Pen-Y-Dre High School

In a sentence, the most embarrassing highlight of my teaching career and by extension, one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.

I didn’t take me very long at all to figure out what kind of school Pen Y Dre is. On the very first day, I was stripped of my basic entitlements. It all started with staff unable to fulfil basic timetable entitlements as a Newly Qualified Teacher. As an NQT, you are entitled to 10 frees in your 2 week timetable, I only received 6. I queried this on the very first day of school and seemingly nobody had any idea what I was talking about. It took me months the get to the end of this quarrel, where in the end I was “told” that this is “justified” and “fair”. Completely fabricated nonsense. This is was first glimpse I had into the levels of corruption that has plagued the school system.

Firstly, there are massive behavioural problems within the school and the behavioural policy is so poor it may as well not exist. Any self respecting members of staff who care about the children’s education who raise concerns about this are dismissed, censured and even punished for speaking out.

One colleague I worked with was put on an “action plan” for simply raising concerns over the poor behaviour and attitudes to learning exhibited by an alarming number of learners.

Being self-sufficient is essential in this role as having to rely on any other staff members to get the simplest of admin/ IT based requests fulfilled is like waiting for it snow on Mars, as on more than one occasion I have had to resort to practically begging and pleading to have any computer / technology based issues resolved.

The children, by their nature seemingly have no regard for manners, decency or a very basic level of respect. I was often left wondering how any parent would allow their child to act and speak to members of staff in such a rude and casual manner.

Children also lack basic school equipment due to either monetary restrictions or more realistically, laziness and complete rejection towards the idea of organisation and taking responsibility for oneself. I once joked that there is irony in the name of the school Pen Y Dre, as when you are stating lessons, half of the class doesn’t seem to have one (a pen). I even had some pupils that didn’t even have bags to put there things in. This then engenders a strong sense of entitlement within the children, as they would learn to expect every thing to be handed to them. Imagine going to a job and asking your client to buy the tools for you to do your job. A completely hopeless and backwards way of life.

Staff coddle children and refuse to exercise discipline, enabling the children to become highly skilled at manipulating situations to their advantage and often taking advantage of the benevolence and kindness of staff members. Teachers here don’t believe in discipline which if you think about it, is a complete paradox. No wonder behaviour is so bad when the children are trained to play the victim rather than to take any responsibility whatsoever.

As for pastoral duties, heads of year support for form tutors is genuinely non-existent. When form tutors actively seek support and advice, again this is met with the archetypal, learned, classic dismiss and deny to an almost manipulative level. I would query issues with my form class and these would be swept under the rug, leaving me with no options. This left me feeling like I was stranded at sea without a paddle.

SLT actively run any remaining shred of staff morale into the ground by establishing what seemed like a school wide, conspiracy-like cover up of any behaviour problems. I remember feeling like I was living in some sort of dystopian simulation or an episode of Black Mirror, where nothing around me seemed to mirror the experience of other staff.

To illustrate this, I remember once sat in a meeting where the head had commented on the school’s “strong approach to behaviour management.” I couldn’t believe the audacity of this statement. As I tried to make sense of what I was hearing, I could only logically attribute this to either utter delusion or complete corrupt conspiracy cover up. Either way, nothing could have prepared me for the way that these people lied to themselves about how good job they were doing. It was complete lunacy.

Pen Y Dre is less school than it is a criminal youth rehabilitation centre. Ideally, one sets out to become a teacher in order to try to teach young people to become the best versions of themselves as proud, upstanding citizens of the future world and members of their community. At PYD, you instead feel like you are actively trying to teach them how to prevent or at least delay the inevitable prison sentence that awaits them in the future. This gives you an idea of standards of the school and the expectation levels held by teachers.

I learned many things that to got me to succeed during my time at PYD. I learned to lock the door as soon as left my room, I learned to never give anything to any pupils under any circumstances, I learned to never bring in any of my personal belongings/gifts for the children. I learned to never remain in my room during break and lunchtime without another member of staff in the department. I learned to lock up any personal belongings in my classroom when absent from school from illness or any professional development courses. You simply could not trust anyone soul to act with a modicum of basic human decency. Granted, these rules would be commonplace in places like a zoo or a prison, but you the last place that you would expect to do this would be at a school. I learned the hard way to drastically lower my levels of trust from that of the normal standard.

When I addressed the behaviour issue with my supierior. I was told that “detentions don’t work” as if this is something that they had just accepted and given up on rather than trying to reform their approach to behaviour. If this doesn’t convince you to reconsider going to this school, then nothing will.

Such is the approach to life at Pen Y Dre. Staff who have been around for long enough have either given up or never truly cared about children to begin with for deciding to stay in such a toxic school. Simply by being affiliated with this place is an affront to everything that makes a teacher, the training, the procedures, you name it. Everything goes out the window when it comes to this place.

During my tenure at PYD, I had been sworn at, threatened, had things thrown at me, been locked out of my room, had my possessions either stolen or destroyed, slandered online and disrespected on a daily basis as if it were some sort of game. Kids here don’t have any respect and they do not see you as a superior, they address you by your first name is if you’re a peer or even a friend. This does not happen in a regular, self respecting school.

One staff member had, very sadly, taken his own life partly due to work stresses and pressures due to feeling constantly overwhelmed and burned out by these horrible children. So you could say that their blood was on the school’s hands and I maintain that this was the reason full stop. Still, as you can imagine, staff just cried about it and then went back to doing nothing about their awful school the next day as you could expect.

If you have read this far then let this be the takeaway for a very lengthy rant by a disenfranchised former employee. If you have any love for your children then please do not send them to this dumping ground run by a bunch of jumped up, sloppy, run of the mill rugby coaches turned teachers who seemingly got their degrees from a lucky dip. At the very least, I can say that I survived this god forsaken place. Rant over.

Barley helps bullying, scraps everyday and so much drama only thing good is the pasta pots but because of the new build they’re cancelling the halls and selling meals for £2.70 even tho the pasta wa only £1.05 (with sause £1.70ish) Mrs vinnicombe, miss Tandy and mrs Davies (english) are really nice teachers. There’s also a phone ban so if you wanna use ur phone anytime in school go somewhere else

bullying isn’t handled well, filming during swimming lessons, isn’t inclusive to poc and lgbtq students, mainly only boys sports clubs

A really friendly school and a lovely environment to be in. All teachers really care about every student and offer so many amazing opportunities for the students. Like extra curriculars and sports and ect.

Good good friend to play it all together on the play and watch a