PFB DS starts primary school next year (2018). Our catchment school has a bad reputation and really awful results and I'd like DS to go somewhere else. I'm trying to work out which out of catchment schools to apply to but it's a complicated picture. Can you help by answering some questions?
- There's a new primary school opening nearby which we won't be within catchment for. Are new schools popular with parents? Are they generally a good/bad idea? It's a single form entry and he would be the very first year. They don't even having planning permission yet! We can apply.
- I've looked at the admissions statistics for the last few years and there isn't any one school locally that we'd have got into every year (except the catchment school). They're all pretty full. With only three preferences, how do I work out which ones to apply to?
- Is there any point at all in putting down either of the two top performing and most popular (and oversubscribed) schools? I think we'd have got in one year in the last six when there was a bulge class. The other is our closest school we're not in catchment. Is there any way of knowing whether there'll be a bulge class?
- If there's an admission number of 15 or less presumably it will be a class of mixed ages. I would have thought that wouldn't be a good idea but some of those schools get good results. Is there a consensus on the ideal class composition? At the other end of the spectrum, two schools are 3FE. That seems so huge.
- Is it a complete nightmare to have siblings in different schools? I don't know whether to choose an even less popular school to try to get a place for DS2 there too.
Thank you for any advice.