Thorpe St Andrew School and Sixth Form

Do not go to Thorpe Sixth form. They give you no support whatsoever, they never ask if you are okay or come up with ways to help and support you. Instead they still treat you like a child and put you into isolation immediatly for no reasons. They make up new rules each day. The best team is not supportive at all either and will make you feel even worse about yourself. Would not recomend it to anyone at all. Since joining sixth form my mental health has gone down massivly, the overall environment is not nice at all.

Supposed to be starting here in September, Now I’m having other ideas from the reviews I’m hearing

keep your kids as far away from this school as humanly possible. The Ofstead review says outstanding, it’s a flat out lie. I was at this school for 5 years, left in 2021, in my time there i watched kids bring knives into school only to be moved houses,
i’ve seen nudes spread around and watched the BEST team do nothing to help,
kids have been stabbed, set on fire, bullied, harassed, assaulted, and beaten.
Teachers love to chase students and call them hookers on non uniform days,
they lock the toilets and sometimes don’t let you in even on lunch and break.
Teachers will take the piss out of you in front of their classes and target you for answers and ignore all other students just because they feel like it.
The schools loves to ignore sexual assault victims and when they don’t know how to handle a situation where someone has injured someone else they will simply put both the people in isolation.
My uniform cost around £200 when i bought it (that could be different now)
the food is horrendously over priced and if their finger print payment system goes down they just don’t let anybody eat.
One specific PE teacher is a bully to anyone that isn’t on the bloody netball team.
The buildings are full of mouldy walls and ceilings and they just paint over them.
The drama department is drastically underfunded even though it holds most of the schools talent
Homophobia, racism, sexism, ableism and transphobia is only ever relevant when the school wants it to be. If you’re being bullied for any of those reasons you’re on your own
Pressures students into doing well, not for themselves, but for the attention and bad GCSE results day would bring onto the school
You can’t roll your trouser legs up cause “how dare you show your ankles”
Some male teachers love to tell girls to “put their legs under the desk cause they’re distracting”
god forbid you have a bracelet, a necklace, more than one set of earrings in, coloured socks, a ring, or short fake nails, you might as well have just snorted crack off the tables
Loves to yell at you when there’s a fire drill going on but as soon as the fire alarm goes off and it’s not planned you best well stay in your seat cause how dare you try and save yourself in the event of a possible fire.
This school was genuinely the worst years of my life. Don’t ever send your kids here if you want them to be bloody normal cause they’ll turn out mentally ill one way or another

i do not recommend, i currently go to this school and it is bad

i’m currently in y9, and the school has been good so far. it hasn’t been coping amazingly with covid-19 but they’ve done the best they can. however, there is definite favoritism between students and the food is quite overpriced for what it is.
the BEST team aren’t great, with favoritism factoring in it, and aside from the good talks to help me calm down from any panic attacks, they haven’t done much to help. before this year, the security wasn’t great, with random people being seen inside the school (which me and my friends have all seen), and students could sneak out a lot easier.

I am in my seventh year at TSAS. Over the years it has been a good school and I have generally enjoyed my time here. It is also fair to say that the school handles bullying very poorly. Since year 7 I have reported physical violence 3 times and each time been told to “try to ignore it”. I’m sure you would agree it is quite difficult to ignore rocks hitting your head. There is also clear favouritism between the normal students and the students who are children of the governors. They are rarely told off for the same misbehaviours that other students are isolated or suspended for. The school also sets far more homework than other schools so that you have lots to do every day of the week. In year 11 I was doing maths homework on Christmas Day. Before this year, the schools’ security was poor. The gates were low and sometimes were not locked meaning that anyone could walk through or jump over them, such was the case that we came across random people walking through at least twice. The school culture is amazing. There are so many little things exclusive to Thorpe that you don’t even realise. For example you haven’t lived until you’ve met your friend to cross sites at big tree. The teachers can be hit and miss as I expect is the case with most schools. Usually the teachers are very good and care deeply about your success, however this can mean that they unintentionally neglect your mental well-being, something the school is particularly lacking in. When you are struggling with your mental health the school will usually suggest “have a bath” or “go for a walk”, which aren’t particularly useful to a student who is suffering from suicidal thoughts or depression etc. In this respect, the school could benefit from educating their staff on mental health in teenagers so that they are more equipped to deal with it. The school also struggles with organising study space, especially for the sixth form. We have found that although we have been given more free periods to catch up with what we missed over lockdown, there often is only one room for everyone who has a free period. This means that once it is full the remaining students (often a large number) have nowhere to go and so they often end up leaving school and just walking around for a bit. This is even more difficult at the moment because they aren’t allowed out with more than one person due to lockdown, even though they can sit with thirty other people in a classroom without issue. It’s not useful for their education and it isn’t helpful for the community. With this being said however, the school has provided chrome book laptops to every student who requested one during lockdown so that they were still able to access the same content as everybody else. I felt this was done very well, especially as it was a “no-questions-asked” situation, although one of my friends was given a laptop so old it didn’t support the software that the school was using for video calls. Many of the facilities at this school are falling apart. The bathrooms are dark and dingy and the toilets are often not attached to the walls so you can’t use them. Usually the basin taps don’t work and there is no soap or hand sanitizer in the pumps so you have to leave without washing your hands if you were even able to go, although I would recommend sanitising your hands even if you just walk into the bathrooms. The food is also sometimes really overpriced. It has gotten better in the sixth form but in the lower school it is definitely a bit of a rip off. They often sell little pots of crisps (about 4 or 5 crisps) with a little dribble of sweet chilli sauce for £2.10. You could buy 10x the amount of crisps and sweet chilli sauce at the Co-Op for the same price. The hot food usually tastes okay but it never looks appetising and is expensive for what you get. With this in mind I would recommend sending your child with a packed lunch. The uniform is also very expensive. When I started year 7 my new uniform cost around £200 from John Lewis. I believe the supplier of the uniform has changed but I would assume the price probably has not. This price also does not include the numerous new skirts and jumpers I needed over the years as the jumpers were no thin that they ripped if you so much as laid an elbow on a tabletop. In the sixth form the dress code favours boys heavily to girls. Many of my friends have been told that their outfit is distracting to male staff. Surely if a male staff member is distracted by the knee of a sixteen year old girl then the issue is the male teacher who is attracted to underage girls and not the underage girl herself. This narrative perpetuates rape culture and is quite frankly disgusting but the school doesn’t seem to be taking on board student comments on the issue. In a more positive light however, the sixth form team has been so helpful with UCAS. Myself and most of my friends have already sent our applications as the school helped us great amounts to get them sent early on. I believe this has set me up for a more stress free year because I have received offers from all of my university choices before most schools have even started working on their applications. This means I’m more prepared in the long run because I have longer to get ready for university and do not have to worry about sending my application in January which is a very busy time at school. I know that the school has also been very helpful to the students applying for apprenticeships through a similar platform to UCAS, and also those students going straight into employment. In conclusion, Thorpe has many bad aspects but your general day to day life here is pleasant and enjoyable. You will laugh every day, meet people you never wish to separate from, and be encouraged to work hard. Thorpe has helped me to grow from a frozen-obsessed 11 year old to an articulate, strong-willed, opinionated, frozen-obsessed 18 year old with a passion for success, which has no doubt been helped by the existence of the plentiful bad aspects of Thorpe and a desire to correct them. Thorpe is a good school with your best intentions at heart even if sometimes they fail to meet those intentions. The teachers care deeply about you and try their hardest to help you, even when it gets very difficult. The facilities are bad but to be fair it means you hardly ever have to do swimming so that is a win.