Central Southland College

The timetable at this school is inefficient. The whanau times (form times) are the second period, which wouldn't be a problem if they weren't extremely long on certain days -- I understand the teachers want to use it for whanau class activities but from what I have seen as a student, not a lot of people want to participate because they don't like it. I have also heard from fellow students that there was a Google form that went out to students asking for feedback on the timetable changes, and it seems that the school only listened to the positive ones and not the ones with constructive criticism. I have also witnessed younger year groups (9 - 12) being casually racist, which I find odd at a school that has it on their website that "Central Southland College has a culture of respect in all aspects of education and extracurricular activities: self respect, respect for others, and respect for the environment around us."
A personal anecdote I have is feeling wronged with the way the Year 13 dean has handed out AP cards, witnessing kids who have ditched multiple classes on purpose receive them feels degrading in a way -- trying my best gets me nowhere here.

From the outside this school looks great and i know that different year groups are better or worse but in my year group it is terrible. To start with there is a lot of bullying (especially verbally) and even when the teachers try to stop it it dosnt stop and once a teacher intervenes it often gets worse. Another reason is my year group is into sports a lot so we got a P.E. teacher as our dean and that means in general all the activities are very sporty and people that arnt as sporty are excluded. On Wednesdays the whole school also gets to finish at 2:30 so people can go to sports practices but for the people who arnt into sports as much and are on a bus we just have to wait around for half an hour. CSC is also trying something new where we have some hour long periods and some hour and a half long periods and no one enjoys the hour and a half long periods as we all zone out and learn nothing. Another experiment CSC is doing is that we all get to choose our subjects and the only subjects we have to do is 2 courses high in English and 2 high in Math's. However i find this a disadvantage because especially in English some courses that say they are high in English arnt and you dont learn anything to do with the original course explanation. So overall I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND YOU GO TO THIS SCHOOL UNLESS YOU ARE EXTREMELY INTO SPORTS.

The college is very well presented with a good range of subjects as a high decile school. As a previous student I know that things are going to change since I left but everything is well managed.

Moved here from James hargest after hargest didn't do anything about the abusive bullying I was getting. Best decision of my life. everyone is nice at csc, the teachers are amazing, my grades have gone up, bullying isn't tolerated, the deans and senior management are amazing. They have pride flags up in the library and a lgbt club for kids. there's a massive range of cultures and they are allowed to speak their own language without being told off. I genuinely can't recommend this school enough.