Girton Grammar School

Girton strives for excellence from its students and wishfully hopes that they receive that excellence from the quite frankly ratty, in-group fighting and vaping children (this has reduced recently) that make up the school.

The school avoids giving much needed time for study, revision, building rapport and developing inter-house solidarity. On top of part time jobs, working out, SLEEPING, the school expects 24 hours work be done outside of class - or 20 for those who do 5 VCE subjects - which is almost one of our 2 days of the weekend, which we spend around 16 hours asleep for, at minimum 3 hours per shift with around 2 a weekend and not to mention time working out, time completing homework and time spent with friends (for the mental health) -> essentially what I’m saying is time is limited, with my basic calculations saying around 5 hours or so. This may be a VCE requirement / strong recommendation but we lose additional time due to:
Assemblies. Happen about 3 times a week for a half hour between lunch and period 5. Not only is this half hour spent by the students sitting down, listening to speeches that don’t concern them, housekeeping matters after a group of immature students destroy the bathrooms yet again the other two days where we don’t have assemblies, we spend our time in our “House Tutor” (HT) Homeroom groups, rereading policies (on a 1-per-term basis, like the bullying policy - understandable sure, but ineffective), talking to mates, unable to continue eating lunch which we could do with an extended lunchtime (1.15-2.25 vs the current 1.15-1.53 and the HT / Assembly until 2.25), that the school is too allergic to give us frequently. A peer of mine gave a “Senior Prefect speech” this week at an assembly, he spoke about a serious topic in Australian society and did a good job, and had invited his parents to view his speech. After his speech I saw his parents faces go from pleased to an almost disgusted look of confusion as the next presentations were to commend students who received “Merit” awards in their subjects. The look was almost as if they were confused as to why us students were required to sit through those presentations for all to see (and yes, I applaud those recipients but, the whole thing is not that interesting, an email or notice board announcement would have completed this too) and why they were paying upwards of $10k to have their children sit through it instead of… sorry, what do schools do again? The school seems to almost think that because we are young we have all the time in the world to do all that we need to do. I get it if some VCE requirements require this, I do, it’s out of Girton’s control - but when you take 4-5 hours a week doing assemblies / Motivate (that free period for VCE students), your kind of giving us no chance to do it all at once, with the school’s values being put first over what the student may need to succeed better at school.

When you get to years 11 and 12 (VCE years), the school has one extra period in its 5 period a day, for five days timetable and requires students to sit through guest speakers, University preparation, continued Sex Ed talk (important, yes, but *repeated* around 2 or 3 times a year), drugs and alcohol talks (this was an important one that was really worth my time as a student going to parties shortly) and continued reminders about school dates and University dates (which could be sent over Email or using the in-school website - Astra). This hour of time per week is sometimes spent completing SACs (e.g. the Maths or English SACs that most will have to do), but otherwise, this time that could be spent studying, revising, doing literally anything else is spent going over topics that have been extended to an hour in length that could be sent in one or two emails.

As a private school which prides themselves on hardship and dedication, they sure as heck aren’t setting a proper demographic. Time and time again in my 13 YEARS of going to Girton, have I had to sit through “This was a sad thing to see our students not representing the school in full uniform in their best light” or “The toilets are damaged again, this is disgraceful” or even “Girton has high expectations on punctuality” and NOTHING be done about it. The school seems to believe that saying these things which condemn a small group which committed a wrongdoing, will act as a good enough shaming that will stop them from doing it again. They believe these speeches, taking time that (ONCE AGAIN) could have been saved with EMAIL, will do enough to create change within the school community and the demographic of current day students which - spoiler alert - won’t do enough due to the lack of care in their students and the very small ability the school has to build this care through condemnation is believed to be sufficient in making the whole school have “pride in their uniform”.

A quick interesting contrast: with the GAT this year, the school invited students from Bendigo Senior to complete section A under our school’s supervision. In a briefing before completing the GAT, “Year 11 students please return to [these classrooms]. Year 12 students you are permitted on your approved street leave. Senior Students, you can go wherever {lenient paraphrase but you get the idea}.”. This caused the Girton students to kind of murmur and whisper about how lucky the other students are for this freedom. The limits set by Girton, can be considered great things, promoting punctuality, promoting rapport between students however when hearing the other opportunities available at Senior, we were a bit shocked and forgotten. Or freedom to roam as (nearly or as) adults is taken away and we are then required to follow a small map, saying where we can and can’t go - with this being limited to only Year 12s.

In conclusion to this convoluted review, I spent far too much time writing, Girton has many positives: it’s educational opportunities are amazing, it’s co-curricular opportunities are also amazing. But, there are many negatives which possibly outweigh the second key positive: loss of freedom, loss of time, increase of stress.

TL;DR - Girton spends too much time worrying about how the school looks and whether students get their weekly notice board announcement and weekly Christian learning opportunity than giving their students a fair chance to study with an already limited schedule.