Chesterton Community College cambridge

Very down to earth and supportive of new teachers. Highly academic headteacher and members of staff open to new ideas. Very diverse set of students from various academic, socio-economic and ethnic background, but the school has put so many interesting provisions in place to ensure inclusion and they are very adaptive, creative and flexible policy-wise!

Not the worst school in Cambridge but very close, the staff had no patience with students with any kind of learning problem. By the end of year 8 if they felt the students grades would not be high enough they ship the student of to CRC so the overall grade average for the school does not drop.. There idea of helping problem students is to shove them in isolation which is a room with no windows, they don't even give the students any proper class work to do, so they end up even further behind on their work. Unfortunately my daughter experienced a lot of homophobia from her teachers and head of year to the point I had to pull her out of the Chesterton.

As an ex-pupil (2013-2018) the teaching I received at Chesterton was amazing and I had a generally happy 5 years there, leaving with 11 GCSEs at a high grade. However the pressure directed on us from the senior management had a serious detrimental effect on the mental health of myself and others in my year (myself and many of my friends ended up on medication because of this). We were constantly pushed and told that whatever we did, it could be better by a small section of the senior management (e.g. a 7 in chemistry constituted extra holiday work because a computer algorithm told them I was capable of getting an 8). Much happier and more confident in myself since moving onto sixth form elsewhere.

My dd is thriving in this school. She has great pride in it as have her fellow students. There is a broad enrichment program and the national curriculum is delivered in a creative and inspiring way by a strong team of teachers and leaders. There is unusually low staff turnover, which is always a good sign. The school is in the top 100 nationally of non selective schools, and certainly doesn't coast on catchment area. We are lucky to have our dd there.

Cool

i went her for 3 fortnites and my pemis fell off 3/5

Really nice school :)

A nice and welcoming school with nice and young teachers.

I am sorry to say but my french slide show was not up to standard, it was a poorly made and disgraceful slide show, my eyes are now hurting. A bitmoji from snapchat starts talking at the end at an attempt to make the slideshow "hip" but that miserably failed. Also can I ask why am I getting set work from a year 8 slide show when I am not in year 8. I also received an absolutely top quality "diploma" at the end, it totally didn't look like something I made in my ICT lessons in year 2. Before I go I would just like to say this is not a comment on the actual school I have never been there and don't know anything about it.

From an academic perspective the school is great. However whilst I do believe the school cares about its students there's a lot of progress when coming to reaching out directly to its students and making the connection between homework, mental health and general grading. As a current student on average im assigned around 7-8 assignments (varying in length, difficulty and how much we're expected to do)per week, whilst this may be a normal amount, it makes spending time with family and relaxing in general really difficult, especially when we're often being force fed the narrative that teachers spend hours alone marking our assignments when often they're never checked thoroughly or even at all, and when they are little feedback is given on how to improve (I'm fully aware teachers may actually spend time marking and I appreciate it may be difficult to give equally thoughtful feedback to each individual student but it makes homework particularly demotivating knowing that often the effort we put it wont be recognised or reciprocated). Personally I spend the majority of my time trying to work out ways of short cutting my homework, trying to maximise the amount of free time I get, obviously this doesn't provide me with much actual knowledge and shows that I'd be better off without homework, or just more practical knowledge on how to revise effectively, instead of being told how and what areas to revise, perhaps teachers could spend more time finding a way to give us more individual revision plans, this way achieving higher grades with lower stress. In addition to all the added stress of GCSEs we're often taught ways of dealing with mental health, personally I appreciate the effort the school goes to to show that they care but "mindfulness mondays"and simply adding a few websites at the start of PowerPoints dont erase the heart of the issue, that being the detrimental pressure we're put under to meet our potential grades (often not being accurate or flexible reflections of us as students and individuals, but rather as points of pride to wave around when sitting amongst groups of other children, or stickers to hide incase of embarrassment) and the results the school produces every year. I myself have developed quite bad anxiety, the anxiety itself doesn't revolve around school but the impact of the monthly tests often results in sleepless nights and unneeded stress which could be resolved by better 1-1 relationships with teachers and trust built between staff and students. As well as this, for a year onwards I have been placed in a lower science set, whilst I agree that my grades dropped dramatically in year 8, no actual questions were asked because of this, no teacher asked me why they dropped or plan was put in place to help me pick myself up again, resulting in a grade 5 end of year result. After being moved down in year 9 I quickly realised that the teachers were in no way as motivated to teach the lower set students, but rather they taught them to a level 6 grade (a pass for GCSEs and allows them to say "97% of our students passed their GCSEs", whilst ignoring that whilst this is still a great achievement it's still a low pass and isnt really enough to get into Hills road (the follow on sixth form college chesterton pushes children to aim towards getting into). I've made great achievements in science since year 8 yet I'm still in a lower set class, recently I scored two 7s in my science tests (an A equivalent) and one of my science teachers told me that I should move up (which I really appreciated as nobody actually had said anything to me, in fact my mum sent the school an email at the start of term enquiring but I was told i would have to wait until i completed the tests, which i got a 7 on, which is really unfair as we're only taught to a grade 6 level, which on it's own isnt enough to move up, so I spent hours every night revising, though I still haven't been moved up). Generally the teachers are amazing, especially the English department, but changes must be made to the grading system and general algorithm.