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St Francis Xavier School - a Joint Catholic and Church of England Voluntary Academy
Secondary · Academy · Richmond
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Student
Do not go to this school unless you want to have horrible mental health. I am a student in this school and the amount of times that i've been yelled at for nothing is unbelievable they say oh well it wasn't our fault and we care so deeply about your mental health. They don't even talk to you they just shout and if you raise your voice just a tiny bit they scream at you and go don't you dare raise your voice at me. They care more about uniform then anything else. I remember i was wearing a belt on my skirt since without it my skirt would fall and everyone would see. I got yelled at by 3 teachers in a tiny room all because of it and i even told them the reason why and they were still like nope take it off we don't care. If i could go back in time i would go to richmond school or whatever my other option was. If your thinking about going to sfx i wouldn't recomend it i'm telling you this now since i don't want you to be in the exact position i was in before. Imagine being in a tiny room with 3 teachers yelling at you for a belt unbeliveable it's just stupid innit
Avoid, avoid, avoid
Based on our experience - Staff close ranks. Children whose parents complain are targeted, bullied by staff and driven out. Staff turn-over says it all. Widespread culture of cronyism and general lack of discipline in classrooms. Reliance on temp staff. Good luck to the new headteacher. The old one had a track record in bringing “Excellent” Ofsted rated schools to their knees. A tip for him going forwards- don’t accuse parents who complain of being liars BEFORE they tell you the basis for their complaint (unless of course you can second guess the reasons because you’ve heard it numerous times before). Damaging. Avoid.
do not take your kids here
When I went there, the school was absolutely terrible at cracking down on bullying. Especially when it came to racism and homophobia, having one assembly about the basics of the LGBT community doesn't mean you've just solved the bullying.
I had a 50/50 experience with the teachers. For example, my YR 11 RE and Maths teacher were absolutely delightful to have, and they ignited a genuine interest into the topics we were learning. In contrast, my YR 11 Art & Design teacher was horrible, played favourites, was hypocritical and often confused me for one of the only other asian students in my class. She burnt out my passion for traditional art. and art in general, which is, to this day, an extremely huge part of my life. The teachers who genuinely enjoyed teaching and respected their students were the primary highlight of my time at this school.
What we learnt and the core of our lessons was fine, it was just the terrible community and culture that had breeded on the school grounds which made everyone I knew so pessimistic and petty towards each other. Understandably, it's extremely hard to discipline a bunch of edgy, hormonal teenagers, but I always felt like they only cared about students getting good grades and improving the school's reputation.
In relation to this, I feel like I was semi-well taught. My grades were at a steady increase throughout the five years but I had a lot of friends who struggled because of how strict and unforgiving some of our teachers were.
In this area it is especially hard to find a good school. If you are able to find something else further away from Richmond, i strongly suggest you take you take your child there instead unless you want to teach them passive misogyny, racism and homophobia and maybe how to do a quadratic equation.
My hental health deteriorated greatly during my time there (although, the standard culture for a secondary school would make anyone miserable unless you were popular), and i would not ever want to associate myself with the school again.
I had a 50/50 experience with the teachers. For example, my YR 11 RE and Maths teacher were absolutely delightful to have, and they ignited a genuine interest into the topics we were learning. In contrast, my YR 11 Art & Design teacher was horrible, played favourites, was hypocritical and often confused me for one of the only other asian students in my class. She burnt out my passion for traditional art. and art in general, which is, to this day, an extremely huge part of my life. The teachers who genuinely enjoyed teaching and respected their students were the primary highlight of my time at this school.
What we learnt and the core of our lessons was fine, it was just the terrible community and culture that had breeded on the school grounds which made everyone I knew so pessimistic and petty towards each other. Understandably, it's extremely hard to discipline a bunch of edgy, hormonal teenagers, but I always felt like they only cared about students getting good grades and improving the school's reputation.
In relation to this, I feel like I was semi-well taught. My grades were at a steady increase throughout the five years but I had a lot of friends who struggled because of how strict and unforgiving some of our teachers were.
In this area it is especially hard to find a good school. If you are able to find something else further away from Richmond, i strongly suggest you take you take your child there instead unless you want to teach them passive misogyny, racism and homophobia and maybe how to do a quadratic equation.
My hental health deteriorated greatly during my time there (although, the standard culture for a secondary school would make anyone miserable unless you were popular), and i would not ever want to associate myself with the school again.
Don’t choose to go here
Only does things to help your mental health when it suits them or they get told to do it by camhs. then as soon as they can’t be bothered with it, they get rid of all your additional help. Gets mad when you speak up about extra exam requirements. Other teachers are scared of speaking up for you to head of years which results in them being unhappy too. Let in homophobic teachers. Let’s kids be racist and bully other students with no punishments. More focussed on uniform and grades than well being. They claim to support us but just shouts at us for absolutely no reason. Wouldn’t recommend unless you want your child to end up with more mental health problems. Sports can be okay but in need of better equipment. Same with music. But all money is spent on eco team. All military funding goes towards eco team not military kids. They’re letting more kids in every year when there’s no room which results in people being crushed and pushed around. Not covid secure and not a safe place to be
Enables homophobia
I currently go to this school and whilst being there I have noticed that the school really doesn’t do much about homophobia and racism for example last week a group of kids said the f slur to a girl who had just come out and said a lot of racist things and only got a slap on the wrist with a two day exclusion and they said they would talk about it in assembly but all they talked about was how it isn’t ok to film people in there uniform not about the hate speech on the video another thing that you have noticed about the school is that it can be very stressful work wise by this I mean that the school is very grade based and anything that is under a 7 isn’t a good grade and you need to get it higher they need to seriously work on a lot of basic things that should be in place in any school like support for LGBTQ+ youth and more punishment for hate speech especially since it is a Christian school so a lot of families are homophobic
GCSEs
Not as good as it wants you to think.
Very grade focused, enable ableism and homophobia in the name of religion. Sees anything less than a 7 as a failure. Too much pressure not enough care.
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