Ysgol John Bright

hello !! former student here, if you know me, no you don't. the first 2 years of school were...fine enough. the 3rd was too loud for me so i'd sneak earphones and an mp3 player in (later became my phone) and listen to music to cope. was it against the rules? yes. did i have a genuine reason to break them? yes. i wasn't doing any wrong with them, i wasn't disruptive: i was a great student actually. i'd do all the work. now i wouldn't get caught until the beginning of year 10, when a teaching assistant caught me with them in and forced me to give them to her. wouldn't hear me out at all. i had 2 breakdowns after that: 1 during break and the other after break, where i was crying to my mom over the phone, begging her to let me go home. she did, and my sibling would collect the earphones and give me to them at home. this cycle would repeat a few times: me listening to music, the same teaching assistant taking my earphones (one time she forced my hand open to take them: not good), me crying to my mom and leaving. during this time i was having a lot of problems, i was being bullied (guess where!!) AND i had to do a court statement as a victim to. um. something traumatic (which a former teacher forced me to tell her), so i really wasn't in a good mental state back then, and having this teaching assistant deny me the one thing i needed to cope in an environment i HATED wasn't helping. it got too much when i actually started getting suicidal thoughts from it all, and i reluctantly told my mom everything. after that, i didn't do a full day of school again. i'd do the odd lesson, but i even stopped that too, now only showing up for my singing lessons and the theatre productions, when they happened.

my mom tried to get me back into school. she'd ask the school to let me have earphones. they said no because i wasn't diagnosed with autism yet. so i got diagnosed (autism and adhd!!). they still said no because "if he has earphones then EVERYONE will want earphones and we can't say no to all of them :(((((((", which is super unfair. in my mom's words, it's like denying someone who needed help walking crutches because "if you have them everyone will have them!!!" the earphones are my crutches in this allegory.

my mom tried time and time again, with numerous forms of outside help, to get the school to let me have my headphones. eventually the school settled on this:

- school wired headphones (which i HATE)
- connected to a chromebook (which turns off once closed, which means i can't listen to music in the halls or the cafeteria, which are the LOUDEST places)

as opposed to:

- my wireless headphones
- connected to my phone/mp3 player (can listen to music anywhere)

they refuse to understand that their plan is practically useless. if we go back to the allegory, it's like "only letting a child have crutches in class, and they have to suck it up in the halls/cafeteria" as opposed to having them everywhere. we've given up.

and i'd like to reiterate!!! i was NOT a troublemaker!! sure, i talked to my friends a lot, and i'd draw in class sometimes, but i was never yelling or making a scene (like some students), and i'd always do my work well. they were preventing a hardworking student that would've genuinely wanted to be in school...from showing up to school.

oh and while im here, here's some other things i've picked up during my time:

- again, disruptive troublemakers. they'd yell, refuse to do work, throw things, and just be a general pain. they'd never get punished in the long term, only referrals and negative points, which they don't care about. i know it's not the school's fault for how they behave, but they should punish them better.
- BULLYING. god forbid you're gay, trans, autistic or just that little bit different!! you are NOT lasting!! you WILL get bullied!! take it from an lgbtq autistic kid: if you want a good time, DON'T. and also the teachers do nothing. how is logging everything they say to me gonna help?? just stop them now!!!
- broken equipment. broken chairs, broken tables, broken pens, broken chromebooks, broken everything. and do NOT get me started on the graffiti.
- the food. i'm not talking about the quality (i personally don't mind it), i'm talking about the AMOUNT. i've heard recent stories of students having to go without lunch because they've run out. hell, I'VE had to go without lunch once in school. not cool.
- while we're talking about the food: PAID MEALS. it's always given me the ick, making children pay to eat at school. they do have free school meals for certain people (ex: people with one parent, people with not a lot of money, ect.), but it still feels wrong to me. i get they have to make money somehow, but c'mon.
- my catering teacher once screamed at me so much i had a panic attack. (for context: i have two friends in that class, a and b. teacher paired me up with a. i requested to work with b. this made teacher think i was BULLYING a, commence screaming. i left the class frantically apologising to a. they were on my side, and didn't even mind). i showed up to that class one other time before quitting.
- again, former teacher forced me to traumadump to her (for context: she was gonna read a book about a sensitive topic for me. i asked to not be present for it because it makes me uncomfortable). she was behavioural management, but that doesn't make it okay. in the end, she did report what i said and it turned into my favour, but she still put me in an uncomfortable situation.
- and speaking OF that teacher, she was also no stranger to giving me panic attacks. one was because she was forcing me to work with someone i didn't get along with (not talking petty stuff, talking lgbtq working with homophobe). the other was a few years later, where she was trying to get me to sit next to that same person. i eventually got my way, but not without tears.
- different teacher kept yelling at me for being late to a class...that i had just joined.
- little to no clubs, no school trips, nothing.

i hated most of the school. the only things i didn't hate were:

- my friends. obvious.
- some teachers. they were genuinely so nice to me and i love them for it. you know who you are. THANK YOU.
- the food. i got some safe food ideas from school.

other than that, not a fun school for me. i'd say i miss leaving, but i was brought up not to lie.

This school is by far the worst school I've ever been to , the bins in the girls bathrooms were changed at most 1 a month, for a school with well over at least 400-500 females this is unacceptable, think about it atleast 50 of those females are on their periods everyday 30 days 30x50 that is 1,500 pads/tampons going in the bins and mind you there is only 6 stalls (roughly) so that's 250 in each bin , obviously overflowing apart from the obvious of that happening, the blood attacks fly's so at that point we can only really use 2-4 stalls , secondly about the toilet stalls , the toilet paper is always running out there is never a day when all the stalls are all full with toilet roll , next there was a brown leak coming from the floor that stayed there for a week , next the teachers are absolutely horrible they do not encourage the students at all if I counted the amount of times a teacher told me or other students that they didn't care if we fail on our last week's I'd be counting for an eternity, the only class I properly engaged in was English as my teacher didn't discourage me , next I want to talk on how horrendous their tolerability to bullying is , I mean fuck the teachers bully you, the entire time I went to this school I was bullied, they did absolutely nothing, I reported this one person for 5 months every time they said something till I snapped and got in a fight then I got suspended for 'going to far' even though they had literal record of every time they were horrible, and oh my lord , the sandwiches they give on meal deals are out of date 90% of the time not to mention they got the lowest hygiene grade sandwiches they could find just to pocket a couple quid once the years open, seriously the only improvement I saw in my time being there is they put mirrors in the bathrooms , that fell off two of them , what the actual hell is the extra budget money going on cause I don't believe 100% of that is going back into the school, they are only a few instances, I mean I could go on and on about how terrible the hygiene and discipline on this place , I refuse to call it a school as the only thing I learnt there is how to write a fucking article

Very poor understanding of children with anxiety almost makes things worse not a school I would recommend going too don’t return calls can’t be bothered attitude, phoned to say they’re suffering and not interested.

Bad school never did any favours

Do not send your children here unless you want your child to take their own life, be bullied by teachers, have your child get perverted comments made towards them or end up having to pay thousands for your child’s therapy. This review is worth the read.
In my 5 years in ysgol John brights multiple teachers were accused of perverted crimes, most of which even teachers would tell us were more than just accusations. I had perverted comments made towards me by some of these teachers and nothing was done about it.
I got told I looked like an “adult actress” for wearing longer socks than usual (I was not aware only calf length socks were permitted) which was disgusting as I was only 15. We were told by M* s**** in an assembly you could see our knickers when we walked up the stairs which made teachers uncomfortable. The girls carried out an experiment and no matter the length of the skirt, this was impossibly unless you tried to look. We were little girls whose legs should not have been a distraction to make teachers. During the same assembly he showed a picture of an actual student in uniform and said her skirt was too short. I’m sure she would have felt humiliated.
There is no safeguarding in the school as they do not care for bullying and allowed my possessions to be burnt in a fire on the rugby club and being posted online despite me warning them it was going to happen that morning. They refused to call the police and I couldn’t do so myself because mobile phones are/were banned. When I went to key stage crying I was called a b*tch by one of the teachers and told it wouldn’t happen.
They refused to help me get counselling and refused to deal with serious matters that were impacting my mental health and should have been reported to the police.
Lgbt+ students were always bullied by teachers and they took the sides of the homophobic and transphobic students. Trans students were forced to get changed in the P.E cupboard and a specific music teacher who left to become a religious preacher constantly made homophobic and transphobic remarks, which the school backed up. They have also outed many students to homophobic family members.
I got straight a’s and a*s yet spent most of my time excluded or in internal exclusion for not having a uniform that fitted however, none of the sizes did fit due to design flaws and I could not afford more uniform pieces. I was also forced to cut my real, natural nails and they tried to make me rip my natural eyelashes out as I was falsly accused of having eyelash extensions. They let plenty of students wear full faces of makeup and acrylic nails but they picked on me because I was diagnosed with autism at the time, had the power of being head girl and clever enough to form valid arguments against the teachers abuse.
I had an incident with a teacher who would make me have severe panic attacks when I saw her and they refused to remove me from her class and promised me they would for the new year. They put me in 3 separate classes the following year to torment me.
I had no physics teacher for 2 years during my gcse exam years and teachers were constantly leaving or on maternity and our grades were massively impacted despite thousands of pounds being spent on ridiculous, unneeded things such as broken hand writing pens and books with the welsh landscape printed on them.
A student was ragged off his chair in an engineering lesson onto the floor for poor behaviour and similar things have allegedly happened. The teachers are clearly physically violent and can’t handle all types of students. The ones who weren’t aggressive would just allow loud and disruptive students to ruin the lessons for the students who were actually trying.
I have many more stories like these and it’s shocking. I ended up needing therapy after I left and the treatment of me by teachers has contributed massively to my trauma and I urge any parents to put their children in ysgol eirias or ysgol aberconwy instead.

Rubbish school, went there for 4 years, made me feel rubbish about my mental health, hated every single bit of it, they don’t sort out bullies, rubbish school

Would not recommend sending anybody here, wouldn’t be fair on the kid. Teachers have minimum effort when teaching, the food in the canteen is inedible, once received a sandwich that was frozen in the middle. In some lessons there are clear favouritism shown by teachers towards other students. the sixth form is even more of a joke.

very not good, got pushed down the stairs by anne webb and she laughed in my face as i bled from the ears, eyes and nose. The only reason I’m giving this 2 stars is because of Mr Bellis who is amazing. #FreeMrPethica