Shirley High School Performing Arts College

🔴 Avoid This School!!

Chronic Instability, Safeguarding Failures, and Targeted Victimization
As a parent and a practicing Children’s Social Worker, I feel a professional and moral duty to warn other local families about the severe systemic failures within the leadership and management at Shirley High School. My daughter was recently permanently withdrawn from this school due to an absolute breakdown in their duty of care- entirely my choice.

1. Extreme Staff and Student Churn (Zero Continuity)
The level of instability at this school is deeply alarming. There is a relentless, high turnover of both staff and students, with children joining and teachers leaving constantly throughout the academic year. This chaos means the school relies heavily on a rotating door of temporary cover teachers. My daughter spent large portions of her time being taught by constant supply staff, completely obliterating any educational continuity or structural stability.

2. Hostile Leadership and Retaliation
If you are a parent who expects an open, collaborative partnership regarding your child's wellbeing, you will not find it here. When I raised valid safeguarding and emotional wellbeing concerns with the Principal, Mr. Myton, I was met with total dismissiveness and a shocking lack of professional empathy.

Worse still, once I escalated my concerns to the Local Authority and my MP, the school's response was to target my 12-year-old daughter. Staff began systematically chipping away at her confidence, culminating in an incident where she was arbitrarily barred from a pre-paid Year 7 educational trip to the London Zoo with zero justification.

3. Dangerous Safeguarding Malpractice
When I physically arrived at the school to challenge why my daughter had been left behind in tears, the school instantly backtracked, claiming it was an administrative "misunderstanding." Because the coaches had already left due to their error, the Deputy Principal and Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), actively suggested that my highly distressed 12-year-old child should leave the school premises entirely alone and travel unaccompanied to East Croydon station to try and "catch up" with the group.

For a Designated Safeguarding Lead to suggest sending an unaccompanied, minor into a major, high-risk public transit network with no staff contact or supervision is a catastrophic breach of *Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE)* statutory guidelines.

This school operates on a punitive, toxic culture where children are used as collateral if a parent dares to challenge the leadership. The school has blocked formal access to the governing body, manipulated panel referrals, and consistently failed to manage critical student welfare indicators.

Thanks to the urgent intervention of Croydon Council's Head of Inclusion, my MP, and the Executive Mayor, my daughter is safely out of this environment and moving to a setting that actually values child protection. If you value your child’s emotional safety, mental wellbeing, and academic stability, LOOK ELSEWHERE!!!

I was appealed at the way the school cover up the reality of what goes on.
My daughter was severely bullied. Nobody helped. I had to de register her as it has had a negative impact of the way she views herself and has caused her to have severe anxiety.

6 weeks after de registering her the school contacted me to ask me to write a letter to them stating that I removed her to home school her so that they could send it to the local education authority which couldn't be farther from the truth.

I stated that I couldn't comply as it wasn't the case. They decided to lie and write a letter to the local education authority stating that I removed her to homeschool her.

It's appalling that a school would go to lengths to cover up bullying and present an image that it doesn't happen. This is no way to improve on situations that occur by fabricating lies to put forward and false image of the school instead of protecting the students and putting them first

Warning ⚠️ do not send your child to this school. They will damage your child.

Depressing concrete buildings and hotch-pot outdated classrooms. The outdoor areas are like a prison yard. Your heart sinks when you are there. Everything needs a good clean and upgrade. Limited facilities with budget equipment that does not work. The sports and performing arts resources are poor.

Some teachers are not ambitious and have low expectations for the students. They just want to make it through the day. Too many supply and cover teachers.

I won't send my own children there.

went from 2016-18. terrible experience. low expectations, no resources, no communication, big behavioural issues, underperformance. teachers are extremely strict and unforgiving, constant physical fights etc. i left to go to a private school and managed to achieve nearly all 9’s. i know this wouldn’t have been possible here. if you care about ur education- avoid!