Highsted Grammar School

As a newbie to this school, settling in wasn’t too easy. Meeting new people, having to walk to each lesson, different teachers per lesson etc. I have already been told i was weird, annoying etc but most importantly got told to k!ll mys3lf. I turned to the teachers for help and it got sorted in no time. One thing to add, you aren’t allowed to go to the toilet during lesson unless you have a toilet pass. I find this confusing as the teachers apparently have to “know where everyone is at all times” but children with a toilet pass have the right to go? Also, the school does NOT allow phones even in urgent situations. I do understand as all schools in Kent HAVE to do this. Personally, Highsted Grammar School is quite good and I would recommend!

I don't go there i but we are neighbors and they are always loud plus they left 2 days earlier

school is not reem. all the other reviews sum it up, ofsted reports do not match with the actual standard of the school. got to give it to them in the past year they've improved slightly but not by much, halfway through my gcses and both my maths and biology teacher are both leaving. im not reaching my "target grade" and they're kicking off over it. dont send your kids here, they'll hate you for it. dont even get me started about the bullying, racism or downright horribleness of some girls

I actually can't comprehend all the awful reviews on here and I don't want to discredit anyone's experiences but it's really not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. I do agree that the school wasn't that good with dealing with mental health previously, but I genuinely think that was due to lack of experience/training, not because they don't care. Over the past three years especially, there has been a significant improvement in pastoral care. Highsted isn't perfect - but no school is. The teachers are caring people who are learning how to do more to support students and I've personally witnessed this. It honestly is a good school in comparison to the others in the area. I do think some students who have wrote negative reviews don't specifically dislike Highsted, they would most probably feel the same if they went to any other school.

This school is absolutely awful, the staff care more about rolled skirts and jewellery more than mental health, I got a 30 minute detention for “speaking back” to a teacher when I barely did anything, the safeguarding and overall design of the school sucks, the toilets are absolutely disgusting with period products thrown around carelessly when people actually need them. The teachers and SLG do absolutely nothing for the students at this school and absolutely nothing to help the students they make PowerPoints about how you should “never leave a girl in the water” and pointless girls on board sessions that do nothing when in reality, they don’t do anything for students who are mentally struggling or who are getting bullied, instead they are told to “calm down” and are just called attention seeking and dramatic, but what they don’t realise is that the reason why the students are struggling is because of THIS SCHOOL. They don’t support people who are LGBTQ+ don’t send your kids here and if you do, don’t expect them to not leave this school with tears and depression.

My daughter comes home crying, she has been bullied since year 8 and she is now in year 10 and they have done NOTHING

this school ruined me so much vandalism and staff actually bully kids 200% dont recommend

DO NOT GO THIS SCHOOL IS TERRIBLE YOU GET DETENTIONS FOR FORGETTING A PEN YOU GET PRESSURED TO THE POINT YOUR TO STRESSED TO COPE SO THEY HAVE A LEAR SUITE WHICH YOULL GET KICKED OUT IF THE MOMENT YOU ENTER AND OVERALL ITS JUST SUCH A BAD SCHOOL PLEASE FOR YOUR SAKE DO NOT

I was a student here 7 years ago and from reading other's reviews, it only seems to be getting worse. I can absolutely support all reviews which state that there is no care or consideration to the students who are struggling with their mental health. Here are a just a few points that I have to share on my experiences at this school: Extremely unhygienic (period blood, period pads and faeces on the walls which remain on there for weeks at a time) Teachers bully the students Too much pressure Bullies seem to be glorified and praised. Teachers do not believe the students Questionable teachers who do seem to understand a thing about teaching. Detention for not getting an A or A* Punishment for being upset or not knowing the answers Punished for standing up for your rights Teachers telling students that they should know something that they have not even been taught yet and then using the excuse, "YOU ARE IN THE TOP 25%" Teachers humiliating children on purpose to get their point across. Pressure, pressure, pressure; and then being punished when you crack. Unfortunately I was very unwell during my time at school and eventually had to get home-schooled. This school basically kicked me out with the reasoning being that I was making the school's statistics look bad. This was the best decision that my parents ever made for me and I felt so lucky to be out of this prison. Even though I obtained a diagnosis of my Chronic health condition and provided this to the school as "evidence", the teachers still accused me AND my parents of lying and would try and insinuate that I was just a lazy teen who was trying to get out of school. My teachers made me feel extremely attacked and neglected during my time at Highsted. I was told that I was going to fail and that I wont get a good job or make any money because I was behind on my grades (due to being extremely unwell and having a lot of time off). This could not be further from the truth. I was home-schooled for the last few months of my school life. I got a B in Science, B in English and D in Maths (the first time I got an E!). I am turning 22, living in my own house with a very good job which I enjoy and am passionate about. I am engaged, have my own car, my own friends and my own life. I could not be prouder of where I am today. It just shows that actually, no! You do NOT need amazing grades to have a successful future. Heck, my employer didn't even ask about my GCSE's before I was hired. I am not saying that an education does not help on your road to success. What I am saying is do not be disheartened if you do not come out with the grades that you are being pressured to get. I could not be happier in my life now, but when looking back at my time at this school, all I can remember are the worst times of my life; nothing but depression, tears and misery. Parents, if you are reading this, I would strongly suggest that you look elsewhere before sending your daughter to this school; otherwise you are unfortunately just asking for your child to have bad memories to look back on one day .

My daughter is currently in year 11 struggling with anxiety and panic attacks however the schools biggest concern is whether she is on time to lessons or not. I’m having her call me close to everyday crying over how she is not being taken seriously at all. As a parent, this is heartbreaking that my daughter dosent feel safe at this school. Bullying is horrendous. Girls think it’s funny to mock my daughter when she walks into lessons late due to having an anxiety or panic attack and teachers couldn’t care less. I’ve had meetings after meetings with several members of the senior leader group however everytime they feed me all this bullshit on how they are going to support my daughter but do not follow up on it. I wouldn’t recommend this school to anyone.

Slg are so trashy. They don’t care about anyone other than themselves and it’s so hilarious because teachers literally talk bad about them to the students then leave ??. If the SLG didn’t want people to leave bad reviews about them then maybe they should stop being selfish and sort themselves out

They don’t care about anything really, only phones and skirts but chose to ignore the real issues in the school like racism, homophobia etc. They make very strict rules about stupid things thinking that the students there will actually listen to them it’s ridiculous. Black people get told of for their hair colour when white people do the same, people are getting called slurs, people aren’t safe at this school altogether yet they cross a line when it comes to phones. Hilarious

Very high staff turnover due to dreadful management of staff by the SLG. Staff are treated like dirt leading to them leaving. Students go long periods without teachers as a consequence.

This school is literal [insert every swear word here it’s censoring me :( ]. It makes me wanna un4l1v3 myshelf. On the plus side everyone’s gay but the teachers and school are actually homophobic as hell. Dont send your kids here for the love of god unless you hate them and want them to end up a depressed alt they/them with no social life sU85t4nc3 4bus3 problems and cripplingly low self esteem.

This school is literal [insert every swear word here it’s censoring me :( ]. It makes me wanna un4l1v3 myshelf. On the plus side everyone’s gay but the teachers and school are actually homophobic as hell. Dont send your kids here for the love of god unless you hate them and want them to end up a depressed alt they/them with no social life sU85t4nc3 4bus3 problems and cripplingly low self esteem.

This school is bad. Before sending your daughter to this school take notes: Bullying (from personal experience in present time) is not dealt with seriously. They make you stay in a room and do stupid sheets on "how to be a good friend". Bullying has been continuous for 3 years at this school now, including my friends. Not only is the Bullying bad, the girls are horrible, but the curriculum is so so poor. We haven't been able to use heat during food lessons during the whole time I've been in this school (because of one tiny accident that burnt a student) It has nothing to do with covid and in fact its to do with the crap curriculum here in almost every subject. I haven't had a French teacher the whole of 2022 and barely an RE teacher either. The practicals in science and in other subjects are incredibly boring and we dont learn anything from them. The science curriculum and teachers have gotten me nowhere. I now have to have a science tutor because of how crap the teachers are here. My classes grades are at 2s and 3s now all because of the teachers are useless. there is no such thing as fun at this school. In form time we are made to look at completely useless PowerPoints on how to revise or about mental health, but they don't actually help anyone. In fact this school has made almost everyone's mental health bad. Mental Welbeing is not dealt with seriously at this school one bit. The hygiene of this school is also bad. In my years of being here, I have not once seen a sanitary toilet which is empty. They probably haven't been emptied ever. This school in general is just bad and I would highly highly recommend speaking to a year 8+ before sending your child here. I am not just saying this because I am a teenager because my friends from other schools have much better experiences with everything including Bullying etc. Just because i am a teenager doesn't mean im saying this out of hate for shcool but overall the school is so poor and needs to sort itself out or I'm moving LOL

absolutely awful. all of the teachers are leaving. everybody who goes here wishes they didn’t. the head of the school is absolutely awful and is girls are put under so much pressure.

highsted is shit. having endured a painful five years at this school I'm so fed up. having done three sets of mocks in the last 6 months it's very evident that this school lies their focuses on grades to keep their high reputation which is a complete disregard for students' mental health and has become crippling. it was brought to their attention in year 10 how messed up the people were and how ill our mental health had become and it was all "fixed" by some shitty support sessions where they made bottles filled with glitter like four-year-olds. another thing that has come to my attention is that the maths department is insane - there are support sessions at lunchtimes which are supposedly compulsory as well as support sessions in the mornings which are also compulsory and during pe lessons which are also compulsory. they demand that you attend all of these to keep your grades up as I have heard from my maths teacher that part of her criteria as a teacher is that she makes everybody in year 11 get a 5 in their maths GCSE. so we have little to no free time. what doesn't help is the complete lack of maths teachers so much so that we have to combine classes and this is hindering our education because there are two sets of classes together that should not be together. the lack of support for mental health is ridiculous. they just dont seem to care because it isn't a good grade... having struggled with poor mental health for years. highsted has never handled it well and have made me feel constantly pressured to say this i dont want to and sign people up for irrelevant support programs that just clearly arent working for anybody - its a complete pisstake. they fail to see that part of the dilemma is highsted is a horrible place to be , the people are awful. the students are awful to eachother and its a dreadful environment to be and many others feel the same way. i fear going around in school alone anymore because of the spite and aggressive mindset of other students. most teachers are genuinely lovely people and get the work done with us and are helpful but also have a bit of fun too , they are my favourite part of highsted. its a shame that highsted is so shit that it drives them away. there is hardly any teachers in most departments are we are having lessons upon lessons of substitute teachers who know nothing about the subject and this close to are exams its honestly dangerous to our learning. its not fair on us- we are having weeks at a time of cover teachers and shoving a textbook infront of you. i feel so awful for the teachers at this school. having heard them talking about the SLG and the head teacher at this school is heartbreaking to hear what they have gone through: sometimes traumatising experiences as i heard from one of the teachers. the headteacher may seem sweet and nice but she is awful to these teachers from what ive heard , theres a lack of care for their wellbeing as well as their families and capabilities , theres only so much one person can do. my heart genuinely goes out to some of these teachers. they care so much about the stupid uniform and if im wearing hooped earrings rather than what actually needs to be looked at. the school is falling apart. they slut shame students wearing their skirts how they want to and what doesnt help is the pedophile teacher that stares at girls chests and legs and hovers over them and calls the students "good girls" this teacher has even been seen having porn on their screen when their shared an education video with the class. their are completely inappropriate at should not be a teacher at the school. they have been very well known to make students uncomfortable and its common knowledge at highsted that their are a creep and students tend to try and keep away. this teacher also posts rascist things online and i do believe it has been reported to a teacher before. i dare not continue because theres so many things that make this school shit , its a school built on heavy discrimination , disregard for health and lies. dont send your child here for their own sake and yours.

As a student of Highsted grammar school I can confirm this is such a bad school. It may not seem as if that's the case when you come to review your child's school, but as you get up in the academic year things change a lot. In year 7 my mental health was terrible. I'm not saying it was all over the school but the majority of it was caused by Highsted. The pressure, bullying, expectations and the overall aura of the other students. Maybe the Oxford Ratings are high due to the grades and education but I have not been the same person since I joined that school, I've lost all my confidence, I'm not complaining but please before you think about sending your child here just think about their mental health and if they tell you they don't enjoy the school take it into consideration. In my only 2 years of Highsted Grammar School I have encountered many issues that seem to be reaccuring. I've been accused of serious things such as launching a shoe at another students head, this resulted in an isolation and further exclusion ,then in the longrun the truth came out that it wasn't me however the senior lead said it was to late to punish the student who done this. There's been many times I've reported how I've felt about Highsted to the Senior roles but they either ignore you or tell you "It's a you problem" So I thought I'd get it out on here. All the best x