Galway City & Oranmore Educate Together Secondary School

1 Right i will start with the negatives I have been here for a few years one thing I can say is you can say this school is for people with special needs but it is not suitable they target people with special needs and take advantage of them i see it with my own eyes people in my year that have special needs are always treated unfairly and are seen as different to everyone else in the school 2 They say everyone is treated fairly but this is not true because in this school for example if you were in the hall way going to class and someone came up and punched you in the face and you hit them back you will be the one punished the person that started it will get away with it 3. 4th year up are allowed down town for break and when we go on our phones in the car park they say go down town and take out our phones there and claim we are not allowed are phones in the car park this is ridiculous as we have previously got in trouble for this it’s a public car park not owned by the school you can’t make rules on a public car park the school doesn’t own it’s ridiculous 4 They allow people to get away with shutting on the floor in the bathroom and let people shit in the sink this is ridiculous as we are in secondary school and not primary school so everyone should know hygiene and potty trained at this point it is carnage last month I went into the bathroom and someone shitted in the sink and left finger prints of shit on the mirror this is absolutely carnage disgusting! 5. They gave special class places to people who don’t need them for example there is someone who has one while at a different school so they are not making use of the place I see people struggling with special needs that do not have a place in the special class and would make way better use of the place they are struggling and the parents need help it’s really unfair 6. If you are late to school your teacher gives out to you and acts like it’s our fault our year head had to talk to the class about being late and giving out to us we cannot control Galway traffic and it just puts unnecessary stress on people in my year who are focusing on there leaving cert and is already stressed enough we can’t focus with this stress 7. Give - points on behaviour system app for no reason for example a teacher said hi to us and we didn’t say hi back and they gave us a - 1 point it’s ridiculous Now onto the positives 1. Some teachers are really nice but most are not 2. Most students are nice enough to talk to This is the only reason it’s not a 1 star

Not the easiest to be honest. It has been some of the craziest years of my life. A lot of the students that are currently in 6th year talk a lot and they are somehow allowed to get away with it while a few students usually get in a lot of trouble for it.

I’m in this school for 6 years I can tell loads of stuff about what I don’t like 1. iPads are horrible and poorly organised with work that sometimes you can’t do work cause the WiFi isn’t working well 2. The Teachers don’t care about your opinion they are making tons of excuses and in cooking class the teacher wants us to bring ingredients then complain to us it’s our problem the other students aren’t in that we didn’t bring full ingredients in case but it’s our money we waste on stupid stuff like this and that won’t be long 3. Deputy Principal restricted all the bus sites on the iPad and there is one person who is very interested with buses that is me 4. Some Teachers can be rude for no reason they can sometimes scream at stuff and when you tell simple to calm down or something they won’t they will start ringing the deputy like mad but she doesn’t know anything what’s gone on and blames students and we all get calls home non stop and then use the VsWare system that gives you tons of minus points and if you have good amount of them you get to go on trips that are only down the road 5. Lack of breaks for people the breaks for special needs people like me are bad enough we get them once in a moonlight the sna’s gone everywhere presumably a shortage 6. Non Uniform School but dress code with hats and hoods that students get in trouble if they refuse and calls home but the school is freezing cold during winter 7. Lack Of Communication with the teachers sometimes they say one thing for you to do then confuse you with something different 8. They keep texting and calling your parents if your late and then blame you it’s your problem traffic is that bad in Galway when schools start same time 9. Science Tech & Main Area to sit during break have no back support on chairs 10. too short breaks and teachers telling us to get to class 2 minutes early and sometimes our rooms are across the building so sometimes we can get only 5 minutes of time to eat and then 30 on shorter days and 40 on longer 11. Trips and VsWare too much minus points than adding points and if you get over hundred you go on trips that are worse then primary school down the road to the cinema to watch a PG movies when we should be in our adulthood 12. The hours School Starts Monday & Wednesday 08:30-15:40 Rest of the day is till 14:30 School buses arrive too early and it drained me from getting up any earlier then 7am I am running late full time 13. They target special needs people like myself checking if I have work done too many times and blocked all bus sites on the iPad cause I was using it when I finished work then complaining to me oh it’s innapropiate use of the iPad what’s so innapropiate is watching ladies not buses so they need to cop on a bit And now to the positive side 1. Some teachers are sound and grand they give you time and work but it’s not all of them most half of them are just utterly rude 2. Work is done on the one note mainly saves your hand from writing 3. You can go to town during break from 4th years 4. The work can be done quicker and some teachers will be nice to let you listen to music but most half don’t allow that at all 5. Work Experience they have sorted work experience very well for us in LCA and I really enjoy it I do it at a coach operator on tuesday but loads won’t take on for Tuesdays I got mine for a Saturday and I prefer it 6. The Students everyone can pretty much get along easily with each other and have loads to talk about loads of activities together done too and loads of chat sometimes the chat is too fun the teachers get mad