Ormiston Rivers Academy

The school is absolutely terrible

The new head only cares about your grades and the schools reputation, if you struggle at all you’re education is basically thrown out the window and nobody bothers with you at all. I did fine, because got on well independently

My sister was relentlessly bullied in her 3 years of being at Ormiston, no teachers did anything to help except for 1 who was later taken off the issue and it was left to the headteacher (who hasn’t actually been in the school since April/May) and the deputy head, who is always too busy telling people off for their uniform rather than sanctioning the bullies. My sister also suffers with epilepsy and learning difficulties, both of which the school provided absolutely 0 help for. Whenever she had seizures I was the only one helping her as i was the only one who knew what to do! The most the school would do was send down first aid who would get her a wheel chair and take her to medical to “lie down for a bit”. In one of her history classes while i was right next door, she was being bullied by her WHOLE class and asked her her teacher to leave the room, and the teacher responded “Wait i’m busy”, while the whole class were calling her names and telling her revolting things. Then when she kept retaliated to one of the children who was physically taking her stuff and damaging it, she got sent out of her lesson ALONE on the TOP floor of the school, with no one to watch her incase she had an epileptic seizure. I asked her what was going on and messaged my mum telling her she was left alone outside her classroom, so my mum called the school and told them to go up to her room and get her. When her teacher finally came outside after 20 MINUTES, my sister was gone and the teacher shouted “Bloody silly girl”, and started bad mouthing my sister (a 14 year old girl) to the 1-1 staff. I then called out to the teacher about to politely explain where my sister had gone, when the woman turned around and gave me the dirtiest look i’ve ever seen (looked me up and down and rolled her eyes) which my whole class saw, so my teacher went and explained to her what had happened.

In another lesson, one of the girls told my sister she was going to “Stab her in the heart” to which the cover teacher told her “Don’t be silly” .

When the deputy head couldn’t sanction the bullies because he was too busy running around telling people off for their footwear, he had to put my sister in the library by herself to work while she was suffering from around 15 seizures a day. Her mental health was at an all time low, she was extremely depressed and whenever she went to go to the Student support services they kicked her out of the room because there were too many people in there.

They never updated my mum on anything, she was the one chasing things up and calling and emailing because No one ever called.

To witness my sister go through 3 years of hell was disgusting, knowing there was nothing i could do about it made it even worse

The school is an absolute joke, ignore the Ofsted rating because they put all of the “naughty” kids in isolation to make sure nothing went wrong
It also seems like none of the parent and children surveys were taken aboard, almost everyone i know have a negative review yet somehow all the replies were positive?
Most of the “naughty” kids just really need extra support and unfortunately no one at ORA can give it to them

They are probably reading this and know exactly who i am, but to be honest i don’t really care

Absolutely terrible, only 2-3 good teachers, tons of stupid rediculus rules.

I’ve had a poor experience with this school for many reasons. The school used to be ‘ok’ but since September 2021 things have gotten worse. Such as the food served at breaktime and lunchtime. Most of the time, the food is poorly made , often being flavourless or for example on the grilled chicken burgers, the BBQ sauce is overdone and is freezing cold. I had a cheeseburger from the school in May 2022 and it was revolting. After one bite it was straight in the bin. They also won’t serve you a drink so if you don’t bring/forget to bring a water bottle, you have no drink for the whole day which will cause dehydration.

Another issue is lack of human rights, this isn’t just limited to this school, but you can’t go to the toilet during lesson time causing you to have to hold it which can cause serious health problems over time such as a bladder infection which just gets worse with time and can even spread to the kidneys causing a very serious and dangerous health problem. I usually avoid drinking entirely until 3:45pm (when I get home) so I don’t have to use the toilet during the school day, bit I have noticed that doing this has lead to many headaches and a problem with feeling dizzy when standing up. So either way, this lack of human rights can have a serious impact on a student’s health.

This school set a LOT of homework which means you do lose a lot of free time but what’s worse is that they set homework during half-terms and summer holidays which is time which is meant to be spent resting and taking a break. Not extra time to be working. Homework can bring a lot of stress on students which can often result in loss of sleep.

The new head teacher, Ms Williams, has brought in many bad rules to the school. Such as banning mobile phones during break and lunch time. This is disappointing because that used to be the only time to check your phone and see if anything important outside of school has happened. It was also a time to play multiplayer games with your friends. I do see how it could be a problem having these phones out in lessons as no work would be done and important points would be missed but having the access to the phones at break and lunch is likely to decrease the amount of people using phones during lessons. Banning them for the whole day is going to make people use the phones in lesson more than ever, I’ve seen it happening myself. The head teacher also brought in more rules such as reversing the queuing system for lunch meaning you have to queue outside which won’t be too good in January when temperatures get as low as -3°C.

Overall, I believe this is one of the worst schools in the area with its lack of human rights which can cause health problems and the poor quality food that is only given a 3 star hygiene rating which really deserves a 2 or less as I’ve seen flies land on the food in the past. This school also has been bringing me and many others lots of stress for 4 years. What a disappointing school that really needs to rethink its operations. 1 star from me :(