# Henbury School in Bristol



## sihhi (Apr 6, 2010)

What's it like- anyone know?

Inspired by this in the morning:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8604000/8604302.stm

"Um I wouldn't want to send my children to the nearest one - Henbury - just because it's it's not a slight on the school, it's just that I think it would be felt that you're taking a bit of a risk"

"No we've passed Henbury on a number of occasions, it really put me off, is er a one, one of the pupil arrived there and um you could see that she was at least eight months pregnant"

Any experience or information required.


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## butchersapron (Apr 6, 2010)

Henbury is a totally normal area - it's totally middle of the road . It's set bang in what is probably the most traditional w/c area of bristol which makes incoming knobbers react like this.


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## Crispy (Apr 6, 2010)

seems like a totally normal comp to me. my old neighbour went there and got 11 A GCSEs


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## sihhi (Apr 6, 2010)

Incomers?


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## butchersapron (Apr 6, 2010)

sihhi said:


> Incomers?



People looking for cheap housing for their 5 years in the City working in insurance or IT. Not the best term to use.


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## sihhi (Apr 6, 2010)

butchersapron said:


> People looking for cheap housing for their 5 years in the City working in insurance or IT. Not the best term to use.



Is it them leading the drive to use a private school and Michael Gove's charity to set up a new maintained school?


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## butchersapron (Apr 6, 2010)

sihhi said:


> Is it them leading the drive to use a private school and Michael Gove's charity to set up a new maintained school?



Bloody good question. I've not listened to the radio link. Give me a sec.

Listen to the accents on that story about henbury (normal) from westbury (one of the poshest areas in bristol). Posh incomers looking for funds and putting it under the sign of serving the community. Good spot m.


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## butchersapron (Apr 6, 2010)

Westbury is like a proddy enclave on the falls road - surrounded by industrious working class areas, but they're the ones with the certificates, the wages and the formal positions to prove it.


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## strung out (Apr 6, 2010)

lived opposite the school for 13 years (and moving back there soon actually). the school itself has had its problems, i think it went into special measures once while i was living there, but it's been knocked down and rebuilt since then, becoming some kind of academy/college i think. have heard good things about it in the last 10 years or so, but as butchers says, it's looked down on by people from westbury/stoke bishop area because it's in the middle of a couple of council estates and traditional working class areas.


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## strict machine (Apr 7, 2010)

I worked there as a science teacher for 2 years and still have friends who teach there. Its not an academy (which would mean that the head controls the budget and policy rather than the council) but a bog standard Bristol comp. Sadly that means that less than 30% of pupils achieve 5 A-C at GCSE. Its not suprising that parents want something better given those stats!! However, as Crispy says, you can get brilliant results if you're into studying because the staff have to be at the top of their game to keep the small minority of disruptive kids interested. Literacy is very poor but if you can make it into top sets (as all the middle class kids seem to do) you get a good education that sets you up for independent learning at sixth form/college. However corridor culture is very tough, for example I had to help a traumatised member of my tutor group during her first week in school because she'd had a scalding cup of coffee thrown over her by another kid. She was a middle class kid from westbury, he was the son of a local drug dealer. She hadn't said a word to him- they were just walking past each other in the corridor a yard in front of me. He did it cos he could get away with it. Thats the problem - there are too many kids who have learned that the system can't punish them (exclusion means a day at home with the PS3!) and it takes at least a year minimum to remove violent and destructive kids from ordinary schools to a PRU. Its a shame because it really is about 50 kids terrorising the remaining 1000.
I now work in North Somerset where there are fewer damaged kids and life is less stressful. I still miss lots of the Henbury kids but unless those 50 young crims were removed wouldn't want my kids to go there.
Parents running schools though  - terrifying idea. Don't know a teacher that isn't shaken to the core by the idea. It won't happen in Westbury as St Ursulas has requested academy status. It will take up the slack and become the local comp for the middle classes.


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## Mrs Magpie (Apr 7, 2010)

strict machine said:


> less than 30% of pupils achieve 5 A-C at GCSE. Its not suprising that parents want something better given those stats!!


That is pretty poor. I work in an inner city comp and we get about 84% A* to C at GCSE if you include English and Maths. I think it's about 91% if you take out English and Maths. We score very high on value-added too.


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## strict machine (Apr 7, 2010)

Yup Bristol is shit!


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## Mrs Magpie (Apr 7, 2010)

I don't think it's a Bristol thing. Getting disruptive behaviour nailed down is the first thing. I used to work in a North London comp very similar to the one you describe. They sorted the disaffected/disturbed/disruptive kids by having a 'school within a school'. 
Instead of 8:30 am to 3:30 pm the 'school within a school' ran between 9:30 to 4:30. The kids in it had no contact with the rest of the pupils and were in part of the school with no through traffic. Their breaks and lunch were at a different time. They weren't externally excluded but internally excluded. They had ordinary lessons plus loads of other appropriate intervention. It worked really well and helped turn the school right round.


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## Mrs Magpie (Apr 7, 2010)

Actually best of all, it turned the kids right round as well. They all, pretty much, integrated right back in eventually. Well, a couple ended up in YOI's for really serious stuff like stabbings.


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## strict machine (Apr 7, 2010)

Thats exactly the way a few academies in Bristol are tackling the problem. I train PGCE students so get to hear the inside view from lots of local schools and the teaching students thought it was a great system. Apparently if you disrupt other peoples learning at one academy you get kept in school that night until 5.30pm, no excuses accepted! 
Sadly even thought they've got that sorted our local academies aren't all offering 9 GCSE's - unfair discrimination by postcode if you are academic enough to go on to A levels.
Bristol schools still within the council system have to follow council policy and Bristol City Education dept failed their OfSted so there's very little chance of things improving soon


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## Mrs Magpie (Apr 7, 2010)

Yeah, my son's school only offered Foundation Science and no History at all at GCSE  Crap.
I really don't know much about academies, I've never worked in one.


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## Mrs Magpie (Apr 7, 2010)

The 'school within a school' stopped kids deliberately trying to get excluded. A few weren't interested in staying in and playing computer games, they wanted to be earning money and weed by running drugs from A to B on their pushbikes


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## strict machine (Apr 7, 2010)

So what local parents should really be lobbying the council for is a radical change in how difficult pupils are handled, not a new school at all!


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## Mrs Magpie (Apr 7, 2010)

Quite likely, yes. If you look at all successful schools, the first thing they sort out is the kids that stop others from learning, or kids that make the school less than a safe place to be.


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## Gerry1time (Apr 7, 2010)

Mrs Magpie said:


> We score very high on value-added too.



A few years back i worked on a project that involved a lot of stats on education in Bristol. Interestingly, at the time, quite a few schools managed to score negative figures on the value added curve. 

Meaning, technically, that your kids would be better educated by not attending school at all.


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## Geri (Apr 7, 2010)

strict machine said:


> I now work in North Somerset where there are fewer damaged kids and life is less stressful.



What school?


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