Was your school/uni a quality place (no matter whether you liked it!)

This is a bit different from the other school thread. Just because you personally may not have liked your school/university does not mean it was fundamentally a bad institution, it may just not have suited you. I very nearly went to a local non-church primary school which was perhaps a bit substandard (don't remember facts). Instead, I was lucky to get a place at what was basically the second best rated by parents, Church of England primary school in the area. It was basically a good, friendly school. One problem was that they didn't teach foreign languages, which annoyed my mother.

The other issue was that they didn't really push kids for the exams to get into academically selective state or private secondary schools, which was what I personally needed. I had some private tuition and did some organised mock exams etc, but it just wasn't enough and I didn't pass any of the several entrance exams I did. Sometimes wish my parents had been able to afford a private primary school, which they wanted to.

My mother looked at so many different secondary schools, including various not hyper-selective ones I think. Have never really forgiven the choice of boarding school I went to. It did suit some people for sure, though absolutely not me, really. Basically it was in such a remote (if beautifully scenic) location, not academic enough with too many iffy teachers, had pretty terrible discipline (I got bullied, even in the sixth form where I should not have stayed anyway, FFS). Far too small as well, would rather have gone to a somewhat bigger school where you can be more anonymous and there are a greater variety of types of people. Though they did a lot of hill-walking and all the games used to keep me very fit (many if not most private schools, are very sporty). But I don't think it was a good place overall, and it closed many years ago now.

As for my Uni, it was certainly good academically and nice in many other ways even though I maybe didn't really make the most of it and had significant problems there. The city where it is, is often unattractive, but it got badly bombed in WW2. A somewhat class-divided uni though with a reputation for that, perhaps unpleasantly so. I may have gone to boarding school, but was absolutely not part of the wealthy/snobbish private school set there! Do wonder if it's really as academically superb as it claims to be nowadays. And I don't really like the sound of the place at all now, the campus and so on seem to have changed quite massively, not in a good way.

I think just 1 out of the 5 schools I went to was ok. That one I at least got one on one help with math and it made things so much better for me.

The other schools were garbage. Too many students, teachers who handed you a book or paper and you had to pretty much teach yourself.

You shop around or qualify for schools, they aren't assigned based on where you live?

My elementary school was poor but alright. Middle school was in a rich neighborhood and was an above average school. High school was a mix of poor, middle and rich students and was mildly famous as a good school for smart kids which made it to the finals of several national academic competitions... but I wasn't in many of those smart kid classes so I didn't gain much from it. My university was run of the mill and I just went there because it was local.

No my school wasn't good (teachers varied but many of the teachers I had were very bad,) it was probably better than some of the others in town but that's saying nothing. I had a better experience at university, but I don't think that was highly rated either. Sixth form (different place to secondary school for me,) was better, better maths teacher at least when I retook GCSE Maths. There were other bad teachers though.

Some stand out points from secondary school:

science teacher who taught physics modules was very hands off and barely taught anything. Think they might have looked into him after my entire class basically failed mock exams for those modules despite being the joint highest set. A girl tried to create a petition or something about him and how terrible he was (would just sit their doing crosswords too,) but another teacher put a stop to that.

maths teacher who couldn't control a class, she would basically not teach and just instruct us to follow text books. Sometimes would go off topic entirely and at least once started ranting about homophobic ****.

Teachers like maths teachers who weren't trained in that subject but were filling in for others due to a shortage.

An IT teacher who quit (or retired maybe,) after our first year at GCSE IT, and basically everything we did under her was wrong so the teacher that replaced her had to basically instruct us in our second plus first year and we all had to come in on weekends to redo all our first year coursework (when I think about it now it's really insane lol how bad it is. I mean I guess it's legal because it happened I don't even know.)

There was also a teacher who I didn't have because I wasn't in top set English although he did sometimes cover the lessons we had to do in the library. He was very touchy feely and basically known by everyone as a pervert. No concept of personal space think Joe Biden. I can't comment on his teaching ability since I wasn't in his class for that.

One time I had a science lesson that was covered by this guy who I never had as a teacher besides this (think he might have been infamous too can't remember,) think he taught history. He used it to basically rant about the environment for an entire hour lol just went completely off syllabus. But since that was a one off I don't really care.

It was indeed an excellent atmosphere and setting for a university. Middle class income rural suburb, but not far from a major city. Excellent outdoor weather most of the year, very pedestrian friendly and well planned town. Very safe crime wise. Ethnic wise, it is diverse. Not much to do, but it's a college town, so. A good selection of restaurants, retail, businesses and bars and such. I actually really like the town, but my abhor of school in general supersedes this.

They changed this at some point but when I was growing up it was based on location/catchment area too (with the exception of some religious schools that also filtered based on whether you went to a religious primary school.) Actually I think they changed this ages ago like before my dad entered secondary school, but I looked it up and apparently some areas still have this huh:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_modern_school

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammar_school

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleven-plus

(I don't actually know is this is what the OP is talking about though.)

This is interesting to me because by the time I went to school this had morphed into 'thinking you can get into Oxbridge would be ridiculous/unrealistic/pretentious.' Since I actually had a sixth form teacher who explicitly stated that nobody in the class would be accepted if we tried (not that I ever thought that would be an option, and besides what I ended up studying wasn't a subject there) because we were taking an A-level equivalent course (clearly not equivalent lol.) I ended up taking that because I was late enrolling and didn't have a lot of options that wouldn't mean waiting another year, which they also suggested would not be an option... So I did a BTEC in software development + fine art AS/A level.

Even in that way any of schools was good...

The university I attended was and is a top-ranked public university.



I had a marvelous time there, despite not engaging much in the way of social activities. I enjoyed the class discussions, most of the books I read, and most of the classes I completed. I also enjoyed the overall atmosphere, campus architecture, campus landscaping, etc. I also enjoyed its location being in a safe city.


Many of the students were open-minded, and the professors made sure to respect and earnestly address the variety of viewpoints contended for by students. Luckily, I graduated before diversity of viewpoints was ostensibly supplanted in favor of diversity of identity groups/stereotypes.




In regards to the high school I attended -- I really don't care. I didn't take high school seriously, and I don't look back upon my experiences favorably, mostly due to the anxiety and depression I suffered especially acutely during that time.

The high school I went to was decent, but not spectacular. Good for a small town. Half the teachers hated me (one kicked me out of his class on the last day of school, costing me the credit) and half of them liked me (my drama teacher dressed up as me for Halloween one year). It was cow-tipping country, so most of the kids hated me because I've always been a bit queer. Bullying was a big issue. (Written about that too much already).

I went to uni for a year on a scholarship but couldn't hack it, didn't qualify for another scholarship, and couldn't go back because I couldn't get a student loan.

My school was okay - it was a private school my father wanted us to go to to make my mother happy. I think I was sort of a mixture of a normal kid and a bit of an egg-head. I liked the library and despised sports. I left at the start of year 11 though because I think I started having a few problems.

I didn't go to Uni until I was about 37. It was sort of a mid-range place. Nice lecturers although mine were a bit eccentric, probably says more about what I studied though. They were really nice people.

By prison standards the first one was ok, old style, minimum security, daily trip to the exercise yard, teachers armed only with rulers, victorian era inkwells good for hiding contraband.

I was moved to a bigger pri... I mean school for more hardened offenders in the summer of 96 & I was passed around like a piece of candy. 😞

2 Well Persephone already kind of explained this above. Basically, most UK kids go to their local comprehensive, some go to one well out of area. Some areas still have academically selective state schools with entrance controlled by an exam, but only in England/Northern Ireland (not in Wales or Scotland any more). In NI, incidentally, most schools are still (notoriously) segregrated for Protestants or Catholics. There are many private schools throughout the country which charge pretty high fees unless you get a scholarship, but only 6-7% of British kids go to one. That's controversial (like academic selection in general), with the left, because private schools are often seen as a major reason for inequality/snobbishness in society. Not all private schools are academically selective, though many are. A private school, at least famous ones like Eton, is often traditionally called a public school in the UK, for weird historical reasons. Think I am glad I was able to go to boarding school, because my dad was becoming an alcoholic by then and he caused many problems at home. But it was also because boarding was the done thing for a certain social class in my mum's generation (working class/middle class etc are more culturally distinct from each other, and mean different things than in America).

My school was an unusual kind of place really, on a big loch (lake), not so nice because that part of the shore suffered from mud/the school's sewage output. There was a nice natural rock pool up the stream with a rope swing, though. The place was too closely surrounded by forest for me, so claustrophobic. It had some really nasty shabby/poorly constructed buildings, especially most of the pupils' living quarters. I once got an electric shock in the biology lab (before they moved biology to a refurbished lab), because a disused electric socket was still live (near a water tap I think!). The swimming pool was bizarre, built in a former log pit of a sawmill and heated by turbines from the stream, so much colder when it hadn't rained enough. It's unsurprising the school went bankrupt really, most of it is derelict now.

I got to do a French exchange to a day school near Paris where I stayed with a family, that was really socially tough and I think the girl who was my exchange partner didn't like me much. The German one was easier, because we all stayed as a class at a boarding school in southern Germany. Lots of kids here do similar exchanges, it's not really a privileged thing.
I also studied for year at a uni, again in southern Germany because of my degree subject. That was in quite a nice small city on a large river, in an attractive region, but it was dreadfully bombed (by the British) in the war, so mostly rather boring modern buildings with a few historic landmarks like the cathedral. The German university system is nothing like anything in the English-speaking world, very intellectual. I foolishly tried theology classes there (because used to be a churchgoer), but was totally out of my depth and embarassed. There was a great discotheque there, in a boat on the river. And the city had really nice open-air swimming pools. But it was a boring, provincial kind of place really, I wasn't the only one who thought that.

My high school was a former grammar school turned private school in a good area so I guess it was/is fairly prestigious. Since it specialised in sports it has had a few Olympians and international rugby players go there. I was never much of an athlete so that was never really my focus. I just went there because my parents thought I needed more academic support.

Most people in my hometown are surprised that I went there and seem to believe I lived in a mansion (when in reality I lived in a three bed semi-detached house in a quiet suburb). A lot of people have this strange misconception that private school = Eton/Harrow when that's really not the case at all.

I did well in high school and luckily could stay at home to attend a top university so I kept my debt and living costs low. If I could change anything I wouldn't have studied my degree subject. While it is extremely interesting it is too general and really needs to add a specialism to it. I can't help shake the fact that university is just one big debt scam so I'm avoiding doing a post-grad.

@LydeaCharlotte Your school would make a good spooky setting for a book.

My primary, middle school and highschool were kinda dumpy old buildings from the 50's or 60's, two of them have been since torn down. It wasn't anything real bad like a cockroach infestation or anything though. The College I went to had older parts that were cinderblock walls with little prison windows while other areas were more modern and pleasant to be in. I didn't find the quality of the education in any of the schools to be much of an issue, mostly just average I guess.

In a word: No.

my schools both primary and secondary i was badly bullied and during that time i was being abused at home
I never want to go back there

My college is an okay, mid-tier state school with professors that are mostly hit-or-miss at best. I'm fine with that, since I never aimed to go to a high-tier college to begin with. (I don't want the ridiculous debt that I would have gotten from going to one and I believe college is what you make of it, so I don't see how not going to a more famous institution would necessarily prevent you from getting a good job.)

For 5th and 6th grade, I had initially gone to a middle school that was quite old and run down. Alot of my classmates were from broke/troubled homes and would get in very violent fights with eachother almost every day. I received some of the worst bullying and ostracizing at that school (Although I did later transfer to other middle schools that I got bullied at as well, I have some of the most terrible memories from that school in particular. My classmates there had tried to make it especially clear they didn't like me at all.)

No. Not really. Nothing in my life has ever been what I'd call "quality".

But especially in the first 10-12 years of my life, we lived in a very rural area in the south and well...I can't think of anything good to say about any of the schools I attended there. My mother had me in a couple of private schools ran by churches and those were horrendous. The first one was SDA and lasted several years and the other one was Catholic and lasted less than a year. I'm not even really sure why she thought it would be a good idea to put me in a Catholic school but it was weird and alien and strict and I didn't learn anything there.

The public school I went to there after that also was horrible. The other kids were mean and aggressive (and some were violent bullies) and the teachers were not great.

Edited to say - I think I more or less stopped learning after 1st or 2nd grade. I don't remember which one was the one where I learned to read and write but that was pretty much the only thing I was ever any good at. I learned to read and write faster than just about every other kid in my class (It almost felt like I already knew it somehow and just needed to be reminded) but later on when I started trying to learn math and all the other stuff. Nope. Was always terrible at math. I liked Social Studies/History (that's what it was called in my schools anyway) but didn't do very well in it because my memory has always been garbage and I couldn't remember all the names and dates and places. I also had to find the subject matter interesting in order to grasp it at all and some periods of history were just not interesting to me. Or the teachers didn't make it interesting or the book wasn't great.

I am essentially a biproduct of the American public education system. My personal experience from primary to secondary with the one school I've attended for both was alright. More socially than academically. High school was a different story... I hear that it became worse as the years went on after I've graduated (just barely since I gave up towards the end - and not that it really said too much to begin with because of its standards.)

As far as higher education, I went to a two-year before going to a four-year (both public.) Looking back I am grateful for the two-year college since it was basically a second chance along with some really good professors who care. I went to the four-year with the main goal of completing the undergraduate, though I can say that it was decent with some great professors there as well. Quality... Let's just say that it attracts the populations of first generations and students abroad, hence I was able to gain that 'second chance' to begin with as a first generation. So not really competitive.