He sounds a lovely boy and you sound like a very sensible, grounded parent. Well done to your son for qualifying.
I don't have direct experience of either but a general piece of advice would be to consider some or all of the following (in no particular order):
Single-sex versus mixed environment. Surely the biggest difference between the two schools. Despite my daughter going to an all-girls school (the mixed school was full), I prefer mixed schooling because I consider it better preparation for life which after all, is what school is all about. You need to decide which environment suits your son best.
Travel time and convenience. Which is the easiest journey and has the most flexibility, e.g. do buses/trains run regularly or is one walking distance and the other public transport? This will affect which after-school clubs, societies and events he (and you) can be involved with.
Does he have particular hobbies or interests that one might foster better than the other, e.g. a particular sport or musical activity? Be careful here because some schools can be a bit elitist and only permit involvement where there's a minimum proficiency so what looks like a strength of the school actually is quite exclusive.
Is it practical for you to visit both during a school day before the CAF is submitted? Open days are contrived, you need to see the school during a normal day so you can pick up on things like behaviour in and around classes, the state of the toilets (I'm not joking, it's a good barometer of how proud the students are of their environment), the general feel of the school and the attentiveness of children in class.
I wouldn't worry about where existing friends are going. In my experience, primary friendships often change at secondary and new friends crop up.
Don't get sucked into league tables, etc. Too many parents become fixated on tiny details like minor differences in grade 7-9 percentages, the numbers of children going to Oxbridge, medicine, etc. It's meaningless when it's five to seven years away unless there's a long-standing and clear problem evident from the data. Teachers, head teachers and children can all change every year so you're looking at a moving picture.
Good luck with the choice. Both are good schools, he sounds like he has support at home so I'm sure he'll thrive in either of them.
|