Sucky School

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• Assassination Classroom distills this into a single class: it turns out the worst students are all stuffed into the same class with an alien teacher so the rest of the school has someone to look down on. When they start improving the school takes measures to keep them down.
• Cromartie High School: No teachers in sight and a reputation that if you can write your name you can enroll. Not to mention a robot, a former plane hijacker, and a gorilla as students.
• Go Nagai provided a couple interesting examples:
  • The titular school of Harenchi Gakuen (it translates as "Shameless School"), where the insane teachers go around naked, torment their students and even molest them sexually, and have tried to outright murder them more than once... And the students are just as bad, only clothed (usually). It's stated there's an international network of such schools, with the Italian one getting shut down (as in bombed to rubble with all students and teachers killed, with only one teacher escaping) at some point and the first part of the series having the (main) Japanese one fall to the same fate. The other schools seen in later parts are no better, with the only difference is that only the buildings get destroyed, usually via the shenanigans of the main characters, leaving the people inside alive.
  • Kekko Kamen has Sparta Academy, that manages to mix this trope with Elaborate University High: the place is a boarding school, with the students living in luxurious single rooms and the teachers being universally very competent (at one point the females' PE teacher explained that you can be hired there only with a Class A teaching license before listing the enormous skillset she had to acquire before achieving her license)... But, with a single exception, the teachers are sadistic disciplinarians and perverts, and it's perfectly normal to be tortured for achieving less than 90% on a test, to the point there's a high suicide rate among the students or the teachers make it look like one after said torture actually kills them. Said suicide rate prompted the police and the Ministry of Education to investigate by sending Kekko Kamen, who by the Grand Finale has found enough evidence to get the school shut down.
• Honō no Tōkyūji: Dodge Danpei: Araki Elementary School has a reputation for being from a low-income and underfunded campus, with foul-mouthed and ill-tempered students.
• Kill la Kill: Honnouji Academy places death matches between students (mainly Ryuko); the loser will have to pay the price. It also has a policy where students have to remain on time for classes, or else they will get pelted with tennis balls or face expulsion. This all changes, however, once its ruler Ragyo Kiryuin is defeated and out of the picture.
• Akehisa High in Kyō Kara Ore Wa!!, due to the high number of delinquents among their students... As in all of them. They are not the worst school, Hokunei is... Or rather was, as its students burned it down.
• Ranma ½: The demented Principal Kuno of Furinkan High is single-handedly responsible for the place being a hellhole loaded with traps that he gleefully uses to torture the students when they try to protest his latest absurd edict (especially his obsession with shaving them all bald). The constant battles that happen within school grounds from people trying to kill Ranma Saotome (such as the Principal's son Tatewaki) just do not help, although the students consider the latter almost an Unusually Uninteresting Sight.

• The school from the Bash Street Kids in The Beano. One of the cartoon adaptations had the school shut down because of this (it was back by the end of the episode.) No one learns, outdated books, falling apart building which has no central heating and (wasn't outdated then) teacher still wearing a mortarboard.
  • Most of the pupils don't wear a uniform, either (the only one who does is a snobby elitist), and all attempts to get them to do so are farcical.
• Common in Chick Tracts, especially given that it's an Author Tract.
  • "War Zone" is about a school ruled by gangs, where Moose slashes a teacher's tire for giving him homework. The teachers can't teach the students anything, and some kids can't even read. Naturally, things turn around once Moose gets converted to Christianity.
  • Other schools appear to be operating normally but are seen as tools to advance a Satanic agenda. For example, Li'l Susy's school teaches evolution, requires kids to dress up for Halloween, and teaches kids about gay couples, all things Chick considers terrible.

Crossovers

• Doofenshmirtz Hero Incorporated!: Downplayed with U.A.; sure, it can churn out heroes, but functional human beings...? Not so much; the school lacks any kind of history or general science education, and the mental and psychological development of their students isn't considered a high priority. While Nezu wants to change this, the corrupt Hero Commission makes such adjustments difficult.
• JoJo New Universe: Defied with Hope's Peak Academy. The school was founded by Izuru Kamukura with the original purpose of fostering natural talent in students, but the Steering Committee made it the center of the "Ultimate Hope" project, which would have turned any chosen student into The Ace at the cost of destroying their personality. Even the students of Hope's Peak Academy are initially apathetic to learning once they realized the school only cared about fostering talents. Thanks to Noriaki Kakyoin, a maternal descendant of the school's founder, Hope's Peak Academy is put under the Speedwagon Foundation's educational jurisdiction, averting much tragedy and dysfunction. Ironically, the students of JJNU's Hope's Peak Academy encounter surviving students of the Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony timeline, who are understandably traumatized by what they went through.
• In A Loud Among Demons, Lincoln firmly believes that Middle School Is Miserable, and attending classes is the one thing he doesn't miss about his old life. Not to mention that he didn't get to learn magic before.
• My Driver Academia (a crossover between My Hero Academia, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Like a Dragon) features several examples:
  • Aldera proves to be an awful place for Izuku, even after he gets a Blade.
  • Despite how U.A. presents itself, Aizawa single-handedly drags down its standards through his flagrantly discriminatory and biased teaching methods. He's more interested in ruining children's lives than he is in actually teaching them, aka doing his job. What's more, his bad hygiene makes several of his students ill. And Nedzu lets him get away with it all, despite Midnight's efforts to get her former friend fired. It speaks volumes that an ex-villain — one involved in the USJ Incident — proves to be a VASTLY superior replacement to Aizawa.
  • The other Hero Schools prove even more oppressive towards their students, operating more like military academies than schools. Shiketsu in particular has some very misogynistic undertones and expels students for dating. One student threatens to tell their teachers that another student has romantic feelings towards somebody outside their school.
• Isei High in Persona: HEAVEN (Afreaknamedpete) is the Japanese high school equivalent of Springfield Elementary. It's openly considered a bottom-of-the-barrel school, the teachers are either apathetic, unmotivated, or unable to control their students, and if they are capable its because they were kicked out of better institutions because of politics. The students are just as bad with a serious bullying problem, class cutting is common, and most are easily influenced by the whims of the rumor mill. Though in spite of its openly poor reputation and problems, it's still better than Shujin.
• The crossover Senpai: A Story of Good Friends has, true to the source material, Furinkan, Tomobiki and Butsumetsu high schools (the latter having a junior high section that is identified as the school Ranma went at before going to China, where students routinely fought for the best meal), well known for their unruly and underperforming students. Turns out someone's doing it on purpose: Asuka Saginomiya runs a switching grades ring, with the grades of the best students from the supposedly lesser schools being switched around for those of people who can pay for the honor of entering the supposedly elite Kolkhoz High. With some of the people screwed up this way being Nabiki and Kasumi. Needless to say, when Kodachi (who has moved to Furinkan after her brother was hospitalized) and her student council (including, among others, Ranma and Nabiki) find out, they're not happy.
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Several schools in the series are shitty, most especially in Calisota given what a Wretched Hive the city is. Issues range from rampant bullying, useless staff, funding problems, and sexual assaults on school grounds, both by teachers and students:
  • The private school Anastasia and Drizella attended ignored their complaints of being bullied because they thought it would make them look bad.
  • Monster High, here named Munster High, is an Inner City School with staff that blatantly favors white students (twins Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde got into a fight and the white-looking Jackson got a slap on the wrist while obviously-black Holt was suspended) and the non-white students take out their anger over being mistreated by white people on the white kids.
  • A. Nigma High is a reform school which overlaps with Juvenile Hell; the teachers sexually abuse, forcibly sterilise, and occasionally kill students under the nose of the honourable but rigid and half-blind principal, the older students are allowed to run riot to keep the younger ones scared and manipulable, Grayson and Kimmie are Troubled Abuser manipulators taking out their misery on their one-time friends, the janitor Li is a kidnapping victim, and the students are so stressed they suffer mass hallucinations of the Tatzelwurm sneaking around the building.
  • Averted with Gravedale High; here it's an underfunded school on the Santa Ynez Native American reservation, but the special ed teacher Schneider cares deeply for the kids and goes the extra mile for them, and the school gives them a lot of leeway after all of them are traumatised from unjust imprisonment after the accident with Miss Fresno.

Calvin and Hobbes

• In Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, Calvin freaks out at the prospect of Susie becoming the class president, convincing himself that she'd transform their school into a horrific prison:
  Calvin: She'd keep us there all day and all night! We'd have to sleep in sleeping bags on the classroom floor, and be waken up by a drill sergeant at three in the morning to do laps around the school! She'd have us wear horrible itchy uniforms and ban recess! Homework would double! No, TRIPLE!

Disney Animated Canon

• The Bolt Chronicles: "The School" depicts Penny's first week or so at a new secondary school, and she dislikes it immensely. Given that the place has Foul Cafeteria Food (featuring a nose-picking lunch lady), an English teacher who sends her to detention when she challenges his interpretation of Macbeth, and a horrifically incompetent football team, she's got good reason to feel this way.
• Played for Laughs in Disney High, where it's stated that the cafeteria food is awful, the football team sucks and half the teachers are some shade of incompetent at their jobs.

For Better or for Worse

• The New Retcons: Milborough's elementary school still uses a blackboard and has no computer lab, despite it being 2009. While some like Elly Patterson are fine with it, Tracey Mayes is unhappy with the quality of education her children are getting and attempts to run for office to fix the problems.

Harry Potter

• Canonically, everyone knows that Hogwarts runs with a skeleton crew, a Potions Teacher who despises teaching, and cursed position that requires Dumbledore to find a replacement every year. Some Fandom-Specific Plots take this further, such as depicting Dumbledore as a Control Freak whose machinations endanger staff and students alike.

• Subverted in The Chosen Six: When Dumbledore decides to change things up to get with the times for Hogwarts, he's effectively hit with the Ministry's stonewalling on hiring more staff, and even their refusal to have an administrative staff on standby or more teachers. By Harry's fourth year, Percy and Penelope are the first two new admins for Hogwarts, the former due to Greyback, the latter joining in.
• Escape Artist plays this to the extreme. When Harry and Ginny both disappear after the Third Task, Amelia investigates the disappearances of two Hogwarts students. These include, but are not limited to: Dumbledore putting Geas on everyone, including her niece (which is a HUGE no-no in the Ministry), stealing from the Potter fortune, intentionally planning to get Harry killed, Snape's horrific teaching methods and McGonagall having three positions and was unable to notice Ginny being missing for a week. By the end of the fic, Hogwarts and Magical Britain as a whole is forced to undergo a massive change in how they do things.
• Harry Potter and the Magic of the Beasts: Dumbledore's actions are played even worse in this fic, with the staff overworked due to Dumbledore juggling three positions, Snape actively sabotaging students from all four houses, Dumbledore not informing parents of students of any attacks on Hogwarts, which causes the bulk of the staff to view Dumbledore on a Broken Pedestal.
• The Odds Were Never In My Favour: Hogwarts is its own jurisdiction in this fic. The DMLE cannot enter the castle grounds without the headmaster's consent. This, combined with Dumbledore's Control Freak tendencies, his refusal to let his favorites face any punishment (or any student face the consequences of their actions), and the way he doesn't care about what happens to those who aren't his favorite, said permission is never granted. The only two times the board was ever able to overrule Dumbledore was the Chamber of Secrets (after several months of attacks and even then, it was only due to Lucius blackmailing some of his collogues) and a Deadly Prank that made several Ravenclaws violently ill.
• Trouble: Dumbledore's actions throughout the Basilisk attack causes Harry to wonder if the man has no care for the students, as if a non-magical school gets attacked twice, the school would be shut down for inspections and if need be, the students go to another school. This, combined with the brooms, Troll and Cerberus from last year, along with Dumbledore admitting his plans, culminates in Dumbledore being removed from all positions and thrown in Azkaban.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

• Murder is Wrong But is a High School AU of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean with Green Dolphin Prison as a school rather than a detention center. Though the atmosphere isn't different from a prison, with only one decent teacher (Weather Report) and the rest are either egoistic (Donatello Versus the art teacher), exploiting the students (Miuccia Miuller with her coding (read, stocking exchange) class), or outright violent (Johngalli A and Viviano Westwood).

Miraculous Ladybug

• Miraculous: The Phoenix Rises gives readers Waterloo High, complete with a Dean Bitterman, Psycho Psychologist, a Shoddy Shindig, bullies, a Monster of the Week attacking, etc.
• Salt Fics (ex. Telling Lies? No, Mama) tend to turn Collège Françoise Dupont into one of these, or at least it turns Madame Bustier's class into a microcosmic example of this, with Bustier's decision to be non-confrontational about all of the bullying Chloé Bourgeois (and later Lila Rossi) are fomenting and the lots (and we mean lots) of Akuma attacks that it causes, to the point that other people act like the class is cursed. Depending on the writer, there are various further reasons why nobody does nothing (with Chloé’s dad being the Mayor of Paris being at the top of the list) which get demolished once a Reasonable Authority Figure puts their foot down.

My Hero Academia

• Canonically, all we know about Aldera Junior High is that Midoriya's classmates knew he was Quirkless, mocked his dreams of becoming a Pro Hero, and that Katsuki was able to get away with bullying him for years. It's very common to see stories where Aldera deliberately discriminates against the Quirkless and intentionally let Katsuki get away with tormenting Izuku.

• All Hail the Queen:
  • The rampant Quirkism at Aldera is eventually revealed to be due to how its principal is part of the Meta Liberation Army.
  • Cantonico, Himiko's middle school, isn't much better; the faculty is absolutely obsessed with image and prestige over all other concerns. Nobody even notices when Saito and his friends sneak out of the auditorium. Oh, and Himiko's mother works there as a counselor.
• The Best Case Scenario, if you're being "realistic":
  • Aldera intentionally encouraged Katsuki to be the Big Jerk on Campus in hopes of riding his coattails once he becomes famous. This blows up in their face when he becomes infamous for a Vigilante Injustice incident, especially after a Trashy True Crime documentary featured several of its former alumni bashing Aldera for how they coddled Katsuki and let his Bully Brutality go unchecked. During the Time Skip, Aldera gets shut down, with practically everyone aside from Izuku who'd attended or worked there during the years he and Katsuki were present had their reputations tainted by association, to the point that a second documentary is produced detailing the fallout from the first.
  • Aizawa also makes U.A. a miserable experience for those unfortunate enough to be assigned to his class. He turns a blind eye towards the misdeeds he deems to have "potential", enabling Katsuki's Bully Brutality and Mineta's Predatory Perversion to go unchecked, while expelling students for things like acting their age around him. And while most of these expulsions are overturned, they leave permanent black marks on their students' records. Principal Nezu finds the students' suffering amusing, though he comes to regret his inaction upon realizing too late just how many alumni were Driven to Suicide or Trapped in Villainy as a result of Aizawa's actions.

• Cain: The faculty at Aldera Middle treat Katsuki as a rising star in the making, and Izuku as their personal scapegoat. They're more than happy to let other students dogpile on Izuku as well. Ironically, however, Katsuki winds up their next target after he fails to make it into U.A.
• In Changing Gears, Katsuki specifically Invoked this trope — he chose to attend Aldera specifically because he knew it was a shitty middle school, wanting to paint himself as an underdog who'd rise from squalor to become the next #1. Naturally, he presumes Izuku had the same idea, but decided to 'lie' about being Quirkless to give himself an even better backstory.
• A Clear Pattern of Behavior: Aldera kept Katsuki's records squeaky clean, letting him get away with whatever he pleased without so much as a slap on the wrist. He's so accustomed to this special treatment that he fully expects it to continue at U.A., misinterpreting his first detention as Aizawa and Inui trying to none-too-subtly nudge him towards only brutalizing Izuku during training exercises for the sake of "plausible deniability".
• In Disciplinary Action, the Apathetic Teachers let Katsuki beat up Izuku in the middle of class while keeping the Bakugous Locked Out of the Loop and unaware of his Bully Brutality. They also let other students film these incidents, something that comes back to bite them thanks to said students proceeding to posting those videos online in hopes of humiliating Izuku further.
• Harmony in War Nezu sends Aizawa to find out about the stuff in Bakugo and Midoriya's files and All Might goes undercover in his true form as U.A.'s secretary. The two find out Izuku was deemed worthless and portrayed as a troublemaker while Bakugo's issues were ignored. The school faces consequences in the end.
• In A Sky Of A Million Stars: While Izuku's suicide attempt is the most prolific screw-up Aldera has had thus far, the place was already seen in a bad light due to various cover-ups and scandals. Izuku himself has no clue how the place is still standing, let alone operational.
• It's Over, Katsuki: Instead of being genuinely crappy or a front for the MLA, Aldera is revealed to be a front for the HPSC that they use to scout out potential agents. Its methods are so disturbing that even the MLA is disturbed by the similarities in how they operate.
• In Safe, Izuku deliberately underperformed because his Quirkist teachers at Aldera constantly humiliated him, accusing him of cheating because his brain was supposedly too 'underdeveloped'. One teacher in particular subjected him to repeated sexual abuse, claiming Izuku needed to 'thank him' for letting him stay in school despite the 'inconvenience' of dealing with him. This triggers a panic attack when Aizawa wants to talk about his grades, as Izuku assumes he wants the same thing. Fortunately, Aizawa proves to be gentle and understanding, hugging his sobbing student while planning to rain hell down upon Aldera.
• The Scorpion Jar sees Izuku taking advantage of Aldera's refusal to do anything about the bullying, abuse and Fantastic Ableism that runs rampant there by quietly becoming a Knowledge Broker, offering his services in exchange for evidence of other students' misdeeds. His peers are more than happy to sell each other out in exchange for test answers and finished homework, and Izuku then turns around and reveals all this dirty laundry to the media, getting the whole school taken down.
• Statistic has All Might learning firsthand just how awful Aldera Middle School is after he decides to start working there as the Quirkless Toshinori Yagi. Not only do Katsuki and most of the other students immediately decide the new teacher isn't worth listening to because of his Quirklessness, his new coworkers make no secret of their own scorn, openly mocking Toshinori and dismissing any complaints by claiming they were "just joking around". They also repeatedly insist that nobody will ever believe any of his or Izuku's claims about the abuse happening at their school, even cracking jokes when Izuku goes missing.
• In Two Sides Of The Coin, nobody working at Aldera was willing to do anything about how Katsuki bullied Izuku. The principal didn't want to 'tarnish' Katsuki's records in any way, considering a Quirkless kid to be an 'acceptable' sacrifice, and one of the teachers tells Izuku outright that the Quirkless get bullied all the time. After Katsuki gets arrested, other alumni inform the media of how Aldera enabled his narcissistic behavior for so long, getting the school in hot water.
• The Wrong Choice: The staff at Aldera looked down upon Izuku for being Quirkless, letting Katsuki illegally use his Quirk against him. Throughout Chapter 4, it's suggested that the Midoriyas could sue Aldera; by the time U.A.'s Sports Festival rolls along, Aldera's reputation was demolished once they were found guilty of promoting illegal Quirk usage.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• the camera adds twenty legs: Seaquestria's original school treated seaponies more like sardines, cramming its students into a series of underwater caverns. Silverstream compares the experience to being imprisoned, recalling how she frequently got into fights with the boys there.

• Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie carries over this status for Jerome Horwitz Elementary from the books (see Literature below).

• Shermer High is implied to be this in The Breakfast Club. The teachers are mostly apathetic and are Only in It for the Money, the children fare no better due to troubles at home and it appearing that the school only cares about the athletic and popular students who make them look good, and although Principal Vernon is seemingly a well-liked and admirable leader of the school (if his word is to be believed), he's really nothing more than a burned-out, antagonistic and petty jerk.
• Exaggerated in Class of 1999: By the year 1999 (in a film made in 1990), inner-city schools have gotten so bad with so much gang violence that they and the ten-mile perimeter surrounding them have become miniature ripoffs of Escape from New York. The plan of the Big Bad is to send military-grade robot infiltrators all over the country and sit back and watch them kill as many students as it takes to bring total pacification.
• In The Faculty, there is a scene early on that takes place at a faculty meeting, where they are deciding how to divide the school's budget. Much to the teachers' chagrin, money that could be used for buying new textbooks or putting on a School Play other than Our Town (which they did last year) is instead directed towards the football team, because, as Principal Drake explains, they live in a football town. She doesn't think the football team deserves all the attention and funding, but it's what the parents want. As well, there are several points that hint the school is in some definite need of refurbishing, such as door frames in need of paint coatings.
  • Also, take a look at the map of Europe in the history classroom. Despite the film being set in 1998, the map still shows a united Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, implying that it's at least ten years old — and judging by the condition it's in, probably older.
• Fist Fight: Roosevelt High School. The students are incredibly unruly; the staff is either too spineless and incompetent to manage them or going too overboard with their methods; and the school board decides to lay off all the teachers to save funding. Not to mention the security guard, who clearly couldn't care less about his job. Strickland's fight with Campbell does help the school go back on track and obtain enough funding.
• High School High parodies this while also combining it with the Inner City School. The teachers are either corrupt or undermined, hardly any of the students in the senior class graduate, the vice principal runs the school (particularly her fellow staff) with an iron hand and the principal himself was abducted twice (including in broad daylight).
• Matilda: Crunchem Hall Elementary School is really bad due to a truly vile principal, who delights in inflicting terror and pain on all of the kids there. Thankfully, the goodly Miss Honey is actually nice and tries to protect the kids as best as she can. At the end, Principal Trunchbull is permanently scared out of the school, leaving Miss Honey as the principal. She makes the school so wonderful the kids never want to leave.
• In Teachers (1984), students get stabbed or shot, teachers refuse to show up to work and get into fights with one another, there's teacher-student sex, a student sues the school after he graduated despite being illiterate, and the best substitute teacher they could find is an outpatient at a psychiatric hospital.

By Author:

• Features prominently in many of the books of Daniel Pinkwater. Schools are typically populated by Drill Sergeant Nasty type gym teachers, academic teachers who are too crazy for their students to learn from them, and students who are cruel bullies.
  • The aptly-named George Armstrong Custer High, from the Snarkout Boys books is a classic example, full of crazy if not outright malicious teachers and apathetic students.
  • In Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars, Bat Masterson Junior High is a dull and terrible place to be. All the kids are snobby and look down on anyone who isn't neat and well-dressed, but they're all stupid and sub-literate. The teachers all teach from the textbook and move so slowly that Leonard completely stops participating, causing the teachers to think he's feeble-minded even though he is quite intelligent. The gym teacher is an abusive Drill Sergeant Nasty type who is somehow popular with all the kids except for Leonard.

By Title:

• The Brotherhood of the Conch: In The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming, Anand visits the village of Sona Dighi. He is never forced to attend the area's one school, but his new friend Ramu tells him that the students hardly learn anything because the teacher spends more time thinking about ways to punish them than about the lessons. Sometimes he makes the students stand in front of the school balancing bricks on their heads until their necks ache. Other times he makes them stand on one leg until they fall over, and then hits them with his long cane.
• Jerome Horwitz Elementary in Captain Underpants provides the page image. The school library is shown as being almost completely free of books, with a librarian who discourages reading. The school also has signs posted encouraging mindless conformity. The teachers are also pretty much entirely either idiots or sadists. Not to mention the principal, who is a complete Jerkass to the point of blackmailing students- which is why those same students hypnotize him into becoming Captain Underpants (when he's in that mode, his personality takes a complete 180).
• Carrie: Ewen High School is outright horrible. All of the popular girls are quite vicious and like to make Carrie's life miserable just because she's weird and uncool. That said, Chris seems to be the most responsible for all this, and it's implied not all of the other girls are horrible people and are mainly just afraid of what Chris will do to them if they dare stand up for Carrie.
• CHERUB Series: In "The Sleepwalker", Jake and Lauren are sent to befriend and interrogate a boy sent to a low-income neighbourhood school, going undercover as new students. Jake, who's spent most of his life up to this point being raised by CHERUB handlers inside very disciplined and strict facilities, where late homework and backtalk to staff are harshly punished, is stunned by how little respect students give teachers, how frequently they spend fighting each other and trashing the place, and how nobody seems to be doing any work at all.
  Jake: It's a lunatic asylum. How the hell can anyone be expected to learn anything?
  Lauren: Nobody does learn anything. This school has the worst exam results in the borough and almost the worst in the country.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Westmore Middle School (The school Greg attends) is so inadequately funded that it lacks heating systems. The teachers also tend to be either overly strict or straight-up incompetent. Due to the stupidity of the students, the playground equipment has been recalled. The rules are so tight that it is forbidden to simply sit down or play tag during recess. It's mentioned in one of the books that their school has some of the lowest tests score averages in the entire state and is on the verge of being closed down due to lack of funding.
• The Dragon Slayers' Academy book series takes place at a school intended to teach kids how to slay dragons, but the headmaster is an extremely greedy man, to the point that he nearly suffers Death by Materialism several times, and so the school is very poorly run and underfunded. Most of the staff are incompetent or just weird and the food is terrible. In one book when some inspectors come to check the school out, they state that the only reason why they don't have the school shut down is because it has a really nice library, unaware that nobody ever uses the library aside from the main characters.
• In Rick, Jung Middle School has the 8th Grade homeroom on the first floor, the 7th Grade homeroom on the second floor, and the 6th Grade homeroom on the third floor, meaning that Rick and his classmates have to hike up two flights of stairs on the way to the Room 326, even if they get wet in the rain.
• Danish author Hans Scherfig's classic novel The Stolen Spring revolves around a group of pupils at the mercy of Sadist teachers and outdated learning at a prestigious school in Copenhagen (a thinly veiled Expy of Scherfig's own alma mater, Metropolitanskolen).
  "Disciplina sollerti fingitur ingenium" is written over the gate. It means something like: "Beatings are good for spiritual development."

• In the Netflix adaptation of 13 Reasons Why, the school's students and staff, while affluent, range anywhere between callously uncaring and deliberately cruel. The school counselor is playing on his phone while Hannah is trying to tell him that Bryce, the popular jock, raped her at a party (and his "advice" to her amounts to "He'll be graduating soon, you won't have to see him again", seemingly not giving a damn about what the poor girl went through). During the ensuing legal deposition, one student says that the staff only cares about boosting and propping up the egos of the popular kids (who are bullies at best and rapists at worst). The staff also give almost no shits that a student is dead, and are more concerned about if/when they will be facing a lawsuit.
• Adolescence: When visiting Brentwood Academy in Episode 2, both DI Bascombe and DS Frank remark that the school seems to be chaotic and running amok, with not much learning going on at all because the teachers either can't maintain order in their class, or are too unmotivated to teach anything beyond having the kids watch documentary videos. DS Frank correctly notes that it's more of a glorified holding cell for teenagers than a place of learning. Furthermore, cyberbullying seems rampant and incel rhetoric is spreading unchecked because the teachers are too oblivious to online culture to be able to intervene.
• Boston Public: A major storyline of the show's third season had Winslow High struggling with budget issues. The Mayor of Boston sent a representative, Dave Fields, to advise the administrators on how to improve the school, but his suggestions end up being All for Nothing and the school falls under threat of massive budget cuts. Principal Steven Harper and Vice Principal Scott Guber hit upon the radical solution to cut all funding for athletics to save academics, and Steven challenges parents to fund school sports themselves.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Not only does Sunnydale High fulfill pretty much every bad high school trope in existence, but it's also on top of a Hellmouth that gets a substantial number of the students and staff killed on a regular basis.
• Greendale Community College of Community is half this and half just bizarre. There aren't really mean teachers, however. Instead, the faculty seems to be composed of incompetent Cloud Cuckoolanders of every description. There are also money issues:
  Dean Pelton: We're broke, Ben! We now get 80% of our electricity from the apartment building across the street!
  • In later seasons it comes out that the school is primarily funded by private donations from alumni of the air conditioning repair annex, who go on to blue-collar but relatively well-paying careers in HVAC maintenance.
• Family Ties had Grant College, which Mallory and Skippy attend. Again, no mean teachers but the college is known and shown to be remarkably substandard: their radio commercials mention it's "conveniently located near several major highways" and they have a class on opening umbrellas.
• Applies to Sheffield Spires Academy in The Full Monty (2023). Pipes burst, leading to the bathrooms flooding. Music teacher Hetty notices the ceiling leak and gets her students out before the ceiling collapses, flooding her classroom as well.
• In Glee: Principal Figgins is constantly telling Mr Schue that he can't help out with monetary issues within the Glee Club, and he [the principal] is always talking about the school's very tight budget; however, the reason that the school has no money to spend on costumes and the like is that the Cheerios have their own private photocopier and get their dry cleaning done in Europe.
• Married... with Children:
  • One episode had Kelly, then employed as The Verminator, visit one. Hijinks included walking through a metal detector only to have a toenail clipper confiscated and not the canisters of poison she's carrying, receiving a Pervy Patdown by the school principal, the school nurse, and then the principal as the nurse watched, having to talk down a substitute teacher from a window ledge, and finally teaching the kids how to kill rats, roaches and something the school called "sloppy joes". The kicker culminated in this line from her:
  Kelly: That'll be the last time I visit a Catholic school!
  • Bud and Kelly's own high school, James K. Polk High, is implied to be this. Aside from school-wide bullying being an overlooked problem, their financial resources are low, their test scores are no better and the security itself is such a joke that the kids have stolen payphones, furniture, their prized football championship trophy and even a vending machine in broad daylight.
• Mr. D: Xavier Academy looks like an Elaborate University High, but they have the title character as a teacher. And the others aren't that much better.
• Outnumbered makes a Running Gag of implying the school Pete teaches at is one.
• Riverdale: During Season 2, Jughead is transferred from Riverdale High to Southside High. While Riverdale High is an affluent school, Southside High is essentially more like a prison: there's guards everywhere, the lights are dim, the toilets are broken, there's graffiti everywhere and most of the teachers are long burned out, save for the English teacher... until he's revealed to be a drug kingpin. It's heavily implied that the school gets less funding on purpose due to Alice's classist campaigns against the South Side. By the end of the season, Southside High is shut down due to asbestos but actually because Hiram bought it out and Jughead and the others are sent to Riverdale High.
• Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby: The main setting of the series is the incredibly underfunded Tepapawai Boys High School, which is explicitly stated to be the lowest rated school in all of New Zealand. The various "quirks" of the teachers include a Maori Studies teacher who doesn't even have Maori heritage and neither knows Maori heritage nor speaks indigenous languages, and a Gym Teacher who is so out of shape she needs to take a car to keep up with the kids on a run. And these are some of the better teachers.
• Strange Hill High: The headmaster is constantly cutting corners to save money, the teachers are either sadists or idiots, the Scary Librarian does not like children touching the books, the caretaker has been at the school for centuries. Oh, and the entire school is a nexus for weird events.
• Waterloo Road is about a failing school in a Manchester suburb. The kids don’t care, the parents are hostile, and the LEA (Local Education Authority) is particularly cruel. Furthermore, a surprising amount of murder takes place on and off campus. Before the programme began and Jack Rimmer took over as Headteacher, it was even WORSE.

• Doonesbury's Walden College is another postsecondary example. It has a worse graduation rate than some for-profit colleges, and once marketed itself as "America's safety school".
  • In the latest new daily strips so far (before a hiatus), Walden has become for-profit.

• A 1970s MAD feature takes the form of a supply catalogue catering specially to such schools. Items include extra-screechy blackboards, chemistry glassware with measurement units that are either obsolete or in foreign scripts, as well as maps which indicate the "Edge of the World" and huge expanses of unexplored territory.

• Bullworth Academy from Bully (2006) is filled with corruption, bullying, violence, and vandalism, and none of the authority figures seem to care, or even acknowledge it, lauding it as school spirit.
• Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice:
  • The Nether Institute Evil Academy is located in the Netherworld and run by demons, and since Disgaea demons run on Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad, at the school students who skip class and break rules are considered honor students whereas unashamed goody-two-shoes are considered delinquents. Not only that, but the teachers actually hate teaching, and will fight to keep students from their classes. An NPC even admits that because of this policy, no one has ever graduated (except for Raspberyl and her posse), and students just keep paying tuition forever.
  • The Updated Re-release Absence of Detention gives us Death Institute Majin Academy. Even though it is an elite school meant to raise Majins, the only actual Majins in the school are the Student Body President Stella Grossular and the Chief Director who is her father, and who has been dead for a long time. In fact, the school has hardly any students and has been on the brink of being shut down. Stella's entire motivation has been to ruin the Evil Academy's reputation so that Majin Academy can get a boost in popularity.
• Shujin Academy in Persona 5 is not only full of Gossipy Hens who spread Malicious Slander about anyone that stands out in a negative way, no matter how small it may be, its principal also allows a Sadist Teacher to bully the students and ruin their lives for petty reasons to the point of physically abusing the males and sexually harassing the females (It gets so bad that one of his victims is Driven to Suicide in a desperate attempt to get away from him), and the principal turns a blind eye to all of this simply for the fact that this sexual predator is a former Olympian athlete who is giving a lot of good publicity to the school. The principal is also willing to guilt-trip others into doing dirty, and often dangerous, jobs while keeping a friendly facade. After Kamoshida's downfall, things begin to improve, insofar as students not being terrorized by a vicious, narcissistic pervert is an improvement, but the students are forced to take part in community service events that not a single one fails to recognize for the PR stunts they are, as if the horrendous legacy Kamoshida left could be made up for, and the same principal who was complicit in Kamoshida's abuse remains there until the would-be dictator he was loyal to orders him murdered for failing to expose the vigilante group his apathy created. Academically speaking, it's apparently a highly-regarded prep school, but it's still a rather horrible place to go to learn, with Ann even calling it a "sorry excuse of a school". How anyone can get good grades in such a toxic learning environment is a Riddle for the Ages.
  • The first boss of Persona 5 Strikers, Alice Hiiragi, is also from Shujin and her time there was bad enough that it eventually drove her to use the EMMA app to brainwash people and become a Monarch. She was bullied horribly during that time, and while she graduated and started a highly-promising career as a fashion designer, her bullies followed her and spread yet more Malicious Slander to ruin her, prompting her to turn to EMMA to make it stop.
• Stilwater University in Saints Row 2 isn't the best of colleges. Though the place itself looks decent, gangs patrol the campus and conduct business there, two feuding fraternities perform pledge hazings and pranks that get people hurt (if not killed), the institute has a drug problem, a (presumably illegal) brothel is being operated out of an internet cafe, Ultor uses it as a recruiting ground, there's a nuclear power plant located southwest of the U, it has a sports team that its cheerleaders boast about cheating and apparently isn't very good, and only seven subjects are taught.
• Akademi High School in Yandere Simulator isn't the best place to learn. The principal is in cahoots with the local MegaCorp (whose heiress runs the Absurdly Powerful Student Council with an iron fist), one of the substitute teachers has a thing for teenage boys, a Mafia Princess orchestrates emotionally draining bullying, one of the club leaders has his own personal clone army hidden in the basement, and there is a love-obsessed maniac running amok — and this last one is the protagonist of this twisted little tale. Have fun!

• Hope's Peak Academy of Danganronpa would probably function perfectly fine as a haven for the best and brightest of society to have their natural talents nurtured if it wasn't for the incredibly Skewed Priorities of its staff. Danganronpa 3 reveals the Ultimate students don't even have to attend class and are simply expected to practice their talents, which include luck and being a princess (albeit that Sonia, the princess in question, mentions that her education standards as a royal in her home country are quite strict, so she's probably still spending her time studying), and show them off at a demonstration; how the hell one is supposed to demonstrate skill at luck or princesshood remains a mystery. Also, an immoral experiment to create the "Ultimate Hope" by implanting all Ultimate talents known into one person while causing Death of Personality was so expensive that they opened the very exclusive school up to the public via an expensive reserve course which sees none of the benefits the talented students pretty much get for free. They also turned a blind eye to Junko Enoshima's despair-inducing machinations involving the "Ultimate Hope" Izuru Kamukura until it was too late, leading to the end of civilization.

• In El Goonish Shive, Moperville North High School is run by principal Verrückt in a somewhat crazy way — such as blowing the security budget on propaganda, so there are no sprinklers or fire alarm autodialers, but lots of motivational murals. And then it starts enforcing a dress code, because one minor fight broke out over a student's shirt, which had resolved itself amicably without teacher intervention before the faculty even found out about it.
• Kat from Sequential Art was in one, Catch 22 included.

• CollegeHumor: There's a fake commercial for the Quendelton State University, where you can get A Degree in Useless in literally thousands of disciplines, renovation projects will take decades to finish, the football team is worthless, the social culture of the school could best be described as High School Part Two, tuition costs a fortune (yet the students don't get much out of their education and don't really care), and the nearby community is a complete ghost town. (Oh, and their graduate program isn't much better.)
• PieGuyRulz had to spend some time at "University X" (which is a real-life college that he refrained from mentioning its real name), featured in his College Confessions series. He went on a 40-minute rant about his bad roommates, along with terrible instructors and cheating students who bragged about stealing toilet paper.
• Detroit Central High School in SOTF-TV is of the budget issues variant. Played in complete contrast to the other school of SOTF-TV, Silver Dragon Academy (a prestigious private school).
  "If we were a good university, we wouldn't need a commercial!"
• Pretty much the entire focus of Weird school rules in Hong Kong is on how ridiculous local schools' rules are, but Episode 17 takes the cake by comparing the conditions of a local, relatively elite secondary school to those of a local women's prison, and concluded that parents were better off sending their daughters to jail than that school.^note The criteria compared are mealtime restrictions, dress code (tied), dealing with complaints, extra-curricular activities, equality, the presence/absence of "Reflection", whether Moving the Goalposts applies for the rules, whether it's allowed to take pictures at the entrance, and extra-layers policy when a Cold Weather Warning is issued. The episode itself is titled "比坐監懲教所更嚴格校規", or in English, approximately "School Rules Stricter Than Those of Prisons Run by the Correctional Services Department".
• Worm: Winslow High School. The teachers tend to be apathetic at best, there are multiple gang members and the school could use a lot of work. Plus, there's the fact that none of the adults is willing to keep bullying under control - such as what Taylor suffers, because one of her bullies is secretly a member of the Wards, and the school gets a stipend for having her as a student.

• The Amazing World of Gumball: While the facilities in Elmore Junior High are actually pretty good for a middle school (since the backgrounds come from on a real-life high school), the staff members are all incompetent/unprofessional/poorly qualified:
  • Principal Brown somehow has had his job as principal for 20 years, despite having a fake diploma and dating one of his workers (Miss Simian), often in school and during class hours.
  • Miss Simian hates her job as teacher (mostly because she's been assaulted and ostracized for teaching subject matter considered subversive or controversial, such as how to make fire and how to use the wheel, as mentioned in "The Pest"), has very little regard for her students' safety/well-being, and is most likely still a teacher because she's dating Principal Brown.
  • Mr. Small, the guidance counselor, is more of an emotional wreck than anyone who comes to see him, dispenses useless advice (even though "The Advice" shows that, unlike most of the teachers at Elmore Junior High, he actually cares about his job and wants to be a good teacher), and is possibly a stoner.
  • The school nurse has to put up with Teri the paper bear's hypochondria, Miss Simian treating her like dirt, and Gumball and Darwin trotting out tired excuses to get out of gym class. She spends most of her time huddled under her desk, trying to re-evaluate her career choices, once prescribed herself heavy sedatives and time off school to get away from Teri, and is not being paid well (cf. "The Parasite", where she tells Gumball she wishes she had a six-figure salary, a cabriolet, and a pension plan). As seen in "The Allergy", this sometimes results in her brushing off students' legitimate medical problems.
  • The gym teacher/coach is bulky and out of shape, lets her bully of a daughter (Jamie) push people around during class, is most likely lying about her past as an Olympic athlete, and doesn't seem to care when a student gets hurt or can't do anything she assigns them.
  • The only somewhat competent worker at the school is Rocky, the janitor/bus driver/lost and found clerk/cafeteria worker, though even he can be oblivious and careless on the job, mostly due to listening to music on his Walkman, and "The Points" revealed that he spends most of his time in the broom closet eating pizza and spray cheese while listening to rock music. He's also a terrible cook.
• American Dad!:
  • Pearl Bailey High School is run by a perverted, psychotic, drug-addicted madman who, among other things, encourages his students to fight, carries guns on school grounds, drinks, and openly asks for sex from his subordinates. While he is the worst example, the teachers themselves aren't above having sex with frogs and gang-attacking students. The football and baseball coach got the wrestling program canceled by raping his athletes. You'll notice the program is gone, but the coach isn't.
  • Groff Community College was always treated as a joke school (tuition is less than $50 a semester), but as the series went on, it became this to the nth degree. The computer lab is a small room with one outdated 90's-era desktop; it pays so little that all staff and administration need second jobs; some of the professors don't know what class they are teaching until they look at the syllabus; and the most famous alumni is a serial killer.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender: Master Yu's Earthbending school is an unsubtle parody of North American "McDojos", more interested in flattering its students by handing out meaningless belts and persuading them (or their parents) to hand over extra cash than actually producing proficient benders.
• Beavis and Butt-Head: Highland High School. The principal is an alcoholic Nervous Wreck who abuses his power by threatening the lives of a couple of his students and even humiliating them. The teachers tend to be either abusive, indifferent, or very misguided. Additionally, the school is constantly vandalized by the titular duo, whether by accident or for their own amusement. In the episode "School Test", it is revealed that the school has suffered significant debt due to their stupidity and poor performance.
• Bromwell High is this in its entirety, being the worst possible caricature of a school in South London. The teachers range from being complete buffoons to outright war criminals and former white slavers. The students are mostly petty thugs straight out of Dangerous Minds who are also so stupid and poorly educated that most can't even read. The school barely "operates" on such a low budget that Headmaster Iqbal, who won the school in a poker game and only gets away with his crimes because he and his brother Mehkmet are on the Board of Directors, spends most of his time with embezzlement schemes to try and get rich quick off of the school. Violence, beatings, murders, losing the schoolyard to Gypsies, and wild animal attacks are the norm, and our "heroes" are a violent bully, a criminally stupid valley girl, and an overachiever who somehow manages to just as bad as her friends.
• CatDog: CatDog had to go back to one in the episode "Back to School". However, this justifies the fact that Cat is treated as The Un-Favourite by every teacher and student in that school.
• China, IL: The University of China, IL is called "the worst school in America". The whole student body failed their exams at the end of the semester. The theme song is pretty much a warning about how bad the school is... before adding that the only good thing about the school is the teachers.
• Daria: Lawndale High School, where the paranoid principal, Ms. Li, regularly siphons off funding intended for education into elaborate, expensive, and unnecessary security and surveillance systems, She then attempts to make up the shortfall with dodgy get-rich-quick schemes and bogus sponsorship deals. All new pupils are psychologically screened; the teaching staff tends to be either sugary idealists or burnt-out basket cases with deep-seated personal issues; and extremely bright pupils are mistrusted as they tend to ask awkward questions. Daria Morgendorffer fits as well as a fish on a bicycle, and everyone, including her, knows it.
• Ed, Edd n Eddy: Peach Creek Junior High, where the staff not only ignores bullying but also punishes students for minor offenses that are beyond their control.
• Family Guy:
  • Chris and Meg Griffin attend Adam West (formerly James Woods) High School which uses the textbooks part of the trope as seen in the episode "No Chris Left Behind".
  • Speaking of textbooks, in the episode where Lois and Peter run for a spot in the school council, among her campaign promises is to replace history textbooks that refer to the Civil Rights Movement as "trouble ahead."
  • The staff isn't much better, with a principal who places bets on fights between the students and drags his personal problems into the school. The faculty openly allows bullying, and the gym teacher requires his female students to kiss him at the end of class.
• Hey Arnold!: P.S. 118 is an interesting subversion — the school is hardly a model institution, its state of disrepair and shoestring budget being the focus of a number of episodes. Nevertheless, the school staff tries to make up for its shortcomings.
• Invader Zim: The "Skool" is regularly acknowledged as both militant and under budget. Illustrative of this are the "hall passes", from the "Dark Harvest" episode, the first being a collar that explodes upon leaving school premises and the "auxiliary hall pass" being a radiator the student is expected to lug around.
• King of the Hill: Tom Landry Middle School shows budget and policy issues that reflect the real-life public school system whenever they're brought up by Principal Moss. Examples include a shop class converted into a study room when the school couldn't afford a substitute teacher or equipment, Bunsen burners that aren't hooked up to a gas line, and newly published Texas history textbooks that tell nothing significant about the history of Texas.
• The Mighty B!: Honeybee Academy is run by Mrs. Gibbons, who makes budget cuts, encourages bullying (especially when Bessie is involved), and is barely able to perform her duties.
• The Simpsons: Springfield Elementary is the textbook example of this trope:
  • It is regularly noted to be on a shoestring budget, mostly due to Principal Skinner (a Vietnam vet who still has flashbacks of the war and lives with his controlling mother) slashing the budget to the point that the kids drink "malk" and the meat is "Grade F".
  • The teachers run the mill between being apathetic, incompetent, or otherwise very controlling; the few good teachers tend to either be temporary substitutes or get driven out one way or another. The occasional substitute teacher who is a tyrannical asshole tends to arrive as well.
  • Skinner also believes that almost none of the students have any future whatsoever and constantly tries to maintain discipline by bringing down their spirits and molding them into a future of mediocrity and conformism.
  • Whenever Bart and/or Lisa temporarily transfer to a better school, the stark difference in teaching standards becomes immediately noticeable for both. In "You Only Move Twice", Bart is sent to a remedial class because he can't read cursive script. In "Waverly Hills, 9-0-2-1-D'oh", Lisa, to her dismay, is given B grades instead of A grades due to actual proofreading from the faculty, something her original teacher was too apathetic to do.
• South Park: South Park Elementary is a poorly run school with incompetent staff like Mr. Garrison, who tends to traumatize his students with his shenanigans. Season 19 introduces PC Principal, a thug who will beat anyone for any politically incorrect actions, including a hate crime against Kyle's Jewish heritage.

• Yuna Kagesaki, author/artist of the manga Karin, mentions in a supplementary chapter of an early volume of the series that she attended one of the bottom 5 high schools of Japan. Among the things she remembers from her stint: there were students that were taught things they already learned in middle school, they were dismissive of their teachers, and fights were common, with one memorable incident of a student being expelled after getting into a fight with a teacher.
• While America hardly has the worst education system in the world, most schools in the United States are considered this by most other countries, and are particularly infamous for their frequent school shootings (due to America's laxer gun laws), to the point where there are now active gunman drills in place in many areas.