For us it was the question of being in walkable distance and we don't regret it.
We chose a school we liked and is walkable (albeit only just) over one we loved but requires a drive. Remember also that what seems a very long walk for a 4 year old will be a lot more manageable for an 8 year old, so don't automatically discard a long walk. It's tough for the first year but does get easier and may be worth it.
Other considerations were, is it a through primary or not? If it is only an infant school, what junior school(s) does it feed into, and what are they like? What secondary schools do the children go on to?
How long do they keep things play-based/self-directed? We were quite surprised by the variety of answers on this one. The average school would say that reception is lots of play and self directed stuff, but in Y1 'school proper' starts which means the vast majority of time is passed in formal teacher-directed learning. But one school in particular explained that they prepared children for Y1 by introducing lots of formal learning already in the summer term of reception. Whereas another school explained that their version of self-directed and play based, but structured, learning in reception worked so well that they had extended it into Y1 and even in parts into Y2 (that was an 'outstanding' school with excellent KS1 results).
What we didn't take into consideration but in hindsight matters quite a lot, is length of the school day. Hadn't realised that these vary considerably. Especially if it requires a long walk, a long school day can be quite depressing. If you finish at 3:30 and get home in the dark at 4:15 with an exhausted reception age child, who is expected to do reading and needs to be in bed by 6 and asleep by 6:30 or won't manage to get up in the morning, when you'll have to leave the house at ten past eight in order to get to school by 8:40 - then it depressingly feels like school has taken over your whole life. Compared to a neighbour who leaves home at 8:50 and gets back at 3:10 and just has so many hours per week more to 'live' and be a child.
We preferred a small school (1FE) over a big one, and don't regret that; however I do now realise a problem with small schools that I didn't at the time. I'm not concerned about lack of friendship options or being able to mix classes up. But I realised now that every school has a certain number of additional roles to fill, such as KS1 leader, maths leader, science leader, KS2 leader, ... and the number of those roles doesn't decrease just because the school is smaller. So in small schools this means that nearly every teacher has to take on one or more of those roles in addition to their teaching. This either contributes to the work overload they experience (which is bad in itself, but of course also detrimental to the kids they teach) or eats up funding that could otherwise be used elsewhere. Also they can't share their planning with another teacher in the same year because there is no one else.
In relation to the funding, something you can ask is how many Teaching Assistants they have in which years. Often there will be one teacher and two TAs in reception, then one TA in Y1, then only part-time (morning) TAs for the rest of the school; but some schools have more TAs, and some less. Having seen EY/KS1 classes in action I now think only an exceptional teacher will be able to get any significant amount of learning to happen without the support of TAs. So that is also something I'd look out for.
What you can look for but won't get a definite answer to without effectively going to that school:
- Do they deal effectively with bullying?
- Do they effectively challenge and extend their most able pupils, and how do they support their struggling students?
- How much of a school's success in terms of results is down to actual teaching, how much is down to parents taking things into their own hands and tutoring their children?
What really put me off on school tours was if the people we talked to sounded disingenuous. For example I had just been thinking how grim and dark and lacking of daylight a particular school was when the Head said how proud they were of their large windows bringing in lots of daylight. Another school seemed to rely on their possession of an own pool as a major attraction to the school. Whereas on the tour I found the pool to be in such a poor state, and only usable for such a short time, that it didn't factor in my decision making at all. However the fact that the head thought their pool was what attracted prospective parents, implies that they have nothing else in their school that they are proud of. Put me right off.