Packwood Haugh School

I would not recommend this school to anybody. The ethos of the school is ‘Grow and develop as individuals in a happy, caring and supportive environment, making lifelong friends along the way’. This certainly was not my experience. It does not have a caring nature, instead it breeds a culture of bullying. The staff at the school do not take pupils concerns seriously or into consideration. My experiences at Packwood have left me traumatised.

Moved our kids two years ago, definitely a bad school you’ve ever heard. All liars! Bullying, racist, and disrespectful from the head and teachers. They have double standards for those local kids.

Our child recently left Packwood. I have to say the school grounds make it and the children really do make the most of them. The school puts on the most wonderful shows, most recently Grease. The music department is also excellent. ALL teachers are very approachable and there are a good set of parents. The leavers events were very special, albeit we did have make a significant contribution.

Some of the points that I feel could be improved to really help the school. When it comes to sport it is quantity over quality. The children do sports most days, which is excellent for their physical and mental wellbeing. However the majority of the time it is taught by all of the teachers and teaching assistants, rather than specialist sports teachers. Your child may have access to a specialist sports teacher, but only if you pay an exorbitant amount extra per week, which I couldn't bring myself to do. Therefore it could be a science teacher, history teacher or geography teacher taking your child for cricket, for example.

The communication in general is pretty poor, a lot of fixtures and team selections are sent out the day before, not giving much time to organise spectating. It was because of this that we seldom made it to a fixture. When we did make it, it appeared other local prep schools were far more prepared for fixtures and the quality of coaching was superior. I always found this interesting as their fees are all significantly less than Packwood.

There are a large amount of Teachers Children and since the merger, Shrewsbury Teachers Children in the school. It has to be getting on for 12-15% of the overall amount of pupils. Undoubtedly they will be getting significant discounts which is passed onto us parents with Packwoods ever increasing fees which are, as mentioned, far higher than other local prep schools.

Since the Shrewsbury merger it is clear that the school is slowly becoming more aligned and has an agenda to increase children moving into Shrewsbury. Whether that be a push on certain sports to suit Shrewsbury or the Shrewsbury Admissions Officer floating around at certain events. Packwood was and should still be of the mindset of a truly independent prep school, looking to place a child at a senior school that is most suited to them.

The school activities were totally over played before we joined and many were not available. With the school finishing so late, if your child takes part in clubs outside of school then Packwood probably isn't for them. Many other schools allow children to finish say at 4pm, giving them the opportunity to take part in external clubs. At Packwood children do not finish until gone 6pm and in the younger years they do not do any prep. So they will have to stay on for a club/ activity that they're not potentially interested in. On many occasions our child didn't get their first choice. Additionally two out of three Saturdays are compulsory which are usually just made up of a handful of lessons and then inter house matches (sixes) rather than school fixtures. Quite an archaic approach and many schools have phased out Saturday school.

Since the Shrewsbury merger some of the more longstanding members of staff have seemed less engaged. Not sure exactly why, but it was pretty apparent to parents that they lost their spark. Would be worthwhile looking into as they are fantastic educators.

I know my review may come across as negative, but it isn't. The school knows where is excels. I wanted to highlight, in my opinion, some simple changes that could really help to improve the school and important information perspective parents should be aware of.