without even know what’s going on there and another thing they love to do is stick kids in a quiet room all by themselves called isolation even if they have mental health problems. Their response to anger is punishment instead of understanding although they say they sit and listen to you but they take no action. It’s all talk talk talk and no action at millais.

I am currently a student at Millais and I honestly believe besides the SLT and Pastoral team the majority of teachers are ok with a few who are particularly good. However the SLT mainly let the school down; the school just care about how they are perceived and don’t really care at all how students really feel besides like I said a small minority of the teachers who go out there way to make your day better and support students. Over the course of my time at Millais I have struggled with many things and one of them being depression; this mainly being caused by the pressures the school put on me and the lack of understanding from teachers. The pastoral team are the most patronising and unsympathetic people ever, especially Miss Lever who clearly has no understanding of when students don’t want her peering over their shoulder telling them to go to there lesson while they are in tears!! If the SLT and the Pastoral team were improved I think this school would be a much better place for students. What a legend Mr De Costa is thought!! Hands down best teacher at the school.

It starts off amazing. Then the teachers start favouring some students and don't help others even if they rlly need support. The staff say they will do something about it then do nothing. If you want to talk to them privatly they will change what U say and decline what you have said to make the school sound better then shout about what you said (which was ment to be privet) to the rest of the school

if you need help at millais about buying they don't do anything they say they will when not when I got bullied they said they do something when not even if you need help for exams or to get better flight path to get into college they won't care so don't go

As a student who went to school. PLEASE DO NOT SEND YOUR DAUGHTER TO THIS TERRIBLE SCHOOL!!!!! They were terrible to me. My mental health suffered. They do not help you if you are silent. WHATEVER YOU DO PLEASE DONT!!!!! They banned pride flags. WORST. SCHOOL. EVER!!!!!

Do not send your child here. Absolutely shocking regarding attitude towards mental health, started the school with little confidence and left with none. Everything from the senior leadership team gets twisted to fit their narrative and make the school look good. They put too much pressure on students which result in anxiety and depression. They only care about there figures and see students as a number. Many students have to use online resources or private tutors to get the grades needed as most of the teachers are useless, and unfortunately it looks like teachers have done a good job when really it’s the students extra work. Avoid at all costs

I am a mum and teacher myself, who had two daughter at Millais between 2016-2022. I was under the impression it was a school of excellence, I even moved so they could go there! How wrong that was. I have so much regret now. The look of the building is impressive & the facilities it has & offers is all you could want, looks amazing. However! The way it is run & the standards of the examples set by those that run it is a complete let down. Important lessons seem never learned or improved on by the leaders. This school is a huge front, that looks and is painted to be something it is very not. All big and insightful words used, yet a continuous let down to so many girls within it. I’m a big believer that the way to teach respect is to show it and lead by example, the way to get the best out of young people is to hear them and show you care. These simple leading skills are very absent at Millais . Only a few teachers have these qualities so the odd lesson is inspiring…. If your daughter is a naturally confident, high achiever with a thick skin she will thrive here, be shown off and used as an example and front as to who Millais produces. Everyone else well good luck. By the time you go it will hopefully have had a transformation and improved on all their many failing areas, to give all that attend there, an equal chance to be the best version of themselves they can be. Millais…you have been a massive disappointment and we are glad to see the back of you. It shouldn’t have been that way for my daughters secondary school experience. At least now they are free to flourish.

I am a mum and teacher myself, who had two daughter at Millais between 2016-2022. I was under the impression it was a school of excellence, I even moved so they could go there! How wrong that was. I have so much regret now. The look of the building is impressive & the facilities it has & offers is all you could want, looks amazing. However! The way it is run & the standards of the examples set by those that run it is a complete let down. Important lessons seem never learned or improved on by the leaders. This school is a huge front, that looks and is painted to be something it is very not. All big and insightful words used, yet a continuous let down to so many girls within it. I’m a big believer that the way to teach respect is to show it and lead by example, the way to get the best out of young people is to hear them and show you care. These simple leading skills are very absent at Millais . Only a few teachers have these qualities so the odd lesson is inspiring…. If your daughter is a naturally confident, high achiever with a thick skin she will thrive here, be shown off and used as an example and front as to who Millais produces. Everyone else well good luck. By the time you go it will hopefully have had a transformation and improved on all their many failing areas, to give all that attend there, an equal chance to be the best version of themselves they can be. Millais…you have been a massive disappointment and we are glad to see the back of you. It shouldn’t have been that way for my daughters secondary school experience. At least now they are free to flourish.

Bullying is rife and they do nothing - if you are not into LBGTQ - you are out of place - in fact seems to be encouraged to be wanting to change sex - goes hand in hand with bullying

This school is the worst i just got taken out of the school because they have been saying horrible things to my mum and aren’t saying sorry not only that they haven’t sorted any bullying out all I see now is a whole group of year 8 going up to one girl for something so stupid I’ve also seen a cat going in the school with maybe year 10 or 9 throwing food at it. This school is the worst don’t go to it it doesn’t help creativity in the mind at all

I dont think this school is bad per say, many students seem to be struggling with the pressure and it is probably due to the fact that the school's support is quite minimal effort. I'll say that the priorities to the staff are in the wrong order, they should value their students much more than they do. However, academically it is a good school, majority of teachers are willing to give extra help to students and offer helpful sessions after school. Although, i started my gcse subjects this year and hav been given a supply teacher and was promised a new one however its been over 6 months and im still with the same supply teacher, she is lovely although i do worry about my grades in that subject due to this, i believe the schools forgotten about it and moved on hoping that this teacher is good enough. everyone has their own experiences here, i went through depression for the first 3 years at this school, it was partly to do with the pressure of school and they did nothing useful to help, but im out of that now and i will say ive realised that this school is quite good in comparison with a few other local ones, the facilities and staff aren't bad. i do think that any other school provides the same amount of mental health support, not very much, so i would say recognise it at home and provide support yourselves and from proffessionals in the best way possible.

Total disgrace when it comes to handling bullying and harassment - brush it under the carpet and it will disappear