Tearing my hair out over State boarding

Bisjo, I've found that a lot of prep schools accept one parents signature and one parents financial details on bursary applications and take it on board that having divorced the parents have difficulties communicating.
Moving to secondary level, I've so far found 2 schools in the surrey/sussex area who don't ask for a 2nd signature. Others will accept registration forms with one signature but as I was told by CH they require both signatures on any subsequent admission forms or bursary applications. I think its due to parental responsibility laws and them not wanting to get involved in often hostile and protracted legal battles. When a child has no contact at all the rules are different. OP ex has a contact order specifying the minimum amount of contact, which means essentially that if her son goes to CH then she would be deemed 'in breach' of the contact order, hence the need then for a specific issues order.Also parental responsibility means that the other parent has a right to their views on the childs education amongst other things. Its worth speaking to individual schools, some have blanket rules others will bend for individual cases.

If the OP's son is happy to board then I don't think her application sounds odd at all; the opportunities at Christ's Hospital look amazing and their GCSE results are 71% A*- A which is a massive step up from Teddington's 21%. Horsham isn't very far from London. It might not suit my children but I have several friends with demanding jobs (and estranged husbands) and childcare can be a nightmare for them.

Something doesn't hang together here, I suspect there is a very different side to this story being told by a father in North London.

I think Portofino has summed it up, I wish your son every happiness and hope he does not become separated from his father. It's a long and expensive commute between North London and CH, I really hope that isn't part of the attraction.

I'm a single parent looking for a boarding place for ds when he goes to senior school. Partly because ds wants to board and partly because, like the OP, I work long hours and I don't want ds left to his own devices for several hours every evening. After school clubs are fine but they finish early and there is no provision if you are late collecting.

Ds currently does some boarding nights at his prep school and the advantage there is on the nights he comes home it doesn't matter if I'm late collecting him. I've previously used a childminder and an after school club and there is nothing worse than the pressure of trying to get back by a particular time to collect and being late and finding your child is the last one to be collected.

Fwiw ds has been at two prep schools and neither insisted on having ds's father's signature even though one school provided a very large scholarship. I'm working on the basis that the same will be for senior school. If it isn't and the school insists that both parents sign having had an explanation as to why ds has no contact with his father than it won't be the right school for ds and I'll look elsewhere.

This decision making process is sounding more and more odd and irrational. Teddington has the local reputation for being the tighter more disciplined ship. Perhaps that is why Teddington gets better results. The good rating from Ofsted was back in 2009 but had many outstanding features including the behaviour of pupils, with the improvement in results there is little doubt it will get outstanding at the next inspection.

%5 A-C (including English and Maths) Teddington 74% OP 70%
Number of students with 8 or more A*/ A Teddington 21% OP 17%

Both were oversubscribed on first preference by 5 pupils for every place, so local parents clearly don't share your prejudice.

Surely most of your DS's friends at primary will be hoping for places at Teddington if they are not in the tutoring factories being prepped for Tiffin / private schools.

With odds against you getting all the ducks in a row to get a boarding place you can afford it seems odd to discount a good popular school on the basis of a packed open day, or to be proposing your ex gets a property in the other catchment.

If moving is an option then why not move to the catchment for Gordons, as commutable as Horsham and you have far more chance of a day boarding place on distance than a weekly / full boarding place on the basis of boarding need. My friend also a single working mother did that and it worked well, and her three bedroom terraced house cost a lot less than just about any property in Teddington, one of the most affluent and sought after areas of London (partly because of the schools).

The actual needs of your son seem to me to be at the bottom of the list

So do you swap between co-parenting and estranged according to what schools you can get into? This scenario seems odder by the moment.

Actually the initial assessment tests look for potential - they do not use common entrance, it is highly competitative about 4 applicants per place, if not more.

If you get presentation then you don't go via the competitive route at all.

I honestly would have preferred my dc not to have gone to CH but the local school really was THAT bad and the bursary received was huge. I also didn't want to consider bursary for local inde school because we live in such a very wealthy area it would have been very difficult socially I think.

Actually, if your ex had taken up your offer and moved to Twickenham for 18 months, where was your son going to go to school then? In the school that you now don't want to consider? All very confusing.

Teddingtonmum1 I assume you have made a state application in case your ds doesn't get into CH? I wouldn't base your opinion of the Teddington school only on an Open Day. Go back and see it in action on a normal school day and get a pupil-guided tour. If you based your opinion on Open Day at my dc's school, you would probably never set foot in the place again! It is like a zoo, mainly due to the fact that it IS so good and sought-after that people come from all over to the Open Evening.

*of

OP, can I point out that you have criticised your ex for only seeing his son for 2 weekends a month, when this is the maximum amount if time that you will spend with him if he goes to boarding school?

OP why have you put the father down as "estranged" on the forms? He clearly isn't he has regular overnight contact with his son, you said yourself he pays you maintenance through the CSA and has his son 2 weekends every month as well as half of all holidays.

I don't think this is about your son and afterschool care, I think it is about your ex.

Not to mention excellent and improving GCSE results and top sets that do better than some of the grammars

The the OP's pfb might be on their own for an hour! Won't anyone think of the children?

Not to mention excellent and improving GCSE results and top sets that do better than some of the grammars

I agree with Unexpected. What also concerns me is that her DS's father is so opposed to boarding. If it was the other way round and a DC primarily lived with the father, who was obsessed with finding a boarding school and the mother was against boarding, we would all be outraged that the mother's wishes could be ignored.
I live in the area, Teddington is a fantastic school, friends, including working parents, are proud send their DCs there. For anyone not local, not only is it an outstanding school, it had a £35m rebuild a few years ago, its on the River Thames, lovely sports facilities, next door to a Leisure Centre for anything extra, and is in middle class suburbia full of girls called Poppy, and boys called Jack, Felix etc. Most people can only dream about a state comp like this on their doorstep.

I don't actually think that people are being overly harsh with the OP but are trying to understand why she is so intent on boarding school, particularly as she has made no mention of her son's wishes and that he is going to be caught in the middle of the opposing desires of his parents. Given that at primary school, after school club (which is a great form of care but with very rigid hours) was sufficient, I think people are struggling to understand why, now that her child is getting older and more independent, so much care is still needed and why other options are not suitable. It seems like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

In addition the fees for boarding at Gordon's are £15000 a year which is more than the £1000 a month OP said she could not afford even if she could convince Gordon's that she should get a boarding place because of need (the definition of which gives heavy weighting to those working overseas and in the military / public sector)

With CH the bursary is means tested so you can find yourself still funding a large chunk. Their endowment which funds all the bursaries is not as healthy these days and I do know of people who have had to withdraw later on due to rising fees and reducing bursary.
The fact is that a) your ds has to be offered a place first b) the specific issues order has to be granted and c) CH will need to give the level of bursary you need.
Given that your brother went to CH its not unsurprising that it was on your radar for your ds but given how competitive it is and the other variables it would be worth looking carefully at the local options (as I've said also, CH were adamant to me that the admissions forms definitely had to have 2 parents signatures due to the parental responsibility rules)

LIZS - at primary after school club was enough, according to OP.

Friday I think (but I don't know) that parents cover the cost of the boarding element, unless they're looked after. Pupils from military/FCO families will have funding from their own employers' allowance schemes to cover it.

LIZS but facing those problems of being a working mother in London are so common as to be normal. A lot of my DDs friends were in exactly in that position, with mothers who work for City Law firms and Acoountants, who were rarely home before 8. None I might add have in any way suffered as a result. I am sure OP must have encountered many in the course of her work. I think she attracts harsh criticism because she isn't honest about wanting a private boarding school education for her son. Nothing wrong with that but wrapping it up in some spurious claim of neediness and disingenuous claim to have no good local state school option doesn't do her any favours.