Wakefield Girls' High School

I am a current student at WGHS and would just like to share some of the experiences of mine and my friends' whom I am writing this with throughout our time at the school.

Year 7 - a teacher, who will be anonymous, was fired for sending inappropriate messages to a sixth former. This was covered up and no parents in any year group were informed. I found out through a friend who had a sister who knew the sixth former.

Year 8 - My friend was followed by our head of year to ask if she had friends the entire year. Another one of my friends was forced into two clubs she didn't want to take part in due to loneliness. There was an EDGE - this is an extracurricular activity afternoon - created to 'help' people make friends. None of this helps people make friends and instead embarrasses them. Everyone involved was forced to join and many were already friends which was the only reason it wasn't a totally devastating experience for all of them. Another girl called me 'emotionally manipulative' after which I was incredibly upset and barely anything was done about it. We were sat down and told to apologise and that was the end. This weighed on me for the whole of next year yet her behaviour has insisted and teachers still refuse to do anything.

Year 9 - The girl previously mentioned said horrific things about a devasting experience a close friend of mine went through. There were no repercussions for her behaviour yet again despite the fact that the girl who she said them to is still incredibly hurt. The environment around us became more pressured and toxic as we chose our GCSEs. Teachers tried to tell us which GCSEs would be best for us rather than the ones we wanted to choose for our futures. I personally had many teachers tell me that I should do their GCSEs rather than the ones I had already selected. A year 7 girl was nearly kidnapped by a taxi driver from outside the front gate. When this was reported all we were told was to make sure we don't let anyone in we don't know. This is hardly enough for an attempted kidnapping that happened just outside thee school grounds

Year 10 - This girl continued to harass and insult us. She used slurs she couldn't say to refer to many of us and other friends from out of school. And yet again there were no consequences. The environment created by teachers became more toxic than it had already been due to starting our GCSEs. The amount of homework quickly piled up and stress got to many people. A different girl began bullying us and another friend group. When we decided to kick her out after having enough and nothing being done by any members of staff she left the school after claiming we bullied her out despite the fact that we did nothing. Teachers have assemblies about issues that affect other year groups or one or two students which takes up our time. There is no help in prepping for GCSEs except a few tips.

Some male teachers, including an English and IT teacher, decided that it was appropriate to enter the female toilets and changing rooms while girls were inside which is very predatory. They also check skirt lengths by putting their hands on your waist which again is very inappropriate for adult male teachers to do to female students.

Overall, this school has it's ups but mainly its downs and lack of care when it comes to safeguarding issues and providing the students with a healthy and happy learning environment. I wish I had left however I am here till sixth form.

This school is not what you will expect for a private school. The school is underrun and really needs an improvement like they did with the junior school but cant be bothered with the high school.
if you want to but food at breaktime the prices are ridiculous its like 80p for a freddo, considering we pay so much for this school the prices for snacks should not be so high.
the school spent money on the church inbetween the school grounds and it was a waste of money as it was not needed at all
most teachers are lovely but some teachers need retraining on mental health issues and learning disabilities and so on
access arrangements for exams like gcses are quite good from my experience but only because i acted thick to receive extra time in my exams
if your skinny, white and pretty then you will get alone fine here but if you slightly different you will get stared at and picked on by the popular girls
you can tell that some teachers just dont want to be at school and some just walk out of lesson randomly and dont come back for like 10 minutes
if you manage to make a few friends then you should be fine for the most part
also the toilets are the best place to go at break with ur friends even tho the sixth formers can snitch cos they are very strange
overall im so glad ive finally left now after finishing my gcses, hoping that me being able to teach myself payed off because some teachers just cant teach some topics and explain it the same way they did before which obviously doesnt help
also you can get forced to go to clinics at lunchtime because the school only cares about your exam results and the schools representation 💀
honestly dont go here, your daughter will not be happy at all and will end up becoming very sad and lonely
p.s. almost everyone here is not posh but rich and they do drugs every weekend

I have attended this school since year seven and have seen it get gradually worse over the years. There are a few main issues i think need to be fixed.

1. school meals and lunches
2. support from teachers
3. dropping grades
4. toxic environment
5. school fees
6. wrong priorities
7. positives

1. To begin, school lunches are a MAJOR issue. As someone who is a fairly picky eater, i really struggle to find any food that i can eat. This has particularly worsen in the recent school year as the meals and catering were changed. Usually, i used to rely on going upstairs, as they always had jacket potatoes and sandwiches etc. every day. now, they have stopped providing this. They are too focused on making everything “healthy” which i understand is a priority for the teachers, but for them i think they should be more concerned about the fact that half of the school isn’t eating any proper at all. Personally, I have stopped going to school lunches completely, and 2 terms into the year, i think i have only attended lunch 2/3 times. It’s honestly just a waste of time, if you’re on last bell, there’s never anything left. there are limited options for vegetarians etc and honestly just give me a plain cheese sandwich and i’ll be happy i don’t need salad and mushy tomatos on there thank you!

2. There are two aspects of this section. firstly educational support from teachers. While some teachers are good at helping you others are 100% NOT. If you’re stuck on something or need extra support you are told to “go to clinic.” clinic times are never clear and many people don’t like attending them as they have too much going on at lunch, or simply don’t like going because it feels embarrassing. I have had multiple instances where my teachers have gotten annoyed with me for not knowing something when they haven’t even taught us it. The teachers rush through some part of the topics and spend too much time on others ans honestly some of the lesson plans just need to be sorted out tbh. I have also had instances where i have asked for help from my teachers and i have gotten super unhelpful responses. for example i struggle with comprehensions and being able to phrase my answers in english and when i went to the teachers they just said “you’re doing great, you don’t need help”. If i didn’t need help why would i ask for it?????
Secondly, pastoral support from teachers. Honestly the pastoral support in the school is just not good enough. They focus too much on little things like uniform and other small issues but fail to do anything about the fact that half the school is getting bullied, people are saying slurs, kids are vaping in the bathrooms and no one wants to be there. honestly just get your priorities right. Also, the point system doesn’t work at all. it’s meant to be: 3 points- lunchtime detention, 6 points- afterschool detention and 9 points- saturday detention. HOWEVER, i know girl who have had 20+ points and not recieved ANY detentions, and yet one of my friends received an after school detention for effectively not being able to do the work in class time because the teacher hadn’t thought us the content for the work we were doing.

3. okay so more or less the overall academic quality of the school is dropping. One of the main causes of this as far as i’m aware is the fact that they are allowing students who are scoring low on the entrance exams into the school in order to keep their numbers up. Honestly considering they’re meant to be teachers surely they know that if they let kids into the school who can’t achieve good grades, their grades are going to drop, and their numbers are going to decrease. The school is effectively not even selective anymore. If they were more concerned about grades than numbers then maybe their numbers would decrease as the grades go back up???. just a thought 🤷‍♀️. Considering my english teacher has told me multiple times that the year 11s don’t know what an adjective is, there’s probably an issue.

4. The environment throughout the school is extremely toxic. The popular groups are completely horrible to the majority of the rest of the year. the school does nothing about this. The majority of the girls in these groups come from the schools junior section, and those same girls are the ones with the bad grades. The school asks why the year is so toxic, maybe it’s because you taught them to be like that in YOUR junior section!? I will say that this has gotten better for me personally as i’ve gotten older, but i know it’s still an issue throughout the school.

5. The fees are ridiculous. The school keeps buying and putting money into buildings that they don’t need, and are upping the school fees as a result. STOP BUYING RANDOM BUILDINGS LIKE WHAT??? anyways moving on.

6. The whole school has got its priorities so wrong. They’re more concerned about your skirt length and whether your hair is tied up or if you’re chewing gum or on your phone than the wellbeing or the grades of the students. I’ve seen other reviews saying all they care about is grades, but personally, i hardly even see that. If the teachers cared, maybe they’d give us some actual help rather than just “go to clinic”. Another thing is homework. Teachers act as if their subject is the only subject you take. They get annoyed when you ask for extensions and don’t seem to acknowledge that you might be flooded with all your other subjects, they just see it as an excuse.

7. honestly i could probably think of more to say about this school but im going to stop here. Now im going to say some things that aren’t so bad. Some of the girls are really nice- i am someone who has a pretty wide friend group and gets along with everyone, even people in the “popular groups” (but that doesn’t mean i don’t see how they act to others). SOME of the teachers are good- particularly the geography and history departments as well as the latin department and some of the chemistry teachers.

That’s all for now, bye.

The place doesn't care about you and the way you learn they care about the way they want to teach they will not let you have your hair down or where a bit of jewellery because it affects the way we learn you. they care about everyone looking the same and that there happy not the students it drains your mental health with how long the day is and then the amount of homework if you don’t do the homework then you get detention even thought trying to do homework eat tea and get a wash in one night is hard enough never mind if you have a club or sport. two of the teachers are just weird they “just want to check your skirt isn’t rolled up” when they put there hands round your waist not to mention there male teachers the place is shit and your mental health is shit when you are here I speak to friends out of school who go to local one near me and yes they check your shirt isn’t rolled but not by wrapping there hands round your waist they don’t get the amount of homework we get there days aren’t as long and they still achieve the same grades as me there not treated like shit ether the numbers ant this school aren’t as high as they should be I wounded why. You do one thing wrong you get a point if you get three of them it’s a detention another three after school another 3 Saturday another 3 suspension another 3 expelled you do 15 things wrong you kick out of the school. It’s meant to be a place you look forward to come to see friends get out from under your mums skin not a please you should dead coming to every day

I am a parent who sent both my daughters to the junior school and then onto the high school. They both decided to move to do A levels elsewhere, achieving excellent results in the process ( state sixth form)
I think this school achieves its aims, in the sense it provides an academic environment with lots of other opportunities.
I think unfortunately it creates a very unhealthy environment from a mental health point of view and really falls short in recognising when students are becoming unwell. I would even go as far as to say when recognised by teachers / the school nurse absolutely nothing is done even when a crisis is reached.
The school does not offer a holistic nurturing environment where all needs are met. This is a significant shortfall of the school.
The dog eat dog ethos with hierarchy based on wealth and status can erode even the most confident, able of pupils.the teachers have favourites and there is a real clique.
Sending my girls to this school taught them the importance of education and discipline but did little for their confidence. One of my daughters is very unlikely to ever be free of the legacy from this school, despite achieving well academically.
The bottom line is whilst education is important the academic hot house of this school does not suit all children who pass the entrance exam. They might do just as well elsewhere, and hopefully the pastoral aspect is better.
The standard of teaching was also really quite variable ranging from poor to very good.Parents evening, the staff were going through the motions.

srsly dont go here. it will drain ur mental health, and the p.o wont do nthn abt it. they dont do jacked shite abt it. go to them and theyll be like "go to....." aight. kms ☠️ the food is crap and has gotten even worse since the nee cools came. they got rid of all the good food. the tuck and peppers is rlly expensive i cant afford it anymore. the teachers r js as bad. some males ones are pedos and come
into the girls toilets. not to mention how rude some of them are. we pay way too much for this.

I’m a former student from a while ago now, but as they still send me the stuffy “keeping up appearances” school magazine each year, I’m pretty confident that not much changed (except apparently you can wear trousers now! I wonder if you still have to wear the same humiliating gym kit, and if the teachers still make you feel like an enormous sea creature if the mandatory kit doesn’t fit you…)

I only had very few friends while at this place, and I kept none of them. We were just trying to survive the experience, and I do feel that this factor made me more easily manipulated. I wish I’d learnt to be my own company better sooner, but part of the fear of being alone there was in case you ran into other students. The popular, the rich, the “beautiful,” the “my daddy’s a governor,” the “my daddy buys me everything and so I can cyber bully you and tell you to kill yourself with no consequences,” even the intelligent ones were intimidating. The pressure began immediately. I was from the very beginning made to feel worthless by staff and pupils alike. I was told I was there because everyone felt bad for me and I’d surely be bullied if I went to a normal high school! Well, unsurprisingly after reading other people’s’ experiences, I will tell you that it does indeed happen. And that they sweep it all under the rug. Bullying, the pressure they put on you, the tolerance seems to have gotten worse from reading here, but the homophobia I remember being devastating. And their failure to deal with mental health issues was always terrible, I had hoped it would have improved by now.

It was a horrible and traumatic experience that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Apart from the people who’s fault it was that I suffered. And those heartless people would be the ones to thrive there. I am happier now than I was then. And I’m chronically ill, have depression and anxiety now. If anyone threatened to turn back the clocks, I couldn’t bear to relive it for anything.

I feel it’s important to point out a couple of positives from my experience, and that is a couple of members of staff who I believe have moved on by now. I hope that they are thriving in a better environment:

-Mrs Slack, my French teacher, was amazing. Strict, but in my opinion fair, and an inspirational woman. To be assertive and self assured like she was is still something I strive for, and she is the reason I met a good friend in College where I continued to learn French.

-Dr McNamara, my English Teacher and for a time Form Tutor felt like a kindred spirit in some ways. I felt like we both understood that the other felt they didn’t fit in, and the conversations I had with him just to pass the time, or the few times he managed to make me laugh during my time there really made an impression on me. Some girls I consider bullies who targeted me, I saw also target him and I saw ways it effected his behaviour, but he still managed to smile sometimes, and if it wasn’t for him, and the little moments of hope, or his strange tales about a maggot-riddled squirrel corpse, I feel like the thread that held me together might just have snapped before I made it out the other side.

There’s much more I could say, but between this account and the others on this site, and google, I would say that if you’re encouraged to send your child here so that they won’t be bullied or traumatised, consider the message that you send to them when you say that first. And then also consider that even though nobody physically hurt me during my time here, the mental scars are not going to help me become a hotshot lawyer. But a parent believing in me maybe would have helped me to be happier short and longer term. And if that’s not the only goal for your child then sure, send them here, but they won’t thank you for it, and years down the line when they can’t cope at work or just with daily living, you should remember sending them here. Especially if you sent them here with no self confidence to begin with. That’s not something they build here.

“Once a High School girl, always a High School girl,” that’s what they told us. So at least now I can look back and be over the moon that they never accepted me and that I’m not like them. It also doesn’t work for them either though, because it implies they support you in school and in the years after. That only applies if you get them some good press, as far as I can tell!

WGHS REVIEW!

Where can I begin with wghs. I am right now a student who has had a lot of experiences.

Let’s begin with a certain teacher ** **** he makes me and many others very uncomfortable. There have been alot of rumours about some of the things HE has maybe/not done, may I also add that there are skirt checks done mostly by male teachers including ** **** but let’s move on as there is much more. Wghs is great for achieving well in grades not in your happiness and health. They say that junior school is to prepare you for High school the only thing I got from that was my academics and how important homework is, not about how girls can be mean. Year 7 was hard for me, I was struggling to make friends up to the point where I wasn’t in a good mental state. I talked to some Pastoral teachers who just told me to carry on smiling and that I would get through it it’s horrid and disappointing after telling the school your deep feelings. Now to top it off Matron who is a very nice lady did do something that shocked me, she asked a girl about her weight and if she was eating when in a matter of fact she was just a healthy, exercised girl (may I say a YEAR 8 girl) which I’m sure didn’t make her feel comfortable with herself nor the situation.

To be honest if you are a bright, quite girl who doesn’t need popular friends your fine I guess, but if not, welcome to your worst nightmare, Wakefield Girls High School because I know it is mine.

very bad quality facilities, creepy male teachers, sexism, racism, homophobia.

I feel this school has a very nice and freeing environment. After moving to a mixed school at year 12 I can clearly see the difference in environment. Although I never really got on with the staff I felt the pupils were always very supportive and I could be myself without worry.

There is often academic pressure which sometimes can feel a lot and I did not connect with many of the staff so I found this hard at times. Sometimes the school system can feel against you due to the consistent ‘high school girl’ motto. I often felt somewhat attacked into being a ‘lady’ and being respectable and often compared our school to the boys school.

However if you can deal with being told off for the silliest of things then I honestly would whole heartedly recommend this school. Made me into the person I am today and I think any other environment I would have felt judged to do the things I enjoyed. Made life long friends forever and would happily re live my school years.