this is a long one, sorry!
3 years ago they restructured the education system in our town. This meant that the school that is on our road, that I had always assumed my children would go to, became completely oversubscribed with siblings, to the point that this year they had to take 37 children into the reception class to accommodate all the siblings (if anyone who knows me can identify me from this please don't give me away!).
Anyway, my son started reception this year, and obviously couldn't get into that school. My first choice was the school he was at nursery at, but he didn't get offered it on allocations day (unsurprising as it's over a km away as the crow flies so plenty of kids in between - our town has a lot of people packed into a small geographical area). But we were offered a place at the Catholic school which is also on our road and Ofsted outstanding, and which has historically been ridiculously hard to get into. We were delighted, accepted and took our son off continued interest for our other choices. He has settled in really well, made loads of friends and is very happy.
BUT I've got nursery applications coming up for DS2, which has made me look at their admissions policy, and I've realised that siblings of non-Catholic children already in the school come way down the pecking order below Catholic non-siblings who live out-of-town. So now I'm panicking (not about nursery, but Reception when the time comes).
There doesn't seem to be any way of finding out if the lower take-up of places by Catholic children this year is a blip or part of a continuing trend, so now I've got massive uncertainty about whether DS2 will get a place when the time comes, which means that I'm now faced with the very real possibility of my children going to different schools.
I've been trying to work out what I can do, and the way I see it I've got 3 options:
- Wait and see. Apply to the Catholic school and the nearest school (which ironically will have resolved its siblings issue by then) and potentially have the children at different schools.
- Convert to Catholicism. I'm christened CofE but my kids aren't. My FIL is Catholic and my mum's massive Irish side of the family is too, so it's not entirely alien to us and not something I'm completely opposed to. It just feels a bit drastic (although talking to a lot of the mums in the playground I gather that I would not be in the minority for doing this!).
- Put DS1 on the waiting list for the next nearest school which is only a 10 minute walk away, and see if he gets a place before I do the Reception application for DS2 (in which case sibling rule applies).
I know it's not the end of the world for them to be in different schools but they're really close, and I hate the thought of them not having shared school memories, no combined school photos, no DS1 looking out for his baby bro in the playground...
Anyway, what would you do in my position? It's daft but it's making me really anxious and I keep changing my mind about what to do!