Choosing a Primary School - local or distant?

[UmSusu]

Oh um! I feel for you. It is not an easy decision - I guess there are too many unknowns.

Best wishes though. I hope it works out for you. I just sent mine off and even though I didn't have a great deal to think about, I still felt quite nervous about the submit button.

UmSusu

[Daogroupie]

Go to your local school. How big is the intake? If your youngest goes your other two automatically become reverse siblings and go to the top of the waiting list. Being part of the local community is in my opnion unbeatable. My girls grew up with a peer group who all lived within a couple of streets. We knew their parents and their siblings. If I was delayed there was a whole gaggle of parents who would scoop mine up with theirs. When one mum was suddenly hospitalized I organised a rota of families who took her girls in for breakfast and picked them up and kept them for tea until Dad got home. When I was ill my girls stood by the door ouside to wait for a family to come past to walk to school with. I happened to be up really early one morning and was astonished to see a girl of my dds age with a straw boater and uniform of a prep two towns away being picked up by taxi from three houses away. We had absolutely no idea she lived there and have not seen her since. But I feel really sad about what she has missed out on. Lots of kids knocking for her and going out to play together. If it snows tonight they will be out there on the sledge with all these children they have known their whole lives. I did not even look at the league tables or Ofsted report before I sent them there. There is no meaurable data that records the value of being part of what they got by going there. DG

[mike1880]

I'm not someone who believes the "child with parental support will do well anywhere" hogwash, you have to have not seen much of life, and some of the people and places it throws up, to be that naive.

As you well know, a school serving a deprived area is a brittle object which can be shattered within a term by the loss of a head or a couple of key teachers - and then you're stuck with it for 7 years because with school rolls going the way they are, you surely won't get a place anywhere else.

Play it safe, go for the middle of the road option that you know. Apart from anything else, that's exactly the kind of coasting, underachieving middle-class school that Ofsted aims to put a rocket up in the next few years.

Mike

[Amber]

I'm not someone who believes the "child with parental support will do well anywhere" hogwash, you have to have not seen much of life, and some of the people and places it throws up, to be that naive.

As you well know, a school serving a deprived area is a brittle object which can be shattered within a term by the loss of a head or a couple of key teachers - and then you're stuck with it for 7 years because with school rolls going the way they are, you surely won't get a place anywhere else.

Play it safe, go for the middle of the road option that you know. Apart from anything else, that's exactly the kind of coasting, underachieving middle-class school that Ofsted aims to put a rocket up in the next few years.

Mike

Agh.

[mystery]

Good schools get left alone by ousted for approx 5 years. That can be a lot of middle class coasting. Think a parent has to be more than interested to make up for a teacher that does not teach anything.

[ginx]

Are there many teachers who do not teach anything?

[mystery]

Hope not! Lots of pupils that don't learn very much though.

[um]

Thanks for all your help, people

It has been an extremely hard decision, but it is D-Day and we have decided to go for the 'better the devil you know' approach now.
DD and Ds who are at the current Primary could both be adversely affected by moving - also dd has her 11 Plus in September.
Ds finds change extremely difficult due to his aspergers and this became a major consideration in our decision. We also worried (perhaps wrongly, I don't know) that due to being a bit 'odd', he could end up getting bullied more at the local school. He is fine where he is though.

That is not to say that the local school, as many pointed out, wouldn't end up better. Without the benefit of a crystal ball, we can only go on balance of probabilities. And also what our children are used to which (I know this sounds absolutely awful) is middle class children.

I am afraid aesthetics came into play a lot too. The current school really has a lot of green space, lovely trees, a small farm, etc. The local school - and its walk - would mean the children see nothing but bricks and concrete (and, on the streets, piles of rubbish, etc.) every day.

My automatic car is much easier...although doesn't take away the traffic unfortunately, and the kids do benefit from all the audio books we get through

Thank you again for all your thoughts...

[mystery]

I see why you have made the choice you have. If you we're starting out with your first child it might have been different.

[Loopyloulou]

Um, I think you have made exactly the right choice and for exactly the right reasons.
I feel particularly strongly that insofar as is possible a child should be surrounded by beauty and protected from squalor. It will have an immeasurable effect.