A horrible place to work. - Anonymous employee Ark Schools Employee Review

1.0
10 Aug 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Having the opportunity to work with children.

Cons

The Ark schools offer a totally toxic working environment. Working at Ark was exceptionally stressful: Most colleagues were unfriendly and some were actively unkind. Wages are already low, yet staff are expected to work overtime for free. There is no work-life balance and staff turn -over is exceptionally high. All in all a vile place to work.

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Ark Schools Response
6y
Thank you for your feedback. As an organisation, we value and take all feedback seriously and are always looking for ways to improve. We wanted to take the opportunity to address some of your comments and concerns. We recognise that we are working in challenging times, but we are working hard to ensure great outcomes for pupils and across our services. We are sorry that you did not choose to engage with us directly on the issues you were facing and allow us to support you through these, before posting on a forum such as this. We take all staff concerns seriously, and there are many avenues open to staff who have any concerns. We take the comment about Ark having a toxic working environment very seriously and want to address this straight away; we want you to be happy at work and are sorry that you feel this way. We are also working on our work-life-balance / flexible working offer and hope we can use this to be an employer of choice for the future. We want our frontline staff to feel supported by their line managers and Leadership Team and to be confident in all that they do, as without them we would not be able to provide the education and support services that we do for our amazing pupils. We will take this feedback on board and use it to better the training and guidance that is carried out to staff. We are working hard to recruit, support and invest in our staff and to make Ark Schools a good place to work. If you have any further comments, we have a number of processes for staff to report concerns to management and staff council and we would encourage any member of staff who have concerns to use these mechanisms. Thank you for your contribution to the organisation and we wish you the very best of luck.

Explore other reviews about Ark Schools

4.0
26 Nov 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Enjoyable role and great colleagues to support. I came from another large MAT (a certain Croydon based one beginning with H) that nearly put me off education for life. Being at Ark has made me love being part of the education sector again.

Cons

Would like to see more collaboration between teams

4.0
22 Dec 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I had a good team that made working easier

Cons

Ended up becoming repetitive at the end

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