The Deepings School

Wish I could give 0 I hate this school all the bad reviews are true still as this September 2024

Terrible discipline. Haemorrhaging staff. Pupil welfare is a joke. Corrupt trust that fails ofsted to gain funding for other schools in the group

This school is so bad there is like 10 cover lessons a week and also half of the staff members left at the end of the year awful and also barley any SLT members

I am an ex-student, graduating in 2023 from the sixth form. Within the sixth form, my experience was generally more positive than at the secondary school. The sixth form is modern, and has sufficient facilities. There was issues with space especially when I moved up to Y13, which is understandable because there were a greater number of Y12s joining this year. My biggest complaint is guidance, which to be fair I put down to the multiple changes in headteacher during just the 2022/2023 academic year. However, I believe the inconsistency is affecting the younger students, sparking a general sense of indifference towards authority and even a student riot in February 2023, which came about, allegedly, due to younger students being unhappy with the conditions of the school. Personally, I felt that the methods used to punish those involved in the riot and the aftermath, whilst pragmatic, was not harsh enough, which led to plans for further riots which thankfully came of nothing. At the time of leaving the school, in June 2023, many if not all of the secondary school toilets were vandalised, with locks missing, and being quite unclean. The sixth form toilets were in much better condition, but this is oftentimes irrelevant because most sixth form classes are on the main site, meaning access to secondary school toilets. In my experience, many students have consistently expressed a concern for their safety at school. Personally, I felt that mental health was taken seriously with my experience with receiving help, although this seemed to be taken more seriously within sixth form. My estimation as to why some students may feel unsafe is because a lot of the measures of punishment for students seem insufficient - for medium to serious offences, students are sent to BIC (Behavioural Improvement Centre) in which students are made to sit in silence or keep up with schoolwork. As you can imagine, this had little effect, because the consequences of the student’s actions are not addressed in a way that the student can learn from and understand. Personally, I would not necessarily recommend the secondary school, but I would be more inclined to recommend the sixth form, though be wary that some academic subjects such as law do not run at the sixth form, and due to oversubscription and/or lack of funding for courses, many experience lack of guidance and lack of basic resources. I know that some students have recently brought up the issue of sexual harassment, which is something that I experience twice within the secondary school. I was groped both times; first in year 8 and secondly in year 10. The first time, this was dealt with very well, and I felt like I had been taken seriously and validated, although I was never kept up to date about the progress of reporting the person who had done it. The second time was not dealt with well - the incident was reported but the member of staff who handled it merely described the person as an ‘idiot’ and tried to encourage me to not take it any further because the student would be leaving school the following year. The student in question was notorious for bad behaviour and repeatedly caused alarming issues, and was intermittently excluded, though seemingly never for longer than a term at most. The furthest I got with seeking validation the second time was pursuing a restorative justice meeting, though the member of staff who handled it never scheduled it. There is a lot of information about sexual harassment, mainly geared towards women but in some respects geared towards men too, which is good, but I have personally seen a couple of minor instances of it which people seem to accept as ‘banter’ or normal. Again, my guess is because the younger students in particular can’t seem to respect the senior members of staff as authority, which has a knock on effect with other students who may not feel confident or comfortable with coming to school. This is an issue which I feel needs to be addressed. There is an element of the school trying to come across in a certain way for Ofsted, and I can testify that most of the structures they put in place in time for Ofsted are temporary and rarely see it through to the end of the year. Ofsted demonstrations are seemingly to show what the school COULD be, and is not a representation of its current standard.

A lot of staff at this school don’t care about the students. The staff don’t bother to tackle racist, homophobic and misogynistic behaviour and when they do, they don’t do it very well or they blame people who are innocent. When a student refuses to go to lesson, they just put them into the bic (isolation) and give them an after school detention instead of finding out why they don’t want to go to lesson. They also don’t care if you’re being bullied. A few people I know have been bullied and the school didn’t do anything about it. I have had it on multiple occasions where I have been crying in the school and staff have seen me crying and have not asked if I was ok. Lots of people in the school have been shouted at wiles crying. The schools really affected my mental health and I have had suicidal thoughts because of the staff not caring. The school has also affected other people’s mental health and a few have tried to commit suicide. It seams like they only care about you wearing the correct uniform and your behaviour. Most of the staff who cared have left to go to different schools. However, there are only a few staff who do seam to care. One of them being the deputy head of year 10. She’s has really tried to help me and she’s been great.