Darton Academy

I mean, its about as much as you can expect from school in general, its never gonna be great and somewhere you want to be but they could've atleast made it bearable. And scratch what I said at the start, its horrible, the staff are fine for the most part but the environment they put hundreds of GROWING CHILDREN in is actually diabolical. I mean, the tightest stairways, your always being pushed about, flung into walls by year 11s that look like they should have they're own job at this point, and the lessons are fine I mean, literally just school but I found that some were just like a broken record, it felt like they were running out of things to give us to learn so they just said 'oh well! give them a book meant for keystage 1 and let them analyse it for a month!' And don't even get me started on this stupid little 'rewards system' for having 'good attendance' and learning or whatever, if you do good in lessons they stick a little sticker in your book and say 'oh you can go to the hall on friday and get a bag haribo tangfastic' which is miniscule and weighs about 2 grams, you could probably get more value shoveling driveways for the local grandma's and getting an ACTUAL bag for probably less of the work. Oh and don't think I forgot about the 'good attendance' thing, basically 'good attendance' is something like anything above 97 percent or something absurd like that, meaning if you have a few emergencies out the year, they'll cut you out of SCHOOL TRIPS, and a whole pizza party (which doesn't look all that good to be fair) but still, it just makes it out to be like they don't wanna use money on extra kids when they can just kick a few off because they weren't absolutely role model student of the year. Anyway, my point of all this is that not only does it give the image that they're just trying to make a bag over actually educating and caring for kids, it also alienates the kids, for example: what if you had to be kept off school because nobody could drive you there? (one that I had many times) well, if that happens enough, I guess your cooked all because of something out of your control, and all of your classmates are gonna be talking about that awesome school trip they went to and your just gonna be hanging about, being that one kid who didn't go because of attendance. Now I'll give a few things to them because I don't want the whole review to be me whining, for example, the food there is actually pretty good, obviously depends what you get but the pasta pots were legendary, atleast when I was there. The teachers were also a bit on and off but most were mint, English teacher I had when I was there was great, same with the maths one, a few could be a bit stubborn and just rude at sometime though, that's mostly up to how lucky you are with teachers though. One last thing before I stop yapping is that the way they handle kids misbehaving is actually just goofy. In my first months there I witnessed 2 fights with actual rings of people around them like in films, and the teachers just didn't really do much and kinda let it happen, also watched two kids in year seven that looked like they were still in primary beat eachother until they bled in the cafeteria, and no one said anything. Actually insane. Also another detail is that even at break times there was no space at all. even with spaced out breaks meaning older years weren't with younger ones, it was STILL cramped in there, I honestly think that it was just that if everyone was on school for a day it would be proper pandemonium in there, but if it was quiet it was lovely. It got to a point where I couldn't eat my lunch because there wasn't enough tables, and yes, you read that right, TABLES, not SEATS. They only allowed like 3 seats around a table which wouldn't be a problem if they didn't have about 9 tables in the whole atrium, so I literally had to bin my legendary pasta pot because I couldn't eat it standing up or I'd get screamed at by some overweight grey haired middle aged woman who thinks she has some authority over ME. Anyway that's my rant over, thanks for reading this anyway. Also if I got any details wrong that's because I literally got put into homeschooling 5 months after I joined and for a year now because it was that bad, I could rant for hours about all my stories and peeves with this school but I'll leave it at this. If your a student going through reviews to see if anyone else had the same experience then I'm over here with you pal, good luck if your still in that hellhole.

I used to come here my mental health was frozen in time for over a year the amount of bullying in the school was apauling they say go to the learning manager but whenever I went they tried to flip it on me "overreacting" and when they didn't they would say "we will sort it" but nothing ever changed I was ther through year 7 and to about 3 weeks after the start of year 8 I was thinking of leaving pretty much when I started I tried to make my situation better by moving form it took over 6 months and when it happened the learning manager was acting like it WS such a burden the wellbeing team is actually useless if you have an autistic child or any other disability do NOT make them come here I am autistic so I would know thank you to anyone who reads this please take my advice

Even before when the old school existed nothing has changed still full of useless teachers who are incompetent. Kidz sitting useless public exams which are not worth the time or effort. Need a much better system. A shame what could be good establishment considering millions of tax payers money wasted paying teachers salaries and running costs.

shocking school my mental health went down as soon as I joined