Please reconsider before sending your children here
Here’s the real truth at limpsfield grange. This school is not a great school for autistic children. The staff do not understand that there is many different ways from why children act like the way they do. Not only did most of us come from a poor primary school, but that this school restricts us from talking about our past experiences making us bottle it up.
I am a student here who has been here for quite some time and I think that most of the staff here have treated me horribly, not understanding why I am like this or how I react. Everytime I think of the school makes me want to leave, and go to a normal school.
Some of the teachers are down right awful, being racist, homophobic and more. I have only found about 4 teachers which I fully respect or I like and feel comfortable with talking to them, the other times I feel like I’m forced to be silent and scared to do something wrong. I can’t even put my hand up without being in fear.
However, the boarding part of this school yes it’s great, sometimes the food options aren’t great, but some of the staff are understanding and caring. They let students have downtime, and calm down after a busy day at school.
The students are the only enjoyable thing here and some of the students are horrible. You can clearly tell who’s favourite and who isn’t. As a favourite it obviously come with perks. I have only found two teachers that favour me and other classmates and discipline the students who need it or in my case if I act up and need someone to talk too. However some teachers are completely unfair, favour the students who are horrible to others and they don’t even try to hide it. It’s actually horrendous that some teachers think it’s okay for the favourites to make jokes about inappropriate subjects like suicide. However if we so dare to step out of line we get a ‘consequence’ and get sent to a room called the ‘white room’ basically isolation or up to one of the deputy’s head office were we will be yelled at like mad and don’t get any lunch.
Please reconsider taking your children here and yes I will be speaking out about this more often about my experiences. There are many over experiences that I’ve had but I don’t want to say just now because I fear the teachers actions and how they will react to this report and that they will be able to narrow it and know it’s me and who I am behind this screen. Thank you for your time, and I hope ofsted comes back and sorts this school it needs it.
This school is disgusting.
The staff/teachers and TAs are unprofessional and rude to students and sometimes even each other.
Many are racist or have very rude opinions on certain topics.
You get HARSH consequences for the tiniest things and the teachers overreact at everything.
They don’t care about your education or happiness, just the fame from documentaries and money.
A lot of staff are verbally abusive to the more vulnerable students here.
SO many students I know have left the school since i’ve been here, its alarming.
I went to this school a couple years ago. Worst 5 years of my life. I almost committed suicide 3 times whilest being here because of just how badly I was treated. If I had a panic attack it was seen as misbehaving and I was shut up in a white room, with windows on the door so everyone could stare at me like I was a freak. It was horrible. I hated it here. If your thinking of sending your children here. DONT. Unless you want your kids to end up with many more mental issues than their special needs(I developed Anxiety, Depression and PTSD whilest attending here) it is horrible. If you like anything that the teachers deem “devilish” or “inappropriate” for instance : Anime. Because it’s not “age appropriate “ they will try their absolute hardest to try and force you into not talking about things that make you happy. If you bump into someone and apologise, you get detention because your “bullying” them even though you apologied immediately. Your phones are locked away so if you needed your phone because of an emergency you can’t use it. If you do it’s confiscated and locked in the teachers drawer over the weekend sometimes. And when you eventually do get it back you immediately get in trouble for turning it on to text your parents. It’s more like a prison than a school.
they don’t care about your education, so bad they don’t clean the school they always have no good food all the staff are so disgusting and disrespectful they banned all phones for everyone and always say no when you ask to go they also banned all movement breaks for everyone
The school is so bad I was there for 3 and a bit years and barely learned anything the teachers and TAs are rude and don’t help you at all if anything they make it worse by surrounding you till you have no over options and one point in year 8 at the age of 12 I had a TAs tell me the I need to roll my skirt down as “there is no boys here to impress” my skirt wasn’t even that short but even if it was that is not the point who says that to a child they can’t keep teachers around for long and always changing them and as a girl with autism I don’t like change they are supposed to be trained to work with autism but they are not when it came time to choose my GCSES I didn’t get to choose them they did that for me and the rest of my year. The head of the school also told me I wouldn’t get any GCSEs because of my attendance (my attendance was low because I could deal with going in with a 2 hour taxi drive there and back to a school I hated) but when I was in school I was one of the smartest in my class with some of the hardest grades
All together please do not send your daughter here so glad I got out when I did
My daughter attended here for a short while. They cater for one kind of autistic child. Their policies do not apply to all children, as they choose which children recieve harsher punishment over others.
If you challenge the school, they simply stop communicating with you. The only communication ip
s to reinforce their rules, never to address concerns, regardless or repeatedly requesting help or information.
When they are asked to explain or give more information they again do not communicate and treat the parent as they do the child.
They believe they are inferior to all.
When I informed them that I was removing my daughter from the school, not at one point did any member of staff try to resolve things or communicate with me.
I am relieved that my daughter only attended for a short time.
The beautiful grounds are the initial attraction for the school. Strip that away and you are left with staff that are stuck in their ways and unprofessional.
Even though it is explained when you view the school lessons are so basic. If you have a child that is not the stereotypical autistic, the school does not give enough. If they are into sports, music, dance, or drama like to learn another language, None of this is happening at that school, your child is restricted to the basics.
The school is also totally lack with cultural diversity.
Minimum amount of GCSEs allowed to be taken, favourite students are picked and clearly treated better - get given less harsh “consequences”
Teachers over react to small situations - giving over the top consequence that don’t even relate to the situation
Bad stay away they only help one specific type of autistic person they don’t know how to learn that it’s a spectrum not just one size fits all
I joined this school in 2017 and left a couple months later. I have had horrible, even abusive treatment from the staff and TAs. I was a part of the boarding school and I am appalled by the way they treated me.
During a sensory overload, the teachers surrounded me and grabbed me to the point that I felt I had to defend myself. I kicked one of the teachers and was isolated for over a month. They would deny any attempt I had at eating, and constantly force me to work, even in extremely high temperatures.
The lack of respect for transgender pupils is astounding. I am a transgender man and i was only going to an all girls school because there was no other autism specialist school in the country that i knew of, and the teacher’s cruelty when discussing my gender was frankly disgusting.
In conclusion, please do not send your child here. This school is not autism friendly in the slightest.
I’m a former student from this school and it was absolutely horrible the teachers don’t understand Anything about autism or any other mentally or physical disability. They only care about money. Sure there were some staff that were ok but the school got rid of them. Always left the horrible staff. They also never understood my needs and locked me in a room whenever nesacary my own mother regrets sending me here I was suicidal because of this institution and no 16 year old should be contemplating suicide all because a staff member told her to suck it up. I’m sorry but this school is appalling and needs to be shut down immediately
Hello, I have been at Limpsfield grange for almost 3 years and the experience of this school will take me all the way to being a completely independent adult.
My favourite part of the school has to be the fact that I can always get support if I need it and that all the staff are really understanding, in recent times a lot of staff members have moved on from their job at the school because of mainly the cost of living crisis and strikes. However I am very impressed with the quality of care that the school provides.
The boarding part is very scheduled which I like because it means that everyone knows what they’re doing that day and where everyone is. It is also really safe as students without independence are always supervised by a staff member.
Thank you all for a great 3 years of education and all the support you have given me.
The school is meant to be the only school tailored specifically for autistic girls. However, the level of knowledge of the staff about autism, anxiety and sensory issues is shocking.
Whilst individual staff members do really care and try really hard on the whole the school is staffed by those who could not get jobs in mainstream environments. Unfortunately the level of teaching is appalling and they seem to have given up on providing any substantive academic input Half the girls have to employ private tutors to learn anything.
High turn over of staff and the inability to attract quality professionals mean that the girls are taught to the lowest common denominator. If challenged the school says that distinguishing the curriculum for too many pupils puts too much pressure on the teaching staff. The classes are only 8 pupils and the whole point of the school is to provide the different profiles. However they have no interest in supporting individuals. They have a "one size must fit all" approach and because they are the "experts" hey just dismiss any other input.
It may have improved but in my opinion limpsfield grange is a bad school
I was there for only a year and during that time i learnt nothing and i have been negatively mentally affected by my time there
During a sensory meltdown that I was having I was denied noise blocking headphones and a quieter corner of the class because ‘You cant hear me’ despite the fact that several others in the class regularly wore noise blocking headphones 24/7.
Whilst I was there my class had mandatory swimming lessons which I was unable to participate in due to several mental illnesses however this did not stop teachers and the administration from regularly sending my mum letters demanding that I participate.
Phones are taken away at the beginning of the day and while for some people that is not an issue personally my phone is a security blanket for me and having it forcefully taken away from me seriously hurt my mental health due to feeling unsafe and being unable to contact parents for help if something was wrong.
Stim toys and things similar were banned in yr8 and above because ‘You should have gotten over it already’ despite the fact that this is a special needs school that has many autistic students who rely on stim toys to regulate emotions, not to bodily harm etc.
They are dismissive of the visually impaired. My class had a few students who were visually impaired and the P.E. teacher forced me to throw balls at girls that could not see you if you stood a foot away. Most of the time I got yelled at for not throwing it at them despite the fact that when I did throw it towards them it usually hit them which also led to me getting yelled at.
Despite the fact that they are a special needs school they do not have any quiet spaces or rooms meaning that any student struggling with communication, sensory, physical or mental issues could not leave the noise to calm down/recover.
I was given a special pass at lunch time to sit outside of the lunch hall however since I was sitting there several other students would crowd around me and pester me even when I told them to leave. Despite asking teachers several times to allow me to eat somewhere quieter or to make the girls go away I was denied. This led to me never eating in school and regularly going hungry for the entire day.
While this school is an all girls school they do have several students who identify differently. There was no support etc for these students. Changing rooms didnt have closed off areas for those uncomfortable with changing in public etc.
Overall: Please stay away. It may be a good school for some but for me I have left traumatised without learning anything.
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