Soham Village College

School made me suicidal, ofsted is a set up btw it’s not real

horrible school very unprofessional all the kids are bullies school encourages it. The learning was so bad was put in all the bottoms sets went to a different school and found out I was actually capable of doing much harder work but soham limited me. All the teachers we horrible and one of them was racist to me and I reported it and got called a liar by my head of year

Worst school my child has ever been to- they got severely bullied THIS year so very recent. The school was aware of all of it and as it was my child vs multiple they did no care at all. They let it get worse until the children got physically violent with my child and hurt my child. The school issued no sanctions (no detentions, exclusions) when they was at the scene at the end but did not care in the slightest. All the child have no manners and are all bullies as the school allows them to be. The skirts of every girl is so short it can be dangerous. Yet the school does nothing about that either? Very very lazy school… poor teaching quality my child was a straight A student walking into soham village college and by the time of year 10 she was in all bottom sets… they did not help her one bit all the did was shout and not care about the children’s educations. The food my child was served was not nourishing at the slightest and had very small portions. They wanted £3 for a sausage roll that was cold and not even cooked! Robbing children!!!! (Well robbing the parents) absolutely terrible school the teachers that get employed have just slightly passed and can’t even teach. Students leave there with low grades after all they do is preach how they have ‘amazing results’ when all the kids who have them results get home tutored 😂And the teachers are very opinionated with no manners or empathy for a child struggling or getting bullied etc. In total TERRIBLE SCHOOL NEVER GO THERE OR EMPLOY SOMEONE WHO HAS GONE HERE

Amazing support. One of the best in Cambridgeshire only downside is the food

There are cameras in the toilet

They don’t deal with racism they don’t give 2 shits at all

We've been part of the Soham Village College community for two years now, and I'm constantly impressed by the staff's dedication to our child's education. They offer an amazing range of curricular and extra-curricular opportunities, and my child has thrived in their supportive environment.

There is utterly horrific handling of bullying and bigotry. From experience, the person bullying etc. is directed at is challenged and questioned by the school beyond reason and said person is the one who has to change to attempt to resolve a problem. The offenders are not punished or dealt with correctly. In my time there I can remember one singular case of repercussions for actions, this being one day in an exclusion room for persistent extreme racism after the issue was raised to the correct staff members multiple times. This creates a highly unsafe environment for any form of minority student Again, from experience, having the feeling that even the authority around you cares more for the needs, wants, and stories of your bully etc. than your basic needs and safety and any staff wanting or willing to help has no power to do so is not a pleasant feeling.

The teachers were all fantastic, very kind and patient people and very friendly as well. The head of year was not good, she failed to take note of any issues students had and did not help, even when the situation was very serious. For example, the school had very high sexual abuse and harassment rates, and very little was done about this, even when students went to her and asked for action to be taken. She brushed off these students and dismissed them. As well as this, bullying was a serious issue and it was not dealt with well by the school, this lead to someone I know personally being forced to leave the school and change to a different one because of bullying, and the schools lack of care. They essentially told this person to just “stay away from the bullies” and “walk away” if trouble was being started, and anyone who knows anything about bullying knows how ridiculous this is. In particular, LGBT students are put at risk, with a great deal of homophobia and transphobia being thrown around the school by students, with little being done about this by teachers. Food was very poor, with very little nutritional value, although the dinner ladies were lovely. As I previously mentioned, the teachers were all fantastic and very friendly, helpful, and kind people. Overall, I disliked this school and was glad to leave, the other factor making it bearable was good friends and great teachers.

My child progressed significantly while attending Soham Village College, thanks to their excellent teaching and resources. The school's values of achieving excellence with care really shine through in the way they support their students, both academically and personally.

We've been happy with our child's experience at Soham Village College, but there have been some issues with communication and organisation. The school tries to offer a lot, but sometimes it feels like too much, and we've had to navigate a few bureaucratic hurdles along the way.

The school really tries to act as if they help students. We had a sexual harassment survey recently showing how much of an appalling job the school is doing at preventing it, but they still tell girls to pull their skirts down and still ignore when people report anything sexual harassment related.

They give the odd ‘mental health’ assembly every now and then, with the same advice over and over again that clearly doesn’t help. ‘take a walk’ ‘listen to music’ yep cheers mate, depression cured. when students reach out for help with their mental health, they sometimes just get told to ‘calm down’ or ‘think happy thoughts’ luckily, the teacher that did that a lot has left.

Kids get blamed for their attendance, I wasn’t offered any help with my GCSE work after a bit of time off due to covid and another illness. One teacher said that i clearly had an attendance problem, so it was a problem i had to sort out. This wasn’t said to my face, but was overheard by a few people.

Some teachers are lovely, don’t get me wrong. Some are great at helping students and are overall friendly and great teachers, but some clearly hate teenagers. If you don’t like teenagers, don’t work in a secondary school. Some teachers clearly take out their anger on their students when they make a minor mistake.

Uniform policies are ridiculous to be honest, but this goes for any school really. My jewellery, nails, hair and all that jazz really don’t affect my education. I’m gonna be able to wear what i want in sixth form, so why do you care so much? You’re just churning out kids with no unique personality who all have the same mentality of suppressing their individuality.

Canteen food has gone downhill in quality so much, whilst the prices keep on rising. Sausage rolls used to be 85p, they’re now £1.20 and taste mediocre. Greggs sausage rolls are quality sausage rolls and only cost £1. The audacity to price food higher when the prices were quite frankly high to begin with. The food used to be much better in quality, and cheaper. Maybe stop unnecessary funding for certain departments and use that money to fund departments that need it most, including the canteen if it’s really that bad that you have raise prices by quite a bit. The sports department gets so much funding it’s ridiculous. A lot of families have started earning less money due to the pandemic, but don’t qualify for free school meals, so maybe think about that.

The school isn’t bad, it’s furbished the way you’d expect a British public school to be furbished. It’s just so many factors make it so poor.

Oh yeah, and they always talk about equality, and do LGBT stuff, but ignore when LGBT bullying happens.

Oh yeah, and we had a survey about how important it is to include the BAME community in education. One of the most stupidest surveys i’ve taken. One of the questions was ‘Why do you think it’s important to include diversity in education’ or along those lines and ‘How can we increase diversity in education?’. It’s clearly obvious, and the fact that they made this survey shows they acknowledge there’s a lack of it, and the fact they need teenagers to tell them how to be more inclusive shows how bad the problem is.

Disgraceful. Supports homophobia, transphobia, racism, you name it - they've done it. Don't send your kids here if you don't want them to leave crying.

Trust me soham your catchment go Bottisham instead before we got put in lockdown nothing but homework all my kids got no social distancing or mask measures in place just covid spreading like a bouncy ball

Place is generally awfully bad my kid was given nothing but homework during covid before the lockdown when everyone was in school and they were not doing anything to do with social distancing or masks just letting covid spread probably how we ended up in lockdown

Covid time once more to much homework not doing anything about masks or social distancing

Genuinely awful place.

Not super bad, the best state school in the surrounding area. I wish I had left the school. There were some teachers who were good but this was rare - I'd say throughout my five years there maybe five were good.

Some teachers were unprofessional. My music teacher who taught me private lessons was racist to me once - she did an accent which was derogatory towards my heritage, when I was in year 8/9. Music teacher said nothing when some ignorant student was confused about Asians and said don't Asians have the weird eyes and gestured it. In my English class a student talked about how Chinese people had taken over jobs which was unfair because his parents had worked hard throughout his life - not only did the teacher not intervene, she stared in my direction, doing nothing. Dr Geall once made an entire assembly about how bad Chinese schools were and put up a photo of an overcrowded, and dirty Chinese school saying that's what they're all like. And I know he did this assembly because of me. My technology teacher said to do a peace sign when we were taking a photo at the end of the year "like how the Asians do it in Cambridge" then glanced at me, but obviously didn't acknowledge it. I really wish I left this school, but I thought racism was normal, since I spent so many years in the area and even adults were doing it! By the time I realised I was half-way through my GCSEs and was unable to leave then. I remember towards the end of year 8 some older students hit me with a plastic bottle due to my race, I reported this but I heard nothing back. They only started caring about my reports towards the end of my time there - got to admit they handled it well, even sent a kid to exclusion for what he said to me.

It's clear some of the staff members didn't want to be there. Planning the class during the class, writing rude words on the whiteboard (business teacher when explaining how a company accidentally used a rude acronym), and in year 9 I did not have an art teacher for most of the year - only a substitute teacher who kept showing the same powerpoint. A staff member said "bitch" once but said she could say it because she heard us say it, so so could she. Was told to not talk about our private lives in class because if she hears something she has to report it, and she really doesn't want to go through the hassle. During PD class, I said I don't think racial stereotypes are good, but my form tutor said "but it doesn't actually affect them does it". In year 9 my science teacher, a Dr nonetheless, although i understand he was going through a tough time, did not teach. One time we went to class, naturally started chatting until halfway through a girl asked what we were supposed to do. He didn't say anything before, then told us we were meant to read a textbook and make a poster out of it. I also found it quite funny how we were told to always tell someone, even teaching assistant, if you're struggling - well I did and she ended up saying that it was all I did a few months later (happened in the Hub). I also found that some staff members from the Hub had searched me on Facebook - as they showed up on my suggested friends list once! A bit creepy if you ask me...

The school does have a really nice field, and it's not like I've learnt nothing there. It has great facilities and new buildings for the arts. As I have said, it's the best state school in the nearby area.

The quality of teaching is amazing which is proven in the GCSE results- however more needs to be done about bullying, homophobia and racism.
As a student I hear A LOT and teachers seem to care more about uniform and how someone looks than things that actually matter.
Also there can be a LOT pressure given by teachers and some give us work loads that are sometimes nearly impossible to do outside of school.

However I believe that this school has done me a lot of good and has really helped everyone with what they want to do after they leave.

my daughter gets soo much homework a week and there has been quite a lot of covid cases there they don’t do anything about it thought

My son is in year 8 and he is saying how bad the schools is with everything

No mask rules at all
No social distancing
Bubbles don't work when all years leave the school and walk through the main gates meaning no social distancing, no masks.

Suggest making all years leave at different times