I'm moving in a few weeks, and have to do an in-year application for my DC.
Where I live currently, everyone just goes to their nearest school, so we didn't have to worry about choosing the best one!
I have spoken to the council, and there aren't spaces for both DC in the same school, so I am going to have to choose different ones.
DC1 isn't much of a problem as hardly anywhere has places; one of the schools is much better location-wise (although unfortunately is still a ten minute drive away).
For DC2, who is Reception age I have a choice between 4 schools, and I am going round in circles not knowing what to do. Three are within walking distance, one is a drive away - in roughly the same direction as DC1's school will be.
They are all either 1 form or 1.5 form entry, all seem friendly and have good Ofsted (though most were last inspected several years ago), results seem good for all of them, all have a similar demographic.
If I went for the one that is a drive away, that would potentially make life easier while DC1 was still at primary (3 more years) - though it would still be a struggle to manage drop off and pick up in two different places - but then I would still be committing to the drive for the next 4 years after that when DC1 was in secondary.
Or I could go for one of the walking-distance ones, and put DC1 on their waiting list. But then, I'm not sure if I'd want to move him anyway once he'd settled in the other school . So in that case I'd be committing to tricky drop-off and pick-up for the next 3 years (I'd probably have to use the breakfast and after school club for one DC every day in order to manage it).
What sort of things should I look out for, and ask, when I am seeing round the schools, to help me decide. At the moment, all I have is that one seems to have a much better home-cooked lunch menu than the others (who all have the same not-terribly-inspiring menu, which I presume is centrally provided by the council). Is more nutritious food really a good reason to choose one school over another? Can anyone think of what things to look for and ask that would never have occurred to me?
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Can anyone suggest useful, sensible questions to ask when trying to decide which school to choose.
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TooManyCuddlies · 13/01/2016 14:07
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