Maris Stella School

As a proud past pupil of Maris Stella, I wanted to share my positive experience at this school. The teachers at Maris Stella are not only extremely knowledgeable in their subjects, but they also display a genuine passion for teaching. They went above and beyond to keep us engaged, helping us grasp even the most complex concepts and encouraging us to question and think critically. At Maris Stella, I was encouraged to embrace my own uniqueness and celebrate the achievements of others. There is a great emphasis on personal development that equipped us with the skills and mindset needed to make a positive impact on society. I was encouraged to explore my talents and I found myself developing skills I never knew I had. The support from both my teachers and peers made all the difference.

Maris Stell claims to be open and accepting of all students. However, this is most definitely not the case. Teachers and students can be openly homophobic. The experience I had with the principal was truly horrfic and I suffer from trauma from it. I suffer from mental health issues (which they have little to no services catering towards it) and I had recently been excessively bullied, this had led to a suicide attempt and a public mental breakdown on social media. Maris Stella handled the situation extremely poorly, two days after my lapse in mental health, I was called into the office and interrogated by what evidence I had on the bullying. I was told to "stop giving attitude" after defending myself and after I had explained previous bullying attempts due being gay, the harsh words increased. I was questioned on why I swore during videos of my public mental breakdown, the principal had no sympathy for my situation. But rather cared for the public exposure of the school, how the school would look. I truly know no teacher nor person who is in a leadership position in this school would cater towards students such as I. The bullying situation in this school is insane, no student recieves a stern punishment (only a "talk") for homophobia or racism, even though the code-of-conduct dictates further consequences. Teachers can confuse POC student's names and this seems to never occur with white students. Maris Stella is most definitely only concerned with their public appearance, more concerned with uniforms and hair than student's bullying issues or mental health. Also, the stairs, paint, walls and carpet are all in poor condition. Most indoor carpet is dirty and needs to be refurbished. The stairs all have chips in the concrete and paint.

Teachers are openly homophobic, one of the maths teachers tells the students that they are stupid, students get reported to the HOD for no reason, a horrible school with a horrible education, don’t send your children here, they force their religion on you and belittle you for believing in anything else.