Western Springs College

the staff blackmailed me by threatening to take away my disability aid if i reported another student to the police. I spent two years trying and eventually being forced to drop out because they continued to put my rapist in my classes and extra curriculars. Ive had to gaird a special needs student who was left alone and naked in a bathroom for over an hour untill their caretaker came back from their lunch break. The school itself is horribly designed, its loud theres no privacy and theres not enough seating. Classrooms are practically hallways due to the open plan building. Some classes are infront of the toilets with no separation and you cant even work because of the smell. Its impossible to write about all the issues with Western Springs College.

It really is a very good school.

As a parent I would definitely not recommend this school. Kids like it, but for the wrong reasons. Pastoral care is very limited and it is not a safe environment.

The school is painfully inadequate. I graduated in 2019 when the new building opened. First of all the open plan of the new building was a mistake. It was the worse and apparently it was done to ‘increase’ learning - ‘it’s the new way of teaching.’ That is BS. The classes were noisy, almost all were not in enclosed spaces. Could hear movies being played etc. The sports in the school was the absolute worst. I paid for a sport and I never got to play and never got a refund when they said they would get back to me. Never got a response back from certain teachers when writing them a email specifically teachers in charge of the sports centre. The school is also really sneaky with their pricing as they don’t put all sport costs up front. Ended up paying $90 for a uniform top on top of the sport fees just to return it at the end of the season (which lasted like 4 weeks btw) Not sure about the arts but it’s definitely more of a hippie artsy school where the outcasts smoked pot during break times. There’s TAPAC so I suppose could be good for wannabe dancers and actors. The teachers are mediocre, had some painfully bad atrocious ones but I had about two who were good. Love my year 12 chemistry teacher, she made me love it. Some teachers just don’t know how to teach - there was one teacher who had a masters degree but barely spoke proper English and no one could understand her. She didn’t even try to teach just told us to read the textbook. Made me flunk physics :) This school also loved to ask parents all the time for their ‘compulsory donations’ when public high school in NZ is free. Kept pestering my parent to pay the donations when it’s legally optional. Would have been fine if it was a good school but WSC was bad. Academics: some of the teachers only cared about the people who were failing giving chances upon chances while leaving the students who actually wanted to get good grades in the dust. Some teachers were totally unfair on the NCEA grading process and let failing students many extensions on the due date for assignments. Whereas I asked one of my teachers do give me feedback on a report 2 weeks before the due date and she says sure but never gets to it :). Then I get my barely passing friend telling me that the teacher was spending her evening helping him on his report way past the due day by herself ? The school really does the bare minimum on academics and everything basically. The graduation was actually terrible in 2019. Our graduation certificate wasn’t even a certificate, it was a small piece of A5 paper written in comic sans font with no colour and a few words. Hey at least Jacinda Ardern shook my hand. The good: There will be some good teachers who truely care and want you to learn. The school is quite relaxed about everything - hey I mean it’s a school without a uniform. The cafeteria food is nice but expensive. There’s lots of land to play your own recreational sports. Meant to give this 2 stars.

it’s been 2 years since i left this school but i can agree that the open learning environment was the worst thing to ever happen to this school, it’s super distracting, messy and you can never even hear anything going on in your own class. we were only in the open building for my last year there but i probably learnt the least that year in all the years i was there. also don’t ask teachers for help they never really do and if you’re being bullied also don’t bother asking for any help it’s a waste of time, they won’t even do anything about it.