Bay of Islands College

Never in my life have I felt so strongly about a place that I've needed to leave a negative review, but my experience here as a student has been so horrendous that I just need to talk about it.

If you ever have a child that suffers with anxiety, depression, or any kind of mental health issue, don’t send them here and expect this school to help them, or even to give them the bare minimum kindness or understanding they deserve (unless of course your student is related to the head staff, then definitely send them here as the amount of nepotism in this school is absurd).

I was always an upstanding student. I got my work in on time usually with great marks every year up until my last. But the moment I started to struggle with my mental health the higher ups of the school decided I was no longer worth their time. My attendance suffered due to my anxiety, and the deputy principal simply said they had "done all they could do to help me", (which was absolutely nothing) and threatened expulsion if I didn’t improve. Nothing matters more to Bay of Islands College than attendance. But fair enough, is what I thought, despite how they didn't offer any solution or support to help me do that.
When I tried to go in and had an anxiety attack mid-class I immediately went to one of the teachers who had actually supported me, but she got an email saying that she wasn't 'allowed' to talk to me and I had to go to a counsellor instead. When I tried that, another staff member interrupted my counselling session to say that she wasn't allowed to offer me help either unless it was in my own time. So my anxiety attack had to wait until lunch.

My teachers wanted to help me. But the higher ups at this school wouldn’t let them. That is insane to me and totally unacceptable.

I genuinely did nothing to warrant any kind of mistreatment other than ask for a little bit of extra support. I was never unkind or rude to anyone, I got my work in on time and did what was required of me. But nothing was done when my parents filed formal complaints to the principal, the only way we ever managed to come to any compromise was when my parents contacted the board of education directly and even then I was treated like an absolute nuisance for standing up for myself, so was my younger sibling who had done nothing wrong, ultimately leading to her transitioning to home-schooling. For a school that stresses how much they care about their students, it certainly felt like they wanted me to fail. They didn’t see a human being with struggles, they only saw attendance statistics. It's truly no wonder the bathrooms always smell of weed and/or cigarettes.

In their actual review site, it states: "Learners with additional needs are monitored and supported".
This is a lie :) their management cares about their image more than their students.

I am an ex-student of BOIC and when I was there, I got bullied, threatened and beaten up from the start of my Yr 9 in 2019 until Aug of 2021. When I went to the teachers about it, nothing was done. Then when my mum went to the school with a piece of my school uniform that had been graffitied, I started explaining that a group of girls I used to be friends with did it, the teacher called me a liar and told me to come back to school when I had "learnt my lesson". My parents ended up pulling me out and reenrolling me somewhere else. I personally feel that their lack of justice in the school is atrocious and I'm appalled that any of that stuff even happened to me, this also happened to my best friend.
But this wasn't the first time they'd turned her and I away like that.