Charters School

I wish I could be positive about the school I spent 5 years in, but I want to be brutally honest. The education within subjects is varied, where some teachers genuinely were paternal and did care for you, and taught their subjects in a way you'd understand, but it varied heavily and some teachers didn't know how to control classes. Many of the " paternal" teachers tend to leave, which in my case was high. What it left us were people who didn't study the same curriculum as us, and often didn't know how to teach. I am all for solving genuine, real problems that the schools faced, but in all honesty they've tackled it in completely the wrong way, if even tackled at all.

Attendance matters of course, but what I've notice is how they've basically highlighted it as the root cause - it very much is not. Its sidelined other, arguably much more serious issues, like rampant bullying. The school has been focused over attendance, and instilling fear for the 90% of children that happen to be late to class by 1-2 minutes, but doesn't punish the 10% that are genuine concerns seriously. When I say bullying is barely tackled, I mean it. The most a child could get for it was a Headteacher's. People only got expelled after their 90th or so offence, and by that point the damage has already been dealt, meanwhilst many children within that 90% are sent to " consequences " for accumulating 10 minutes of lateness in two weeks. Of course, being punctual is important, but thats 1 minute of one lesson a day, which could be for simple reasons like the traffic due to the one way systems, though I see the logic behind it. They've got their priorities all wrong.
Racism,homophobia and misogyny is RAMPANT in this school, transcending all year groups, just getting progressively worse the older you get. Assemblies treat students like they're kids - they're not. its 12-18, and of course for the majority of your time spent here, you technically are a " child " you certainly are not fresh out of nursery either, which is how you're treated in instances. There's usually a lack of understanding between student-teacher conversations.

Safety wise, there's certainly been no outside school threats, but the drills do not prepare you at all. If anything, you don't feel safe within the actual school bounds - during the break times, there simply isn't enough staff to safeguard 1700 students, and considering the fighting problem, it ramps up quickly.

The food is mediocre- not bad, but certainly not something you'd look forward to, especially the given prices.

I overall would not recommend this school, it needs MAJOR improvements.

Great school. Strict rules meaning the kids can't get away with things. About to ban mobile phone usage in school which I think is great by having kids put phones in lockable pouches.

School results are very good.

I would not recommend Charters School.

Misogyny, racism, and homophobia are widespread and unchecked. Bullying is not taken seriously — despite meetings with heads of year and school governors, no meaningful action was taken. There is little regard for students’ mental health or how they’re affected by these issues.

Our child witnessed a violent attack in class. The teacher couldn’t manage the situation and had to call security to stop the assault. This wasn’t an isolated incident. Verbal abuse — racist and homophobic — is a daily occurrence.

Teaching standards are questionable and the staff turnover is unbelievable.

We’ve since removed our child and placed them in another school — the difference is remarkable. They finally feel safe, supported, and respected.

Charters fails to provide even the basics of a safe learning environment.

This school is very supportive of children who are observing the Holy Month of Ramadan. They allow children to either sit PE lessons or very very mild exercise. The PE teacher is Mr. Marris and he is brilliant not only with the children but also with the parents. I also want to mention Miss Lane the attendance officer who actually uses her common sense before sending letters to parents for poor attendance. This review is left by Nadeem Kiyani.

This school offers no support for the year 7s who are starting the school. These children have come from some rural schoolhouse with no more than a dozen students to a literal college with 1500+ students. They expect to be fine with the change but it’s so terrifying and overwhelming especially for neuro divergent students.

Speaking about neurodiversity if you weren’t diagnosed at birth, they don’t give a fig. Autism and Hypersensitivity can occur at any age but I don’t think they know that. Those who were diagnosed at an early age get to skip the lunch queue and eat/ change for PE in the LSC(learning support centre). They claim to have so many locations for pupils’ mental health, like the Wellbeing centre and the Maine centre but they never allow us there and I think it’s just for show.

The lunch breaks are so short (only 30m) and the lunch queue takes up half the time. Plus the timings of our Lunch changes every day and it’s so confusing. Also lunch is way too early. 11:00-11:30 are you kidding me?!? My sister doesn’t even wake up at that time. But the lunch food it pretty good. The queue is terrible. It is ridiculously long and it’s so cold outside but they won’t let us in even though everyone’s already sat down and are eating. Plus everyone in the queue pushes forward to get their food faster or are just play fighting with their mates. If you playfight then playfight. That’s fine. BUT DONT DO IT IN A QUEUE!!!!! I was pushed so hard I fell flat on my face and broke my new myopia control glasses. And the kid didn’t even get a negative( the least serious form of punishment) if my friend got a negative for forgetting her RE book in the 2nd week of Yr 7 then why shouldn’t that dude who’s been in the school for 3yrs get punished for damaging my £800 glasses?? They didn’t do anything about it.

It’s funny how they can afford trips to Japan and Belgium but we can’t have private changing places. Sure international trips are the best. But pupils get bullied severely for their figure. This one obese kid got abused daily. Sure he was aggressive, ignorant and would push people to the floor for fun . I don’t even like him but I don’t judge him for being obese. People say crap like “all the ladies are jealous of his man boobs and hips” if we had private rooms to change in or we could change in the bathrooms a lot of body shaming will disappear.

Speaking of bullying, there’s a whole damn lot of it. I don’t think anyone cares though. Saying crap like the N-word, ‘last on to touch this is gay’, harmful memes about South Asians, disgusting things about sex, and shameful things about therians has been normalised unfortunately. If you are south Asian, LGBTQIA+, a therian, a woman, an academic or neuro divergent, you won’t survive. It’s so harmful here and no one cares. It’s so toxic. This will never stop. Why can’t we just exist? I’m LGBTQ+ and people are so arrogant. So many of my LGBTQIA+ and therian friends are depressed and urgently in need of therapy. They even talk about killing themselves. I’m not even joking I have text messages I can show you. It’s out of control and the teachers do not care. In fact they are probably more racist than the students. My sister is south Asian like me and her best friend is Portugalese and both have an accent. The teachers are very racist and are constantly criticising their accents. And then they ask them to to apologise for calling her racist. Hmm maybe JUST MAYBE there’s a reason we call you racist??

With the uniform we have to wear lanyards in hideous colors like neon orange and acid green. We have to wear it all day and it’s annoying!!

Now onto the curriculum, English is pretty good. But we spend the first 10-15 minutes of every lesson reading our books which wastes lesson time but benefits us. In maths there is so much pressure in top set. We are expected to do 50 difficult algebra questions in 20 minutes and we are rushed. There’s so much pressure and too much work. We are constantly shamed by our teacher who says stuff like “ I didn’t expect this from a top set maths class” . She doesn’t allow us to ask for help and goes by the questions quickly expecting us to understand it completely.

Science is ok but my teacher is lenient to a fault. Students are screaming, standing on desks, passing notes and running around. It’s a mess. There’s no discipline and he cannot teach for his life. And we are taught about sex in too much detail. We are taught in year 7 and we have to watch videos and analyse images about genitalIa. PE is the worst. First we have to change in front of others, which is terrible. It causes body shaming and insecurity. And then teachers are constantly changing our sports. We are scheduled to do football outside and we need football boots for that. But then they change it to volleyball and we need trainers for that. They expect us to bring two separate PE uniforms. They also don’t allow us to bring a water bottle with us to PE which is ridiculous because it’s not like Algebra is making me thirsty. It’s exercise. There’s always so much pressure on students to be good at PE especially boys. And when the trans dude does PE with the boys everyone is SO HURTFUL. I’m crying right now. My friends have gone through the worst pains at this school for merely existing. Comments like “what is that girl-boy-thing doing here?” “That’s literally a girl”. PE is the toxic subject

History is terrible too. We are taught that the British helped revolutionise India by giving them hospitals, education and Railways. WE PRACTICALLY INVENTED NUMBERS. All the people you raped, murdered, whipped?!??! MY ANCESTORS STARVED TO DEATH BECAUSE OF THE BRITISH. THEY DID NOTHING BUT DESTROY OUR KINGDOMS. It’s all lies. And the white students believe them. They always gloss over the bad things saying that the white people weren’t nice to Africans/Indians. Ok so you’re telling me that raping is “not nice”…
Geography is just as bad as they tell us that China is full of impoverished people and children are allowed to work at the age of 8. They also say that they work for 24 hours which is exxagerated. China is the second most developed country in the world. They spread lies . But we have more DT than geography. Geography is much more important than DT.
We have a subject called Learning to Learn which is all about revision skills, organisation, communication and stuff like that. It’s a good idea in theory but it’s kinda useless and everyone knows the content and there’s no garde for that class. I would rather spend my time doing Geography. Every year we are behind on Geography because there are 5 topics to cover and so little lessons.

The buses arrive at 8:00-8:15 and the bells rings at 8:25. In the meanwhile, people are at the canteen, library or just talking to friends. The canteen has croissants and porridge and other breakfast stuff for students who don’t have time to eat. I think this is very good 😊. Then we have tutor time from 8:30-8:55. We do a variety of activities like quizzes, class presentations, debates, reading and touch typing. We have assembly once a week during tutor time. Our lessons are 55 minutes long with 5 minutes movement time to get to our lessons on time. We have lunch either before period 3, after period 3 , or in the middle of period three. This can be distracting from focus. We have our second break during 1:00-1:25. Teachers can set detentions during this time. We have clubs here as well like Book club( discussing books), Backstage club(creating props for drama) and Creative writing club( writing poems and stories).
We can go to the library and canteen. Library is too small. Library has terrible chairs. We have multiple computer rooms to print out homework. This break is too short. Teachers give negatives for going to the toilet. Needing to pee during class should not be punished. ITS RIDICULOUS.School ends at 3:00 but many students stay after school to do more clubs like chess club, tennis club and art club. This is from 3:00-4:15. People can also have lessons or detentions after school. There is a Cafe near our school and the path is very simple. Many students go there after school which helps connect us with the local community. The busses leave at 3:10 and 4:30.

Sorry for bad english it’s not my first language

Some teachers are amazing and help you a lot, but some, (mainly some of the HOY and tutors) are down right lazy and don’t care about your situation, during my time at the school I have been bullied and contacted school many times and nothing ever happened, except from them saying I would be put into ELSA (support sessions) and they just forgot to give me the sessions I asked for even though they said I would have them, many teachers don’t have passion for teaching and are only there to be payed and don’t enjoy their job, school isn’t clean and the state of the toilets are rank, there are food, bottles, wrapping etc in the toilets and more disgusting stuff, food prices are terrible too £2.50 for chips £1.75 for a slice of pizza and then £1.20 for a capri-sun (the only drink they have now) they’ve changed all the systems so you cannot see detention making you miss them, can’t see why you’ve been given negative or positive points on Arbor and only changed to save more money, sport is good here, good facilities like 3G, Astro, gym, and more, and they have emergency meetings when ofsted comes to the school to make sure everyone behaves and if they don’t they increase the punishment to make the school get a good ofsted rating, many teachers don’t let male students leave to go to the bathroom but let female students leave which seems a bit sexist, and the school says they focus on fixing behaviour but what they really do is just give you an afterschool and that’s it, most teachers don’t even come to talk to you during the detention (which they should do due to it being on the sheet) and you sit there for an hour wasting more time, in my opinion if your mates aren’t going here, don’t go it’s not a very good school especially if you have had problems with bullying etc…

What a delightful private school that produces such fine judges as the honourable C. Hehir, who sentences peaceful protestors to many years in prison. And to impart such vast knowledge of science that the reality of climate change can be denied. Truly an accomplishment to 'educate' such alumni...!

I cannot express how poor this school is, if your child does fit the mould, has mental health issues or struggles in a school environment then please don’t send your child to Charters. They will be made to feel like a failure and definitely won’t be supported in their education.

So I’m an ex student from this school the amount of times I went to my head of year because I was being bullied in I had support and they tried and tried that probably the best part about that school which is the LSC ( learning support centre) although they tried helping me it pushed me to give up and now I’m on my second year at college they have given me a councillor to help me through it because of the teacher not doing anything

My five years spent at this school were hell. The level of bullying experienced was near unbearable and the support non-existent. The rampant homophobia I was forced to put up with has caused damage I’m still working through now, over ten years later.

They ignored my every complaint and request for help so thoroughly, I was consequently ignored academically as well. They managed to miss my blatant dyslexia that was picked up on within my first few weeks of attending college. Instead, I was consistantly accused of being lazy and not paying proper attention in an enviroment where I was heckled and mocked for simply existing.

Further reading of reviews shows that this issue has not been fixed. The schools complete disregard for their students beyond grades and academic status is repugnant.

Recent Former student
I had the worst experience at this school. Racism, homophobia, sexism etc is off the charts within students and they don’t know how to contain it. Their measure is mainly to throw on a motivational assembly featuring some sports success story as though the students are 5, it’s not making any difference. Ridiculous expectations for uniform rules and rules in general- their solution to misbehaviour over the years has just been to increase punishment and rules which honestly resulted in worse behaviour because it made it easier to rebel against such ridiculous regimes. For example: the long sock ban. A favourite of the many sexist and misogynistic staff and teachers at Charters, they would defend this rule with their life. Of course, it is the fault of the (underage and minor) girls for being (and i quote) ‘tarty’ or ‘dressing like a prostitute’ a school which claims to be attentive to all accusations of this form, have not to my knowledge once addressed this entire situation even after being emailed about it (sending back evasive and nothing responses). The school like to market themselves under the ‘outstanding’ ofsted review they got in something like 2002, despite having changed both the headteacher and many staff since then. Since leaving i’ve watched them take fancy photoshoots and paint interiors white with the new headteachers face and motto plastered over it like some sort of weird dictatorship (not far off it honestly). They care about nothing other than reputation. You often find people are afraid to even talk about their experiences, and even if they do they are not addressed because all the school actually care about is how they look and what reputation they can hold up despite their dire and completely disgusting situation inside. I’ve never seen bullying anywhere like i saw it at Charters, there is zero freedom to be an individual for the fear of the attack from peers which is normalised within the student community from day one and not combatted by teachers even when asked to. I’ve found the most they did was place the victim and the perpetrator into a room together to ‘talk out’ their ‘friendship troubles.’ They need to wake up and recognise what they’re doing to the students who are there because most people come out of that place unhappy and unmotivated. Not to mention their dropping grades and attendees of unis like oxford and cambridge. They cling on to old reviews and fail to acknowledge what’s really going on. The only good staff were some of the english department and the caretaker. I’ve never been happier than when i finally left charters.

I am thoroughly impressed with Charters School. The teachers are knowledgeable and supportive, and the facilities are excellent. My child loves the Duke of Edinburgh Award program and the personal development lessons. Our whole family feels a sense of community at Charters.

We were a bit nervous about sending our child to a new school, but Charters exceeded our expectations. The values of Unity, Respect, and Excellence are truly embedded in the school culture, and our child loved the enrichment programs. We only moved away for a job, but we miss the school and the community.

We've been happy with our child's experience at Charters so far, but there are a few things that could be improved. The school's commitment to sustainability is great, but we've found the catering options to be limited. Also, some of the teachers could be more approachable. However, the school's values and programs are a big draw for us, and we're hopeful for future improvements.

In my experience in charters school it was the worst school I have ever been to, the teachers do not care about your opinion and if you struggle they do not help you and most students leave the school with depression or some for of mental disability.

This school is absolutely dreadful, please do not send your children there. It creates a misogynistic and racist environment where many children have to hide their ethnicities as not to be bullied. The school takes no action against abuse and many teachers share political opinions that are factually incorrect. The school looks to punish and does not foster an environment where students learn how to think and question the world around them. There are a handful of incredible teachers (it says not to mention names so I won’t) but apart from a few, the staff are awful.

don’t do enough about racism, homophobia and sexism they just don’t care really. the actual schooling is good i guess but the support for mental health isn’t that good and they certainly aren’t that well trained for people who are meant to specialise in that area