Ursuline High School Wimbledon

My daughter went there horrendous experience, they sell themselves as nurturing, what a joke. Teachers are lazy, they hand out worksheets or pupils copy from board, all while teacher sits at desk on phone or laptop. Don’t need to be a teacher to do that!!! Bullying is rife, Ursuline buries its head in the sand over this. My daughter was bullied nothing done, problem only fixed when bully leaves and Ursuline believes its tackled it. No support from teachers when pupils go to see them or email them. Teachers talk down to parents at parents evening. Never get replies from emails there communication is awful. Very high turnover of teachers, if they are good they never stay there. They hold a doughnut day every 1st friday of the month, surely encouraging healthy eating is a priority as sport there is non existent.

both my daughter's attend the Ursuline school and I am shocked at how little is done about the horrendous bullying that goes on! girls seem to get away with attacking other students on a daily basis both physically and verbally. Both my daughter's are very unhappy at the school and cannot wait to leave, as are a number of their friends. I know ex-students who have the same opinion of the school. The school needs to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards bullying and expel the girls who behave badly towards others. The school is very strict when it comes to racist behaviour and I recently heard about a girl who was expelled because she unintentionally used a word which may be considered racist. I have reported a few incidents of horrendous bullying behaviour of which I have provided video evidence. The best that could be done regarding the culprits was to suspend them for a week and then they are back in school to continue with their physical and verbal bullying whilst the poor victims of their behaviour are exposed by the staff!! looking to removing my girls as soon as I can

As an ex student in the sixth form here my personal experience was horrible. Not because of the people, because everyone was lovely there. But the system it’s self and how the school is organised was in my opinion quite frankly horrendous. To get into specifics before entering the sixth form please be aware that this is a catholic school! Meaning there will be dedicated Religious Study classes (mainly on Christianity) on top of PHSE classes that is compulsory to attended every week, along side common masses you have to attend wearing professional attire. (The dress code is very strict with compulsory blazers). All your frees will be dedicated ‘study’ periods. So basically free periods aren’t a thing there. Not only that but you will be forced to do these study periods in the common room In absolute silence where there’s no room for socialising. in this same common room is where you also have lunch and break, (bearing in mind you’re not allowed to leave the school to go get food from outside the school during lunch or break.) and you’d also have your week assembly’s in this very same common room. But to add on to this, in my opinion, the common room was very small, often not having enough tables and chairs to accommodate for all the sixth formers to do work. So take that as you wish. You might be thinking well, why don’t you use the library? Well that’s the thing, sixth formers weren’t allowed to use the library during ‘study periods’ (which let me illiterate is basically all your free periods, which is not a free because it’s a compulsory study session. Where there is a register that is taken to make sure you’re confined in the same small building each and every one of your study periods. And if you’re not there, there will be appropriate sanctions). Okay, so back to topic about the library. To keep it short you were only allowed to use the library during break or lunch. Why? I have no idea. Also, to make it things better or worse, the lower school (years 7-11) were prioritised. Meaning that for example, the buses outside of school weren’t allowed to be used by the sixth formers until most of the lower school (in uniform) had gotten on the bus. Which could take up to half an hour or more depending on the day. This would often force sixth formers to walk to the highstreet before they could find a bus to head home. And they made sure of this by having teachers on guard at the bus stop to make sure absolutely no sixth formers entered the bus until most of the lower schools had hopped on to buses. Another way the lower school was prioritised was the canteen. As I said, lunch and break would be in the small common room, meaning that a very small shackle with one canteen lady served our food. Sixth formers aren’t allowed to use the main canteens which are meant for the lower school, which these canteens are a lot more furnished, a lotttt more bigger and better looking. If anything, I’d say it’s a lot better to go to this school for Highschool and not for the sixth form. As the Highschool is a lot more prioritised than the sixth form. Even though i could say soooo much more on why the sixth form is horrendous, that would be my own personal opinion and not beneficial to an accurate review. Though i would like to end my cons list with a note that they are extremely strict with late policies. Surprisingly more than attendance policies. Your first couple of lates will be a detention for half an hour (in the very same common room you’ve been confined in all day) but once you reach your 7th late within the year, it would result in a prolonging hour detention after school on the same day you were late. And don’t take my word on this because Ive forgotten how many lates after the 7th late but a couple more lates and it would be a serious discussion with the head teacher with parents involved. Because of this, if students knew they were going to be late, because it’s London and TFL can be shambles sometimes and traffic is disgustingly long. Then very often people would just call in sick and study at a local cafe for the rest of the day, rather than attending the school environment. Ironically enough getting a lot more work done in the cafe than they would of at school. This can cause unnecessary stress for the student on top of all the work, which can worsen mental health issues. Or even create them… Though i do say all this, the education was pretty alright. They were enough class periods which meant there weren’t a huge amount of study periods, sitting in that small common room in absolute silence. I’d say I had about 2-3 on some days. And on other days only 1. Bear in mind that the timetable is weekly so therefore you have the same lessons every single week with no changes. Unlike other schools which have 2 week timetable, where the timetable shifts depending on whether it’s week 1 or 2, or week A or B. Whatever you’d like to refer it to. They also had weekly folder checks which probably is better for the benefit of the student to keep them on track with their work and make sure that their notes and stuff were organised. Anyways, let me mention this is for the year 12. I can’t comment on year 13 as I didn’t stay there long enough to get a first hand experience on what really happens in year 13 for this school. And any other comment would be a speculation. But this is my first hand experience in the sixth form before desperately trying to transfer. But all in all, the education is good (putting a lot of pressure on students), but student life satisfactory is down the drain.