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Woodford House
High School · State · Havelock North
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Good and bad
Woodford House boarding and day school for girls
Outstanding school with exceptional teachers and boarding staff. Boarding is 'the best part of school' apparently. And the sporting and cultural opportunities on offer are incredible.
Better places.
As a student, most teachers are nice enough and passionate enough but pastoral care is absolute nonsense.
Will state they want the best for the girls and what makes them happy, but then don't even give two cares if no girl is happy about a change (which does not need to happen) and several girls are crying over it, a lady who was in charge of the change even going as far to state "as long as most girls are happy, I'm doing a good job", while people are visibly upset, crying and whatnot. This change has the majority of two of the boarding houses crying, upset. 83 girls signed a petition against it and that's only the girls who were around at the time, and of only mostly 2 year groups, and one of the whole boarding houses signed it (49ish girls)
If you only care about education, that's great, but if you care even a little bit about your daughter's mental health and happiness, then perhaps other places may be better.
I post this anonymously so they cannot find me to make me take it down or punish me for this negative review, for my opinion.
There is also a massive issue of overcrowding, as the schools try to accept the maximum amount of students every year recently, and one year group has to sit on the floor of the chapel during services instead of pews.
Will state they want the best for the girls and what makes them happy, but then don't even give two cares if no girl is happy about a change (which does not need to happen) and several girls are crying over it, a lady who was in charge of the change even going as far to state "as long as most girls are happy, I'm doing a good job", while people are visibly upset, crying and whatnot. This change has the majority of two of the boarding houses crying, upset. 83 girls signed a petition against it and that's only the girls who were around at the time, and of only mostly 2 year groups, and one of the whole boarding houses signed it (49ish girls)
If you only care about education, that's great, but if you care even a little bit about your daughter's mental health and happiness, then perhaps other places may be better.
I post this anonymously so they cannot find me to make me take it down or punish me for this negative review, for my opinion.
There is also a massive issue of overcrowding, as the schools try to accept the maximum amount of students every year recently, and one year group has to sit on the floor of the chapel during services instead of pews.
woody
the actual school side of things was good but they shut students up when they cry for mental health support. the counsellor was good but school could have done better to handle it. also there was verbal harassment to a particular student who had intellectual disabilities and no one spoke up or did much about it at all. but overall the academics were great although there was some bias by teachers, but food was good
Good school!
This school has allowed to expand in many different areas and has allowed me to gain the maximum amount of education
The day school side amazing boarding not as great
The day school side of the school is AMAZING but the boarding side is terrible and it would be really helpful that if instead of giving their staffs girls day girl spots to give the day school spots instead to people who are in the havelock north zone so that people who live two minutes down the road don’t have to board.
3 Iona Road, 4130, Havelock North
Julie Peterson
06 873 0700
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However in recent years the SLT have been putting profit above students and overcrowding has become a major issue. A big reason I was sent there was the small class sizes meaning more one on one time with teachers. As the school has attempted to increase the role size, classes have become very crowded and the school was not built to hold so many students which has overall caused a lot of issues.
The mental health and well-being side is awful to put it bluntly. One of the old school counselor treated students sessions as gossip and many students had some extremely private information spread by them and the school chose to ignore the issue. Any student who had disabilities wether that is mental health or physical were ostracised by many of their peers and this also went mostly ignored by SLT.
If you want your children to have an amazing education then Woodford will give them that but you will be putting their wellbeing at risk for it.