Soham Village College

Amazing support. One of the best in Cambridgeshire only downside is the food

They don’t deal with racism they don’t give 2 shits at all

There is utterly horrific handling of bullying and bigotry. From experience, the person bullying etc. is directed at is challenged and questioned by the school beyond reason and said person is the one who has to change to attempt to resolve a problem. The offenders are not punished or dealt with correctly. In my time there I can remember one singular case of repercussions for actions, this being one day in an exclusion room for persistent extreme racism after the issue was raised to the correct staff members multiple times. This creates a highly unsafe environment for any form of minority student Again, from experience, having the feeling that even the authority around you cares more for the needs, wants, and stories of your bully etc. than your basic needs and safety and any staff wanting or willing to help has no power to do so is not a pleasant feeling.

The school really tries to act as if they help students. We had a sexual harassment survey recently showing how much of an appalling job the school is doing at preventing it, but they still tell girls to pull their skirts down and still ignore when people report anything sexual harassment related. They give the odd ‘mental health’ assembly every now and then, with the same advice over and over again that clearly doesn’t help. ‘take a walk’ ‘listen to music’ yep cheers mate, depression cured. when students reach out for help with their mental health, they sometimes just get told to ‘calm down’ or ‘think happy thoughts’ luckily, the teacher that did that a lot has left. Kids get blamed for their attendance, I wasn’t offered any help with my GCSE work after a bit of time off due to covid and another illness. One teacher said that i clearly had an attendance problem, so it was a problem i had to sort out. This wasn’t said to my face, but was overheard by a few people. Some teachers are lovely, don’t get me wrong. Some are great at helping students and are overall friendly and great teachers, but some clearly hate teenagers. If you don’t like teenagers, don’t work in a secondary school. Some teachers clearly take out their anger on their students when they make a minor mistake. Uniform policies are ridiculous to be honest, but this goes for any school really. My jewellery, nails, hair and all that jazz really don’t affect my education. I’m gonna be able to wear what i want in sixth form, so why do you care so much? You’re just churning out kids with no unique personality who all have the same mentality of suppressing their individuality. Canteen food has gone downhill in quality so much, whilst the prices keep on rising. Sausage rolls used to be 85p, they’re now £1.20 and taste mediocre. Greggs sausage rolls are quality sausage rolls and only cost £1. The audacity to price food higher when the prices were quite frankly high to begin with. The food used to be much better in quality, and cheaper. Maybe stop unnecessary funding for certain departments and use that money to fund departments that need it most, including the canteen if it’s really that bad that you have raise prices by quite a bit. The sports department gets so much funding it’s ridiculous. A lot of families have started earning less money due to the pandemic, but don’t qualify for free school meals, so maybe think about that. The school isn’t bad, it’s furbished the way you’d expect a British public school to be furbished. It’s just so many factors make it so poor. Oh yeah, and they always talk about equality, and do LGBT stuff, but ignore when LGBT bullying happens. Oh yeah, and we had a survey about how important it is to include the BAME community in education. One of the most stupidest surveys i’ve taken. One of the questions was ‘Why do you think it’s important to include diversity in education’ or along those lines and ‘How can we increase diversity in education?’. It’s clearly obvious, and the fact that they made this survey shows they acknowledge there’s a lack of it, and the fact they need teenagers to tell them how to be more inclusive shows how bad the problem is.

Disgraceful. Supports homophobia, transphobia, racism, you name it - they've done it. Don't send your kids here if you don't want them to leave crying.

Trust me soham your catchment go Bottisham instead before we got put in lockdown nothing but homework all my kids got no social distancing or mask measures in place just covid spreading like a bouncy ball

Covid time once more to much homework not doing anything about masks or social distancing

Genuinely awful place.

The quality of teaching is amazing which is proven in the GCSE results- however more needs to be done about bullying, homophobia and racism. As a student I hear A LOT and teachers seem to care more about uniform and how someone looks than things that actually matter. Also there can be a LOT pressure given by teachers and some give us work loads that are sometimes nearly impossible to do outside of school. However I believe that this school has done me a lot of good and has really helped everyone with what they want to do after they leave.

my daughter gets soo much homework a week and there has been quite a lot of covid cases there they don’t do anything about it thought

No mask rules at all No social distancing Bubbles don't work when all years leave the school and walk through the main gates meaning no social distancing, no masks. Suggest making all years leave at different times