Calday Grange Grammar School

Awful school from the teaching to the bullying to the drugs. My son is very sporty, this school wasn’t for him, full of jumped up posh kids taking drugs or at least being offered them

Terrible school that used to be good but has gone downhill over the years.
Behaviour of the pupils is awful, kids shouting over the teacher and throwing things round the classrooms, teachers have no control. Bullying happens all the time and when kids complain they are blamed for it instead of dealing with the bullies. When parents complain, the head teacher bans them from emailing or just tells them they are wrong.
Kids vape inside and outside the school and also do other drugs. They deal them in the school and local area and bring them into the school.
If the pupils can’t do something, they are told they aren’t trying enough rather than the teacher trying to help them.
Everything on the website and on paper looks like they are good but it’s all a lie and doesn’t actually happen.
You’d be better off at any other school!

NOT as good as explained to me on open evening and when I was in year 6. Poor behaviour from most students which makes the miserable teachers nasty and mean to other well behaved students who haven't done anything wrong. Not to mention 90% of these teachers cannot control a class and within some classes there is favouritism where some teachers take the mickey out of specific students. The majority of teachers have a very short temper. Extremely underfunded school who spend all the money they do get on sports facilities which are only just above average. PE lessons are on a roster so you do a different sport every half term but PE staff are hardly there so mostly have a choice of 3 sports every week. Just to add they've just built new drama and music studios for the very very few students who do those GCSE's. Students aren't even like people to teachers just like grades as that's all they care about. Target grades make the students feel pressured and they're completely inaccurate. 90% of bullying is ignored and unresolved. Kids will bully others for the most pathetic things over and over again for years having a severe impact on their mental health and SLT will say "kids will be kids", give them an isolation and off they go; just to go and do the same thing again. The school will threaten with exclusions which theyll never follow through with. Punishments are detention and isolation mostly which teaches the students nothing at all. They will do the same thing over and over again and the school is too soft to exclude even the worst behaved students. Behaviour point system and 'form time report' is a load of rubbish as even the best behaved students can get on this report. Students just behave good when they're on this report and go back to how they were as soon as they come off the report. The school is like a prison with all the fences that former headteacher Mr Rodaway spent money on. Food is overpriced although the dinner lady's are the only nice teachers in the school so instead of building new long jump lanes for 20 grand and new music and drama studios maybe give the dinner ladies a rise (give Sheila the most). Calday's lessons are very centered around CCT's (Exams on knowledge learned in the past few weeks) which you have to revise for on top of the endless piles of homework handed out by the teachers. French is homework every lesson which gets stressful. Teachers expect us to go hours and hours into our free time just to complete a tiny peice of homework that won't even be marked because most are too lazy to mark them. Physics lessons are pointless as the teacher trys to teach physics stuff which you don't understand. When you tell them you don't get it, they tell you you should've listened and won't say it again for you to understand. One of the strictest schools I have heard of with minor things. If you have your shirt untucked, that's a detention but major things like bullying SLT couldn't care about. I haven't seen a worse student support in my life at any school. They say your a risk even if you are completely fine. I have no idea how ofsted rated this 'good' to be honest. Steer clear of this school or just be warned about the severe bullying problems.

For context I attended this school for year 7 to year 9 then moved to Chester International School; a school which I would definitely suggest to anyone going into year 10.

Calday is very miserable, even the building is just a dull mess of bricks. Most of the other students aren't well behaved. It's like a prison, just look at how many fences there are around it; the ex-head teacher Mr Rodaway was known for his obsession with fences. The grades are probably pretty good but that would only be because they cherry pick their students with the 11+ test. There is a massive inequality between students and teachers. Their number 1 rule is 'respect everyone and everything' but that is of cause one-sided, with the school expecting way too highly from students but not caring much about anything but your grades.