Cams Hill School

I cannot praise this school enough. The lengths they have gone to support my daughter with complex SEN is cannot be put into words. The staff are caring, understanding and they go above and beyond. I don’t know where I would be without them.

New head teacher is horrible and has changed a lot of rules do not come here as it offers a bad education

This is stupid because they put me into a isolation because I said a word that isn't offensive DO NOT GO TO THIS SCHOOL

I left this school last year and i’m very glad i did, as they’ve now added ridiculously harsh policies regarding everything except learning, which i would have thought would be the main priority. Apparently, according to them, having opinions about people if now an offence that requires taking year 11s out of their lessons 3 months before exams to send them to another school and then refusing to let them in lessons for 6 weeks, however it is totally ok for teachers to say things about past and present pupils: in my year 11 psychology, Miss Robinson took it upon herself to talk about a student that used to be in her year group and called them ‘irrelevant’, and today Miss Cutler (who for some reason has not liked me for a few years) was talking to my sibling in nexus and told him he was going to fail his exams, and turned to another teacher and said my name as if it was a piece of dirt. Not only have i been bullied for five years at this school by both students and teachers, but still after 8 months of me leaving, they continue to talk about me in a derogatory tone, and in a place where students are supposed to be encouraged and receive support. The majority of the HOY team are vile and only support those who they like (particularly Miss Kendall who accused me of lying when i repeated to another teacher exactly what she had told me). Even though my mental health was really bad at that time, she completely ignored me until i left school, even though this happened in year 10. If you value your child’s mental health and imagination please do not send your kids here. They are forced to line up in silence every morning and have whistles blown at them, each of them meaning something different, the attendance officer constantly harasses you and your parents if you are ill, and the school much rather cares about reputation than pastoral support and the quality of education.

Not amazing. All they care about it uniform and nothing else. While I was harming myself they did practically nothing about it and i was left to fend for myself. When it gets to being in year 11 they give hardly any good information whatsoever like exam results day, when they start or been things like prom, they’d rather do assemblies about kindness in YEAR11 rather than give out good essential info. awful school

i only joined cams this year and already the experience has been quite shocking. they care about the uniform more than they do the students. they punish girls for not having knee length skirts but the pe skirts are more revealing than anything. seeing a girls butt cheeks is extremely unhygienic especially for a school environment. and even worse the school CHOSE these as a part of their uniform. a pe teacher shouted at my friend for having nike socks yet there girls wearing nike pro leggings. it makes no sense to me. apparently piercings are distracting too, we are only allowed to wear one small pair of stud earrings. no bracelets or necklaces allowed. that’s distracting too of course. we aren’t allowed any form of self expression (no hair colour, nail polish, makeup, jewellery, brands, skin) nothing at all. half the people i know in that school struggle, and the school won’t do anything about it, they give you a safe space to sit at break and lunch, they allow you to be out of lesson for no more than 10 minutes and SLT are extremely harsh too. the academic and educational side of things are brilliant. they make sure your working hard in lessons and the teachers put a lot of effort in to make sure you are working at your very best. but they don’t care about their students well-being. they’re a lot of fights and bullying too. however there are some nice teachers and nice people that are there to help. overall very poor school and i wish they did better to make the school experience more enjoyable.

Amazing school. Supported my child well.

My son said mr Morrisons shouts at kids way to much he need to be fired.

Please don’t send your children here. In general the school staff care more about the presentation of the school rather than the children themselves.this is really shown by the quality of teachers they are employing they constantly fail to do anything about the poor quality of teachers there is multiple incidents that looking back it was not okay to let them get away with and thinking that’s normal. The students are not treated like humans they are treated simply like statistics. They claim to care about their pupils mental health but fail time and time again to spot warning signs. Nearly everyone i know struggled at some point and nothing was done the teachers are almost alway terrible about this as in a test once I had a panic attack and the teacher said “I don’t care be quite or I’ll give you a detention”. And for the few decent teachers there are there is little they can do. The school is also very strict on uniforms having girls punished for their skirt not being knee length and their ankles showing when wearing trousers however when it comes to the pe skorts they are the most revealing piece of clothing with girls bum cheeks hanging out of the bottom and these were chosen BY THE SCHOOL for the girls. Pupils are not allowed any kind of self expression through what they wear (no jewellery, hair colour anything but your earlobes pierced) apparently it is distracting for your education. meanwhile while there is a teacher with bright red hair their hole ear pierced and wears an excessive amount jewellery

Cams is a ok school but they only care about the uniform and not the actual school work and they have silly rules such as having your shirt tucked in, not being able to use your phone on important occasions

My experience at this school was appalling the academic side is great but bullying / harassment is appalling and the teacher to pupil realtionship is terrible

Current year 10 pupil, cams likes to act like a huge advocate for mental health but from my experience and friends', this just simply isnt the case, with my anxiety the school does absolutely nothing to help me unless I beg, suffering anxiety attacks, they let you sit out of lesson for 10 minutes, no more and the SLT team can be very insensitive and disregarding, other than this most teachers are fabulous at what they do and try to help where and when they can with the obvious exception of a few.

Got above my target grades and staff where always there to support you.

I was enrolled in cams for the full five years and it was partially enjoyable. Teachers care more about how the school looks instead of the well-being of their students. On multiple occasions teachers have singled people out and made them feel bad for not passing specific tests or not doing well in general. Students were told multiple times “you need to try harder” “you need to do better” and the teachers saying “it’s not up to me to get the grade you need”. And that’s understandable but the teachers are at blame too. They care more about how the school looks and passing blame on people. In a lesson I was doing my work and when I asked the teacher for help they just replied “you should have been listening” with no help whatsoever. All teaches favourites those who misbehave and don’t do any work and when they do they’re amazing!! When people who work hard all the time don’t get any recognition? They don’t care about the well-being of students and just tell you to get over it and forgot about it because soon it will be nothing? I would definitely look into other schools before cams. 50% of teachers are so lovely and kind and have helped me loads, but others are horrible and don’t care properly.

this is coming from a student who was enrolled here for the full 5 years
this school is horrible when it comes to actually treating students like students. the uniform policy is incredibly strict; even seeing girls being reprimanded for their trousers being too short when theyre hardly above ankle? and lets not forget piercings either. i understand thoroughly that you don't need to look 'good' at school, but what harm are piercings going to do? having more than one pair of earrings in? going to ruin your education for life, neither is it going to actually distract anyone.
another problem with the uniform they seemed to have was skirt length. they used to freak out over school skirts being too short, when the pe skirts are as short as can be, and they were PICKED by the school. and keep in mind when i talk about skirt length, most of the people actually wearing skirts only had them inbetween knee length and mid thigh.
the higher ups in the school care more about the reputation than actually employing decent teachers who are qualified to teach. goodness me, there was even an article about cams employing teachers off the street!
i even had a teacher in one of my years who singled me out just because i didnt understand, neither did i get any help. just got shouted at and embarassed infront of the whole class because i didnt know an answer. not only that but the same teacher used to make many passive agressive comments towards me once i actually did well in class, which honestly just made me feel horrible. i really cannot understand how they pride themselves on being an amazing school when even they know some of their teachers aren't fit for the job!
moving on, their 'help' with mental health is horrific. you're depressed? just go to class. we cant help you- is the basic attitude they have unless your parents actually contact them, which doesn't even help that much either.
i have a lot of criticism for this school but i also can say they do have some very lovely teachers, and that is the only lovely part about the school.
cams hill school really does need a reality check.

I know that many people have a bad experience at this school and it is in no way perfect however there are many kind and caring teachers who have your best interests and will go out of their way to help you if you are struggling academically or mentally. On the negative many find that teachers are more occupied with appearances than the well-being of the students which to some level is true with many focusing too much on uniform. Despite this there is still an effort for conflict resolution though sometimes not great but the best part of this school are the teachers so many are so kind and supportive always being there whenever needed and willing to help this is why I believe that cams despite its flaws is just as good if not better than the surrounding schools.

They accused my child of telling somebody to kill themselves on a whatsapp group a few months after she joined, i went through her phone and found nothing. The school doesn’t care about mental wellbeing and only pretends to after a student sadly passed a year ago. Every time you have a day off, they send you a letter saying how poor your childs attendance is and that their GCSEs are going to be very badly effected. I got 4 letters of them threatening to pass on the “case” to the attendance board. Please do not send your kids to this school.

In my opinion cams has been really great.
In handling the pandemic they’ve done really well, and so far there have been three student cases in different year groups, none of which have spread very far.

We have to wear masks at all times when inside, which I think is a very good decision, and we have a one way system which generally works pretty well.
The only comment I would make about this is that teachers can be seen quite frequently going against the one way system which defeats the purpose of it, especially since it is teachers that are more at risk then the students.

In terms of academics, the vast majority of teachers that I have had have been very involved in ensuring that i have achieved my goals, and am understanding what I’m being taught.

I personally haven’t experienced bullying, but my friend has and they said that the school handled it well. We have anti bullying ambassadors who do their job very well.

During my time at cams I witnessed and was myself a victim of many bullying incidents that due to lack of interest from the school staff and redirecting of the blame, these incidents continued until police involvement. Not only students were bullies, but some teachers took it upon themselves to encourage unkind comments and create their own insults. Teachers would accuse innocent students of cheating and reward the troubled students. Students that interrupted lessons, broke school rules, smoked and drank alcohol on school site(which staff were aware of) and many other unthinkable behaviours, would be treated as teachers pets, whiles all outstanding students would be lucky to be acknowledged by teachers. There are a few teachers at the school who do not deserve to be teachers according to the schools three strike rule, which in many cases has been exceeded. In particular one of these ‘teachers’ was known for his pervy reputation and his child predictor like behaviour, which caused all students to feel extreme fear of being in his class and feel threatened by his presence. In class the praise and rewards was lacking, often teachers would bribe students with sugary confections and junk food to complete work, which is completely unnecessary. Dispute this there were teachers who were so exceptional and were worthy of more than the school had to offer, these staff always offered lunchtime support and after school sessions. I believe there is a staffing issue in the school especially in the Modern Foreign Language department as almost every other term my teacher would be replaced after staff suddenly leaving without communication with their classes, leading to inconsistencies in teaching standards and gaps in pupil knowledge of the curriculum.