St Hilary's School

Worst school I ever worked in. The head created a ‘them and us’ scenario where certain members of staff were her favourites and encouraged to effectively spy for her, pretending to be friendly to you when you were new only to glean what personal information they could to report back to her and provide her with ammunition to undermine you and make you feel insecure. She would routinely call in staff to face an intimidating sofa of her handpicked favourite colleagues, criticising and nit picking. When there were genuine problems with a staff member she was spectacularly inept. Her way of dealing with it was to pander to the trouble causer, offering them tea and sympathy. The capable staff quietly getting on with their jobs were effectively told it was their role to ‘understand’, ‘accommodate’ and do whatever extra was required to keep the show on the road. She allowed the private lives of certain staff members to spill over and cause tensions in the classroom. She was very weak in these scenarios especially if the ones concerned had wormed their way into her inner clique so she would compensate by picking on those doing absolutely nothing wrong. They would suddenly find themselves bring observed, questioned and extra work piled on to create a smokescreen and reasons to target them as the problem, deflecting the focus away from what was really going on. The atmosphere in the school was appalling. The staff room was empty. Nobody spoke and she was responsible. There were some talented and committed teachers there but they all left. Never seen a staff turnover like it.

I worked at St Hilarys when the current head took over. The school before was an amazing community. Staff and children were happy. It is now a shell of what it once was. I was one of the first members of staff Jane Wittingham bullied out of their position within the school. Still living locally I have heard throughout the years of many other, long standing, staff members leaving, with very little to no explanation leaving both parents and children confused as to where there very much loved teachers have gone.
Jane has made it her mission to replace well qualified, experienced members of staff with cheap, young and dispensable yes men/women who will not argue with her and who turn a blind eye to her bullying and harassment of other staff members. I wish I had stood up to her at the time but she made my working life miserable.

I am now in year 8 but I will never forget all the memories and experiences I made here. Throughout my time at St Hilary, I never had a boring day the teachers and pupils made each day so fun and I found myself enjoying going to school. I have made life-long friends there and I miss this school so much, I feel that now looking back that time has flown it feels like yesterday that I was walking in as a little reception kid. Definitely recommend sending your child here.