Durham School

It’s a great school best \u12 cricket ever they have brilliant bowlers

This review is our personal experience with Durham School. The review was without malice, not at all defamatory and factual. Everything that follows is either opinion based on our experience of our daughter’s time at school or fact that can be backed up through notes, emails or letters. First and foremost I am aware of how good the school can be. The first year that our daughter attended she had a great year, and had an excellent report to match. Both academically, socially and through sport she enjoyed the school and we were delighted with our decision to send her to Durham. Had this carried on I’m sure I would defend the school resolutely, should it be criticised. Unfortunately for us, this was not the case. I am a firm believer that you judge an establishment as a consumer when a problem arises and how they react and deal with the situation. I’m sure if we’d not had this issue our daughter would have had a magnificent and rewarding time and left the school not only with good qualification but also enduring happy memories. However the fact is that she was bullied mercilessly to the point of needing counselling. We are not naive enough to think that bullying does not go on, indeed the schools Behaviour Policy was a factor in our choosing the school. When it did occur, and to the schools credit they brought if to our attention initially, we expected the Behaviour Policy “(13) Bullying” to be implemented. This is where things failed miserably. For instance my daughter was not asked to record the events in writing, nor were the perpetrators, a warning was not given to them. After repeated incidents written warnings/sanctions were not given. When my daughter was seriously enough affected to need medical help the bully’s parents were not contacted and action was not taken. This is all fact, we lived through it. It is also in contravention of the schools own policies. In the end we were left with no choice but to remove her and find another school. We were then pursued for the remainder of the year’s fees despite her not being there and the school failing to implement its own policies to protect her while she was there. We complained and requested a meeting with the Governors which they concluded without my being present. The school have since appointed a debt collection agency to recover the disputed debt. Our sole priority is to help stop our daughter’s experience being repeated and harming other families lives. We are unable to accept that this situation could not have been nipped at the bud had the school followed its own policies. We have shared our experience on various platforms and review sites as well as Facebook. Since doing so a number of people have contacted us having had exactly the same experience at the school. This is simply not acceptable. We have issued proceeding against the school for recovery of fees for the time she was bullied as they broke contract by not implementing their own policy. We feel that a Court will listen to both sides and come to a fair decision. Should the court feel the school acted fairly and upheld their Policies we will pay the fees. Should the court find in our favour then we will donate all fees recovered to an anti bullying charity. We take no pleasure from leaving this review and are generally by nature passive, rather than reactive people. I’m aware that the vast majority of pupils will have great affection for the school and pleased that this is the case, as this is what we wanted for our daughter. The fact remains that for my family and the others that have contacted us the schools implementation of its own bullying policy has been very poor and caused both children and parent’s great heartache and stress. By taking the time to post this review and reviews on other sites we hope to help change this attitude so that all pupils can get the best out of Durham School.

Great atmosphere, and a very beautiful setting. Lots of school pride and teamwork amongst students, who are also very polite and hard working.

School house crupits = life