Both my brothers attended this school. Teaching was reported as excellent by both but at the time (15 years ago) and they both enjoyed the academic teaching. Unfortunately teachers didn't act on their concerns about frequent episodes of bruising all over my brother's body at the time, including his back and other atypical areas for accidental bruising. My mother concealed it by saying it must be from rough play with other boys. My brother has longstanding health issues relating to years of physical and emotional abuse from our father, in fact all the children in our family do. I'm sure their safeguarding processes have improved but I wish they'd been vigilant to ongoing abuse markers, which were perfectly obvious at the time. Unfortunately this experience is not uncommon as middle-class parents are more likely to believed when concealing abuse. read more

In his excellent article, "Oh come, come, headmaster private schools are pretend charities?" (Sunday Times, 20.01.08), Simon Jenkins argues against private schools registering themselves as charities. He has a point. In recent years our family has suffered illness, job loss, disability and even homelessness. We are now in social housing. Last year - choosing our daughters high school, we attended open day at Birkenhead School. A wonderful school & Best of all, they were a charity. If a gifted child could benefit from attending Birkenhead, their bursary scheme would do it. A big ask yes, but we saw a lifeline & held on tight, finding the £50 entrance test fee. The school has its own primary to feed the senior school & rumour had just 6 external places. Our clever girl was offered one of them. What joy! Even hearing our situation, they wanted our girl. We submitted bursary application and waited... How we waited. We sent off e-mails, but no reply until... Welcome evening arrived. We emailed should we come? Now a response "best not" Funding was still not secured, anyway, we could easily be "brought up to speed." I think then I saw the lie, though we still hoped. We had not requested the 100% bursary they claim is available. We did not expect a freebie & we wanted to show the school we would increase our contribution as & when we could. We also clung to knowledge that the schools own head had benefited from the grants available in his day. In July, when our girl was due to start in September, we learnt the fund could not acquiesce to our request for support. Apparently, most fee requests are low & the school will happily secure the saving that the average haggler wants? Personally, I found it all so distasteful that it still leaves a bitterness no medicine, regardless how sweet, can relieve. Beati Mundo Corde? Oh come, come,headmaster... read more

I joined this school in year 7 at 11 years old, and stayed here until I had finished my GCSE's and wanted to move out of private education and into a college. I will say this, it's a good school, all my friends that carried on did very well, but I would say that going into a college atmosphere for 6th form really opened my eyes and prepared me for university life more than Birkenhead School could have done with their stiff upper lip attitude and policies. They have a great range of subjects and a great dedicated set of teachers, with subjects as diverse as Latin and Ancient History being offered up to A Level when I attended eight years ago. They are known for their sporting passion and have a dedicated sports team that specialises in rugby, cricket and hockey. All round it's a good school but a bit posh and stuck up at every end, so if this isn't your thing, don't put your kids through misery! read more