Hardwick Primary Schools, Secondary Schools & PreSchools in the Cambridge area

From the outside, the school looks alright, with it being Ofsted Outstanding right now and being the second best public school in the county by GCSE results in 2017. As a student, I will rate the school as it seems to me from the outside. Firstly, the place is (mostly) dirty (inside). For example, the male toilets at least are run down and are littered with rubbish and from listening to some other students I can verify that the girls toilets are very similar. The corridors are cleaner; some have no litter in them at all (surprise). Some classrooms are also rather clean in terms of large pieces of litter and paper being strewn across the floor. Of course there are exceptions to this, and the state of classrooms does vary a lot between departments. The classrooms are each belonging to a single department and the departments themselves operate by themselves, instead of as a whole. This makes each department know less and care less about what is going on in the school outside their department, which is partially why the school is falling apart in places. This also means that a student either has a lot of homework or almost none at any given moment. Once I was given 7 pieces of homework from 6 different lessons out of 6 total lessons in a day. As one can tell, this puts a lot of stress on the students, which isn't improved by the teachers. Some teachers at Comberton are good teachers who can teach. Others are more average or less thorough, but that is expected as Comberton isn't a private school. However, there are several teachers who spent large amounts of time in lessons not talking about the lesson as they are rambling on about their life experiences or telling people off. Some teachers are also sexist as mentioned by Dillon De Jong. Some teachers don't forgive and give detentions to people who they have developed a dislike for several months previously, whereas for someone who they are more neutral towards they may just tell them not to do it, as an afterthought. Some may even have favourites that they never punish. As for the rules themselves, some are understandable, like no mobile devices unless told to do so by staff or at breaks and lunches. Others are more pointless, like not being allowed to be in the science department at break or lunch, which is ironic as the year 9 lockers are there and so no-one can use them, ever. In the library, there has to be one person to a computer. For some reason, they won't allow multiple people to be around the same screen at the same time, even though they want to make sure that everyone is able to use the computers at some time or other, However, the rules aren't always punished, ridiculous or not. Bullying is rarely stopped, although the majority of students seem to know about it. I put the lack of reporting to teachers down to peer pressure. Theft, too, from the school catering facilities was very high due to a lack of security until the school council pushed for a check of the CCTV. One simple act of catching two students stealing from the school reduced the amount of theft by many times, which shows how effective punishment of the rules can be, only if teachers would actually enforce the rules. Overall, education wise, it is possible to achieve outstanding grades here if a student is skilled and talented and either a) lucky with their draw of teachers and has a strong friend group that doesn't get into trouble much, b) works hard outside of school and stays rather out of what happens at school or c) plays the game of being well behaved and hard-working around teachers (who knows what they do when the teachers are absent). Here, the outstanding really excel, the average drop and the needy fare the worst.

best school and the cabin has great support

My son started at Excelr8 a few months ago and he loves going. He is a strong student at school but we wanted to make sure he was stretched, particularly as he is a Year 2 pupil in a mixed Year 1/2 class. The small-group classes and personal attention have really benefitted him in improving his original writing and his mathematical skills. He is also motivated by the reward system in place. At a school parents' evening this week my son's teacher praised him for his general progress and mentioned his now-extensive vocabulary, and I am sure than Excelr8 has played an important part in this success. We also really appreciate the feedback given to parents immediately following the lessons, and the opportunity to feed into the structuring of lessons. I'd recommend Excelr8 to any other parents.