Guilsborough Academy

This school is a joke! It’s had no idea how to tackle bullying / racism / or any kind of prejudice whatsoever
Teachers smooth over problems instead of dealing with them and have no respect for parents or children.

I would rate it zero if I could. This school is almost going to guarantee that your child has poor mental health- sending them here is basically telling them you hate them.
Academically, the school is awful with the majority of teachers not doing a good job and sometimes even refusing to teach the lesson- one incident happened to me in year 7 where the whole class was behaving but we didn't understand but the teacher decided that he wasn't going to teach us for the rest of the lesson. When a girl in the class went to report him for it, she got punished. There are a handful of good teachers but the majority have left or are leaving and I don't blame them. Your child will not be supported at all despite how much they try to say they will help. Some of the teachers are perverts where they have been caught looking up girls skirts or at their thighs. There have been cases where teachers were put on leave for a while after insulting some of the kids calling them fat.
The pastoral and safeguarding team basically does not exist. They only care when someone is smoking or having sex on school sites- yes that happened a lot! They provided little to no care and would never take action against bullying, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, racism and sexual assaults. The bullying at Guilsborough is relentless. It is so bad that it is not uncommon to see police being called and going into the school due to their lack of help. It is not uncommon for ambulances to be there either due to the high amount of physical fights. There have been many incidents with knives over the years and kids threatening to take their own life at school while holding a knife. Guilsborough hardly ever looked after students with eating disorders or self-harm issues- they ignored it, punished you or didn't take responsibility for not keeping things like craft knives locked away so many kids used those to cut themselves with.
The school itself is disgusting, they hardly clean it and there is lots of graffiti- even the kitchen was gross. There is always at least three windows broken at one time and so many chairs are broken. They haven't purchased new textbooks in like 10 years so students have to scrape together loose pages. The disabled lift has been broken for ten years at least so if you are on crutches, you won't be able to learn anything as you will be stuck sitting in pastoral where you will be ignored and they will never send you any work so you will be behind.

They are very aware that sexual assaults happen but never act on it- as a student, I was raped most school days for 2.5/3 years right in the view of the cameras and yet they still did nothing- I was also strangled on camera and know that they have definitely seen the assault as they spoke to me about a smoking incident around the exact same time I was being raped.

The buses are so dangerous, they always speed, the seats fall off, The window has smashed on us, it has set on fire, the drivers have crashed into teachers cars and swear loads.

They are extremely understaffed and teachers lack qualifications- I had a science teacher for health and social care who said that I was actually more qualified to teach the subject than them.

Students often end up smoking, taking drugs or drinking alcohol on site just to cope with the stress of school and poor mental health.

If it wasn't for COVID, I would have failed most subjects- I already had to drop two GCSEs because the teachers were so shockingly bad. I was a very good student or was very academically focused but this school played a huge factor in my suicide attempt- they even refused to let me in school for a while because they couldn't make sure I was safe..?

I could go on forever about how awful this school is- please send your child ANYWHERE ELSE. You'd be setting your child up for failure.

The school was brilliant when I was there the staff were so helpful and I left school and started College now in my 2nd year of college and I couldn't of done it without the school they are amazing. Keep working hard guilsborough your doing me proud.

The school has no consideration or empathy for anything the students could be going through. The pastoral team is a joke, the staff are useless and clearly should not be in the job they are in. When students manage to work up to courage to speak up and talk to someone, very little is done to help. I have heard teachers mocking and laughing at students who suffer with things like autism, depression or problems with anger. They let students get away with disgusting amounts of racism, homophobia and transphobia. Some teachers have a really good bond with the students and seem like they genuinely enjoy they job, but this is a rare occurrence as most good teachers end up leaving the school for somewhere better. The school seems to care more about statistics than the actual students that are attending, would not recommend sending your child here.

Mr Rogers if you are reading, this is not about you we all love you please don’t ever leave <3

The new head seems to care too much about uniform and lesson structure to actually notice the students mental health problems. Tutor time is used to teach us about "mental health weeks" etc but we arent taught how to manage our problems. People are horrible, and arent taught about homosexuality, disabilities, mental disorders etc, and are often spiteful because they know no better. Although I will say the amount of attention around Racism and BLM at the moment is exceptional.
Teachers are wonderful, almost all of them are lovely, mostly all are understanding, and some are very cool people. Overall the school is a fun environment but needs better awareness around students issues

It’s only just two stars because some teachers genuinely care about the subject, why they are stuck at guilsborough though is beyond me, they claim to have a fantastic pastoral department but they do nothing other than be a really weird friend for everyone who has anger issues. The school doesn’t tell students off for homophobia and it’s LGBTQ+ assembly has been the same for four years running, only covering gay men and a direct quote being “bigender and transsexual’. They get teachers to talk about anxiety who know nothing and claim to always have their “door open” when in fact they just say, “everyone feels like this now go” the new head only seems interested in uniform not addressing the obvious bigotry, sexism and racism that lives among the students who don’t change because they are never reprimanded. As an exam year, you would think I would have teachers that taught that subject but no not even that is the benchmark.

Not very good at all