The Marches School

horrible disgraceful school teaching kids to beat up others

Lexi bonnor
6 Cornwell Ave Gobowen
Oswestry SY11 3JX
family, Mattie, Jamie, Luke and Emma bonner
School, The Marches schoc cars, 3 series grey bmw and white bmw
(Plates)
LB5
Lexi Bonner is a evil cow

Cant believe this school is keeping a horrible horrible slag like lexi, lexi bonner is a vile vile girl, she beat and tortured an autistic 8 year old boy for no reason, all he wanted to do is be her friend, i hope she gets whats coming for her

As a junior student at the marches, it is not great. This can be due to unfairness with staff, pastoral team not solving issues between students and not taking responsibility for their own faults. As well as this, staff can be incredibly unprofessional during meetings, parent evenings etc. My personal experience is that one of the mathematics teachers was biting their nails, avoiding eye contact when they were called out on the issues of which we had. As a senior student, the staff act as if they’re your friends ( most of them) and everything is much more chilled out in the classroom as of course students have matured so staff aren’t stressed though back to being unfair, prom. The school have allowed students to attend prom who have been excluded for bringing illegal substances into the site and creating high risk for students where as students who are late more than once a term are banned from attending. This needs fixing.
Other than these issues the school is fairly average and would recommend, though students must be able to stand up to staff when something is wrong and stand up to bullies and the staff have other things they would rather do than help out.

Horrible school and teachers no good

Poor experience. Failed to recognise a special educational need until year 11 , and only after school was pushed to do an assessment. Child felt singled out , when issue was educational needs not being met . High levels of anxiety just being on school site , but shown little compassion or creative thinking to get education back on track . All too little , too late . Methods all punitive , trying to fit child into marches school mould . Blame aimed everywhere else , not accepting or taking responsibility for child’s disengagement in school life . Only saving grace was my engagement with school trying to turn it all around .
Now playing catch up , glad school experience behind us , but will stay with me as a parent forever .

I was fortunate enough to have an 'ok' time with this school - but it certainly still falls short of adequate, considering what may be expected when you look at how this school is advertised.

Year 7 to 9 I was persistently bullied, one member of staff refusing to take me seriously through being persistently threatened, harassed and cyberbullied by said person. It took a petty rumour about me having HIV for anything to be done, along with several complaints from my family. Every time, the excuse was that the child bullying me was 'troubled' - I appreciate this, but there is never an excuse to ignore bullying.

Staff absence often had a knock-on effect for exam results, I had a supply for English (a CORE subject) for the entirety of year 8, as well as a GCSE physics teacher who failed to attend a number of lessons.

SEN support was poor, access leaders made users of SSS feel unwelcome. A further distressing point is that the room used for vulnerable SEN children apparently serves as an overflow for young people who refuse to attend school in the correct uniform.

Speaking of - the uniform policies are absolutely obscene. Female students often advised by male members of staff that their skirts were too short, and female members of staff speaking of how this may be 'distracting for the boys and male staff'... If you feel that a male member of staff would regard a teenage girl in such a way, perhaps you have not employed the correct person!

Delivery of the curriculum was often muddled, extremely disorientating. GCSE options were not offered fully as not enough people chose certain subjects - leaving some students unable to sit their desired choice of subject exams. School seemingly unsympathetic toward this situation, and the lasting impact that this may have for a young person's future.

Homework was insufficient, I know that this may sound mad, but during my five years here, I was barely given enough. Whilst I appreciate self-directed study is important to independent growth, I was sometimes left with insufficient resources to expand my learning.

Facilities were dated and falling to pieces in some departments - math block chairs seeming to break every lesson! Exam tables were coated in graffiti and profanities. And, might I add, the toilets were abhorrent. A popular smoking spot for a majority of students.

To conclude, The Marches does not achieve through caring, more exhibiting control and power over students and disallowing freedom. Achieving is self-driven, caring is rare.

Where do I begin teachers do nothing about bullying they care more about your uniform and the teachers clearly have favourite students some teachers there are nice and some are rude the science teachers are really nice and so are the English teachers but some IT teachers have ago at you for being slow even though your dyslexic.

Had many problems with one girl at the school teachers only made us say sorry to another and she was bullying me and calling me names clearly the teachers don’t care and the school toilets are dirty and nasty I think they should put sanitary products in the girls toilets. Teachers don’t care if you have mental health and they make it worse I used to skip school here because the bullying was getting bad and teachers did hardly anything

Send your teens to another school because there mental health will get worse.

Let's start with the positives:

- The ICT department has an amazing set of staff, I have been taught by all of them and enjoyed every lesson. The ICT lessons are fun and interactive and the teachers have a sense of humour.

- There is a Safe Soace Social group on after schools on tuesdays, it's quite a small group but it nice to have especially for the lgbt, disabled/SEN and ethnically diverse kids.

- There are a few nice teachers that you can tell your problems too.

- There's been more support and education on LGBT issues recently.


Now negatives:

- Skirt length is too important to teachers.

- Teachers have OBVIOUS favourites and disliked students.

- Some science groups dont get to do practicals because theyre in a lower set.

- Bullying is a major issue.

- The councilour is terrible.

- Pastoral will give you I.E for wearing the wrong trousers but wont do anything if you're called slurs or told to kys.

- PE is terrible, people have been sexually assaulted in the changing rooms by peers and nothing gets done about it, trans kids are pushed to one side and get picked on by peers and the PE teachers dont care. The girls do just dance all the time.

- People have become homeschooled because of mental health issues or bullying, I'm friends with 2 people who left two years ago and are yet to return.

- The SEN equipment (Laptops, e-reader pens, ect) don't

- Teacher's suck, especially in the English, Maths and humanities departments.



Personal stories about this school:

1. I was bullied for half a year so my mum contacted my form tutor to make her aware, she then told my mum it wasn't bullying and didnt do anything about it.

2. Two of my friends left school due to mental health or bullying, I was going to move schools because of bullying in year 7.

3. Supply teacher mocked me for being trans.

4. Best teacher in the world in Science sings science songs for us, he's a good teacher and one of main positives about the school.

5. Teacher helped me through a rough period and was extremely comforting, this has happened multiple times with around 3 different teachers.

6. Teacher shouted at me for trying to get my PE kit from my friends locker because we weren't allowed to go there during social times???

7. Got trapped in I.E when I wasn't supposed to be there.

8. Had a fellow student pull out a knife and tell me he was going to kill another student with it. This was delt with quickly as he had threatened someone with a compass before.

9. Had 2 knife incidents within a two week period.

10. Was told to kms by another student and teachers did nothing about it.

11. One of my friends was ridiculed on the bus home by fellow students because she's LGBTQ+



End of review comment:

This school is overall rated OK, it sucks with things outside of education but the education itself is relatively alright. Would rate 5/10 all together. Not extremely safe but is getting better.

I left this school a few years ago now and it seems to be getting worse. One of the main things in which I have noticed from the school is about the drama department and how they do not let certain people in their cast when they're doing a show. They favourite the same students every year and only cast those people as the main parts. There are a variety of talented individuals in and around the Marches School that deserve to be heard, listened to and to play a part, rather than seeing the same people on that stage each year.

they dint give you any support you need and they let bullying slide, they tell you to come back in your own time to sort it out but when you do they send you away and say its nothing to do with them and they cant do anything, when its outside of school they cant get involved but when they catch someone “smoking” and etc outside of school they will be disciplined, this school is the worst for not listening and not helping you reach your needs that are meant to be reached, especially when you need extra help and have support with you, it never happens you are always left on your own with no help/ support so all in all this school isn't recommendable

As a former student of the 2019 Marches, this school is probably the most contradicting, double standards and back handed place you could send your child.
The teachers were bullies, very big bullies, they’d never listen to issues you’d have, in class or at home.

They’d praise and baby the wrong children , the bad children who bully and attack everyone. Then they’d be confused why they aren’t changing their ways. Whilst the quieter kids, the smarter ones who could’ve had a good future was thrown to the back of the class and rarely told well done or even given the attention they needed to succeed.

The education was the poorest thing about this school, the teachers wouldn’t actually be interested in teaching and only giving you small information and then expect you to know everything else off by heart.

The teachers would constantly harass students, especially the head teachers and the p.e teachers. They were the cruelest ones.

If you want your child’s mental health to remain well and not suicidal, do NOT send them to this school because the school will not listen to them. They’d hand them a paracetamol and tell them to deal with it.

This school is absolutely awful. They do not take subjects such as bullying and poor mental health seriously, and I know this because TWO of my friends have literally been off for a year because how overwhelming this school is, and they have hardly gotten any support. When you email this school for help and support, they literally send you an email back saying ‘we are too busy’ or something similar to that. Now on to bullying. This school claims to take bullying seriously - having multiple assemblies on it and assuring students that they have it all under control, however I have witnessed multiple occasions where students were bullying others in front of teachers, and nothing was done about it. The Marches obviously cares about their reputation more than their student’s wellbeing.

The education is also appalling. The Marches has a range of outdated technology (aside from the ICT teachers) and in a lot of lessons you can see that the teachers are either far too laid back (by this I mean that they do not tell off students when they are being too loud, causing a lot of students to experience sensory overload) or they are far too strict (picking on students without their hand up, not allowing them to communicate at all, etc). Some teachers also have favourites - I have even heard a member of staff at pastoral saying to a misbehaving student that they have a ‘soft spot’ for them. There are a couple of teachers that have been extremely helpful and supportive, however that is a minority for me.

Now let’s talk about rules. Obviously the school has basic rules that all schools should had (don’t be disrespectful, don’t vandalise, etc.) but there is a system called the ‘Smart card system’ in which when you break a rule, your smart card log is signed in your planner, and two of these in a week will result in a detention. In theory, this sounds reasonable, however in practice a lot of teachers use this on girls with SLIGHTLY short skirts and other ridiculous uniform rules, such as not being allowed to wear socks with tights. This is contributing to the sexualisation of young girls, it is telling them that they can not do this and that, just because men can not control themselves, but if anything the men can control themselves. The boys aren’t distracted by these simple things, and a skirt that is a few centimetres above the knee won’t make you an attention seeker.

The school is also not very secure either. The school’s car park is near classrooms, so it isn’t exactly the safest, and there are security cameras by the school bathrooms. Food-wise, the school does a decent job with that. The food is reasonably priced and usually tastes okay, however don’t be surprised if you get something undercooked or crispy rice in your curry.

Overall, don’t go. If I had the money I would definitely be going to a private school or a public school with better staff and rules.

The school has little mental health support, the councillor is useless and takes the side of the bullies.
The "SMART card" system is terrible, I knew a girl who had her skirt hem undone because it was a centimeter too short (thats right there is a required length that they will measure). The school do not deal with bullies adequately and even resulted in my friend refusing to go back on campus from fear of her bullies, and rather than discipline the bullies she now does online schoolwork.
The actual education quality is also apping, with half the teachers seeming like they don't even know what they are talking about.
The food is decent, but it is not uncommon to find barely cooked pizza and only half baked cookies.
The school definily lacks diversity, and as a result some staff members come across as racist, a person of colour was taken out of my class by a staff member, who asked if the person needed a dictionary to help translate.
The school is also lacking LGBTQ+ support, there is no education provided about LGBT+ peoples or history, nor sex education, and the school have made no effort to suggest that it is a safe space that will not tolerate homophobia/transphobia, however, the school will let students change their name on the register.
Their is no actually breaktime area that can accommodate all students, and even has a road going through the school to a second car park, this road is accessed infrequently by cars but cars do still pose a threat as many children that congregate on the road during break and lunch only for a student to shout "CAR" and everyone disperses to make room for a frustrated supply teacher.
Several classrooms do not have proper interactive whiteboards, the few that do no longer have the appropriate pens, and aside from the IT department and teachers laptops, nearly a the tecnology is outdated and often the keyboards are broken or missing.

This place was awful. They wouldn't help you if you were struggling with mental health, and they certainly didn't help if you were being abused and bullied by other students. Most of the students in that school are so disrespectful to LGBTQ+ students, and I do believe it's because of the teachers letting the misbehaving students off the hook so they don't have to deal with them. Not to mention how they care far too much about the uniform. I remember being told I wasn't allowed to wear a coat with patterns on it... They said it was because it was made of cotton and looked like a jacket because of the patterns, which is ridiculous. I wouldn't send my children there if I had any.

The school don’t care at all about bullying, you should be ashamed of yourselves, you care more about uniform than our education, just ridiculous, utterly ridiculous!!!

I got threatened by a girl and I told the school while I was crying but they did nothing about it, I continue to feel unsafe around her. School is supposed to be a safe place but they don’t care unless you’re on of their favourites who get involved in competitions and do things for the teachers. They care more about our uniform and what we look like then about our education. Don’t recommend coming here at all.

I can think of Multiple times where i have needed help with my mental health and i have just been told to go back to lessons. all they care about is what uniform looks like. I’m not sure why male teachers feeling uncomfortable about my skirt length has anything to do with my education! The school says they want people to feel like they can be who they want but they make us all dress the same and we get put in isolation if we don’t abide by all the uniform policy rules. which is so stupid. we are getting taken away from OUR education because our skirt is a few centimetres higher than they’d like or our eyebrows are darker that day or the boys hair is too short. it’s absolutely ridiculous and they need to get their priorities in order.

Uniform very strict and haven’t updated bullying policy since 2015!! Only a few of the teachers make learning fun. Don’t care about students mental health.