Sir John Lawes School

I am a student who attends Sir John Lawes school and it is not a pleasant experience. There is this one maths teacher who I will not name but they makes you feel far less capable and can not teach for the life of them. My other maths teacher has an accent you can’t understand and it makes learning an obstacle course. The rules are so unnecessary and unfair, for example you can get an isolation for wearing fake lashes but can also get the same punishment for vaping in school. They are too strict on gum and uniform. This one pe teacher is so racist and rude. When I was in year 7 or 8 I was forced to run 1500m and it was a challenge because I have struggled with fitness and weight all my life and this teacher didn’t even push me and try help me. They made me redo it twice and called me extremely unfit in front of my whole class.

I left SJL in 2021 so I'm a recent former student. My 5 years at Sir John Lawes can only be described with one word: hell. If you have any mental health problems, prepare to be belittled and accused of lying (a PE teacher who is still teaching there once accused me of faking panic attacks to get out of PE, and said panic attacks and other episodes I experienced were never taken seriously and were even on a few circumstances laughed at by both students AND staff). I'm not alone in this either, many other students I've spoken to faced similar experiences. I was also a victim of a lot of bullying, including physical assaults whilst a student here, and every single time the staff tried to find a way to blame the situation on me. Every single one of those assaults was motivated by me being bisexual and one left me with a headache and bruise for several days afterwards (my head was hit repeatedly against a window, the student got a day and a half of isolation for this, the same punishment a friend of mine got for wearing the wrong shoes). I have numerous more anecdotes of a similar nature that I could carry on listing in this review for hours, but I'll instead leave it with this; this school does not care about the wellbeing of their students, no matter how much they like to preach that they do. The facilities are fine but this "school" is nothing more than a grade factory, if you don't get 8s and 9s, they don't care. As soon as I got a chance to leave this place, I took it.

Worst school I’ve personally visited. The teachers were disrespectful and the students were far worse

while the education and lessons are good most teachers cannot control their students in or out of lesson. there is no equality or protection for lgbtq+ children and teachers do nothing about bullying, homophobia, islamaphobia or any sort of hurtful language. “bad kids” are suspended or put in detention even when they have done nothing because the teachers don’t want to cause a scene.