Stanchester Academy

Don’t join this school

Lots of teachers who sit around and do nothing about bullying or anything like that

Absolutely rubbish. I go to Stanchester and they suspend me very regularly for the most pety reasons and if someone else did the exact same things that I do then they would just get a detention or something! It is so obvious that they pick on me and give me much worse punishments for no good reason. You can get an after school detention for being 2 minutes late to a lesson! Quite often, senior employees of the Bridgewater & Taunton College Trust come into the school and see how everything is going, and it is so obvious how much the headteacher changes her attitude towards students when they are here. A few months ago, a new SLT member joined and he was deputy head & in charge of behaviour, however, within about a month he left as he realised how terrible the school is. Around 10 teachers have left the school and they have only employed about 3. They blow absolutely everything out of proportion when speaking to my Mum on the phone and exaggerate it so much. Also, when students write statements about incidents such as fights, the school don't actually take the statements into consideration, they just assume that they are always correct and never believe anything you say. Everything has gone downhill ever since the new head teacher joined, she has no idea what she is doing most of the time and if one thing happens throughout the day then that makes her be moody to every other student aswell causing lots of students to be annoyed. I don't think I'm allowed to say her name on here but I'm sure anyone that wants to know it can search it up on their website.

I was bullied very badly and so was my brother. They did nothing about it. The cafeteria food is also rubbish.

Honestly this school is horrible, the teachers are so strict and yell at good students all the time, too many things going on at once, they just don't care about the students to wellbeing

Since I’ve been there the school has gone from strength to strength. Stanchester provides, from what I remember, a range of activities and trips for all the students unfortunately many cancelled due to the pandemic and the atmosphere can be good sometimes. Introducing a new pointing system which I don’t find very effective as the majority of the points go to Year 7s. The school tried to enforce a new behaviour policy, recently, and the punishments has varied from teacher to teacher, so not very effective in enforcing behaviour. Some teachers are great, they are very caring and supportive of the students others not quite so much especially in the English Department. Mental health has been a big factor in the school, providing groups and assemblies on it, for some it has been tough to go through due to there being no trigger warning on the topic causing many people to be in tears. Also couple years ago I asked for support and I never received it hopefully now it has changed. Food at Stanchester seems to be popular but the prices have slowly crept up so it has put me off buying from there, so bring a packed lunch to save time and energy. Stanchester has dealt with Covid-19 greatly, establishing rules with face masks as such but for the teachers the amount of severity was different from each teacher, for example a science teacher is more worried about the virus due to knowing about pathogens compared to a history teacher. When there was a case confirmed it was decided that all years would mix back together (this was probably the plan before the case was announced) therefore inflicting fear into all the students. To add, due to missing many months of school, Stanchester started to introduce a Raising Attainment sessions before and after school for the Year 11s, to catch up on the time missed, as they are worried about the grades received in their mocks which is good but the amount of mental strain it has put on them is damaging. And the sessions had only started a couple weeks ago and they have more to come as well so I would not be surprised if these Year 11s achieve high grades but at the cost of their mental well-being. This is what I can remember about Stanchester