Started My First Secondary School!

Started my journey in education at my first Secondary School, The King Alfreds School an Academy!

Once I had finished my Primary School education, I began my journey in Secondary School at The King Alfreds School an Academy. Now, in the beginning I loved this School because it let me feel like I had grown up and that I'm finally making progress in my educational side of life as well as social life, being able to use my mobile phone on Break / Lunch was lovely because it gave me the flexibility to contact my friends to meet up and ask where they were on the Campus which was pretty sweet! (This has since been changed, however, from what I've heard and honestly, the entire school sounds more and more like hell to students than anything.) I had a great time at this School too because it was larger than my 2nd Primary School and it felt great having multiple buildings which they called Blocks at the time and each Block had its own specific purpose whether that be English, Maths, IT etc or some Blocks such as the A Block during my time at the School held the Science Classrooms, IT Classrooms and finally the Catering Classrooms which the classrooms were pretty nicely put together in the building and the School made it very easy for Students to find where they were going when they were new and just following their timetables because they had massive signs at the doors of each Block stating what Block was what so you couldn't get lost too easily and each floor had its own specific purpose such as Ground Floor was for Science, Floor 1 was for IT & Catering etc so once you got used to the bigger school layout and your timetable you knew where to go after about a month of being at the school. So after about a month or so of being at TKASA things started to ramp up in pressure immediately, all of a sudden we're all given a big ring binder file and they called it the knowledge organizer, they tried to make it seem better than it actually was but we all knew from the getgo it was going to be hell because the way the timetables were structured were by Week A and Week B which often confused students a lot because sometimes you'd go on a break from School and when you come back what week were we on now are we back on Week A because we took a week off and technically it should be Week A or are we Week B because we had already done Week A before the break, things like that they never really made clear to any of us and there was nowhere on the Website or even on any Student Portal that told us the answer either. Anywho these Knowledge Organizers were absolute stress-inducing pain for everyone because it was homework that had to be done every single day Monday --> Friday after school on top of the homework given out by your lecturers so you had to essentially juggle homework every day because say its a Monday and you get homework from the Science Teacher, Maths Teacher and the IT Teacher you not only had to do all of that but then also had to do your Knowledge Organizer homework which was pretty much information about every single lesson in the structure of Week A and Week B; so on Week A of the Knowledge Organizer you would probably have Maths, English, Science, PE and French and then on Week B you would have Catering, IT, Music, History and Geography and the information never changed, it remained the same information for that entire year and what you had to do was pretty much read all of the information and then write it out in your own words into a homework book you were given and it was checked daily by your tutor and ticked off. If you failed to complete the Knowledge Organizer you would get a detention; so essentially for all students it was you have no free time outside of School, you will do all of our homework we give you and you will do your Knowledge Organizer which was atrocious and just overall horrible, I remember a lot of nights I would set my alarm on my phone to wake me up at 5 AM just so I could rush to get the Knowledge Organizer done because I was so exhausted from the other homework given out by lecturers that in order to maintain a good personal life work life balance, I did homework from my lecturers and then would use the remaining time I had with my friends playing some games in my own time because I felt that was fair but it always made me worry and panic because what if the alarm didn't wake me up to complete my Knowledge Organizer then I'm going to have a stressful day and there were some times where I didn't complete my Knowledge Organizer but I think because I had made a start tutors didn't really thoroughly read what was written by the students, mainly just the first few lines and then they'd check it off so all was pretty well although there were some sharp eyed tutors so if you had wrote what you wrote last time, they'd catch on pretty quickly. Homework + Knowledge Organizer was an absolute pain, and I would never wish for anyone to go to that school. It was horrible, and I felt terribly for my friends after I had left because I had left in Year 8, and they still had 3 years to go through. I think the School however picked up on the fact that a lot of students weren't quite completing their homework or their knowledge organizer or both; so to counteract this (and I think this was a really bad move for the school in my eyes and I still feel that way today), they began in-school forced homework support for those that didn't complete their homework and it was certain specified rooms with a lecturer who was there to help you if you needed it but I would mostly end up there because I was simply exhausted after doing the lecturers homework and didn't feel that I should have to spend all the time I had once I got home doing homework, I felt that this homework support wasn't the correct solution / response to students that are getting completely bogged down on their homework / knowledge organizer, it doesn't help also that the lecturer there at the homework support sessions were teachers for their specific subject like a science teacher, what on earth are they going to know about IT solutions?? They won't be able to help with that and they're not going to be able to get a hold of the IT lecturer to ask them to come on down and help out because they're on their lunch break too so they'd just tell you to ask them when you're next in their lesson which was so terrible like what was the point in me going to the homework support session if it was purely just a waste of time and I'd need a specific lecturer anyway that wasn't available during the homework support sessions. I'm sure others may have found homework support helpful and that's great, but for me I did not and if you didn't turn up you'd get a detention so your essentially forced to go to these sessions during your own lunch time and yes your allowed to eat in there but it's just not great, no friends to chat to, social life went right off a cliff, it was atrocious. What they should have done and still need to do if they haven't yet already is scrap their Knowledge Organizers and just have students do the homework, that's more than enough and anyone who says it isn't is blatantly wrong and you need to be lectured on why its good for students to have free time outside of school than no time at all working away on endless useless work. Moving forward, however, there were some enjoyable parts of TKASA, such as some of the lessons I quite enjoyed, such as IT and Music and even sometimes PE, depending on what we were doing for the PE lesson and even History, because the teacher I had at the time was awesome. I find that there are a lot of improvements this school could have made during my time there and even my time after. Hopefully one day they'll change for the better, but I'm completely put off any school immediately that has the word 'academy' in their name or branding, as it just screams hell to not only the students but also the parents. The amount of times my family had to call up TKASA and ask to be put through to the headmaster who at the time was Nathan Jenkins (he was awesome) because of teachers that used their authority in insane ways, I mean at one point they gave an after school detention to my brother who hadn't caused them any problems ever, always got his homework in on time, always was a great student throughout, caused the school no problems, etc and just because on that day his friends' pen had ran out and he didn't have a spare and my brother did, my brother lent him his pen and then my brothers pen tragically ran out that same day so he had asked the lecturer in the room at the time to borrow a pen because his had ran out and of course rather than the lecturer not making too much of a fuss and just giving him a pen to borrow, instead the lecturer rambled on about why its important to have 2 pens and my brother tried to explain but this lecturer just didn't want to hear it and reluctantly gave him a pen to borrow as well as an after school detention, my family phoned up furious because in what world would you ever consider giving someone an after school detention for not having a pen?? In what world would you give any form of detention for not having a pen? It's pure insanity and straight-up abuse of authority. Safe to say that after school detention got erased from the system immediately, and my parents were told it would 'never happen again'. But this is something that should have never happened in the first place, and it just shocks me so much how an 'academy' can get stuff like this so wrong. But anyhow, that was my time at this school over, and I'm so glad it is over!