DH and I don't agree on secondary school

Either you are local to me then or prepared to move to accomodate his needs, which is rather a shame. But we all do what we have to do. It is such a shame that your choices are being narrowed by this.
I sincerely wish you all the best in your quest.
Stan

Yes, I have looked. It wouldn't be able to meet DS1's needs or provide the provision in his EHCP.

@10brokengreenbottles, I expect you are right and I am wrong. This was never my speciality, MFL was the subject most students with learning difficulties dropped in order to facilitate the learning of others, understandably. also the School Action and ditto + may be the way I made a mistake. We just all colloquially called them "statemented", obviously this was incorrect.

Anyway, did you look at my old school with serious intent?

What are the value added scores for each school?

Does the private school offer as many choices at a level or even gcse? Your child may not want More main stream choices but might develop a passion for product design, photography, etc. Smaller schools don’t tend to offer as many subjects as you need enough pupils to make it worth running.

If you didn’t use the savings for school what would you use them for? Living costs at uni? House deposits? Because you wouldn’t use it all on tutoring.

DS1 is non plussed in his relaxed manner. He thought it was great but also said that he'd be happy at the other school. He is fairly easy going and doesn't have a strong opinion either way!

I think you may find he does later on when it feels more real, I had difficulty getting dd1 to really engage until she was in year 6

I'm sorry if this has been said before but why not ask the child what they think?

Dd1 has chosen state, her sister will be given the same choice.

I know in one way it's a big decision for an 11yo but I don't want them telling me at 14 they hate their school and me for making them go there.

Sorry Stanley, I have just realised you think DS1 has Multiple Sclerosis. He doesn't, MS stands for Mainstream school - as opposed to special school.

Stanley, EHCPs replaced Statements! If you retired in 2015 some pupils may have already had EHCPs. It wouldn't have been possible to get a statement for "historic" needs and unlikely you would have got one for needs that were "almost nothing obvious".

I think you are confusing statements with SEN support (which at that time was made up of school action and school action +).

I am not trying to prove any point. I was intrigued by a school with supposedly so many statemented pupils because, as I said, it isn't something I, or others, have come across before. As I also said, I am looking for provision for DS1 who is in KS2. Thank you for your PM, it confirms what I thought - when you worked at the school it had below average levels of SEN.

@10brokengreenbottles, we have been at cross purposes. I was only talking about SEN statements, and the students with them. These can present with almost nothing obvious, or indeed with historic stuff that is not longer even true.

The best guide I have to underline what I said is that when students arrived at my school in yr 9 (from middle schools) we all obviously had to be aware of all statemented children, and I entered them all on the spread sheets for my classes. In the lower ablility groups between 1/4 and 1/2 of all students had a statement of one sort or another, in the middle groups it was about 1/4 and in the top sets there would be 2 or 3.

ECHPs are since I retired, as far as I know. Having looked them up, these are obviously for students with much more serious conditions.

My former school would cater very well for your offspring as there were students with similar conditions there and were well catered for. I still have no idea if you live in this area or are considering moving there, or if you are just trying to make some sort of point. and I really am not bothered but I will pm you with the name of the school and you can get in touch with it if you really are interested in it. I can only say that it would be a very good school for students with MS, as it is with other serious conditions. As I already said, we are used to educating children with disabilities.

Agree re: pangs for rugby pitches and honours boards @zucchinicourgette cc @SJane48S but think that is easily got over once you think about the dosh saved (DC being happy, obvs).

If the grammar is producing excellent results and the children from hearsay and my own observation appeared to be happy then to be honest I wouldn't be questioning it and would save us the potential £105K, no hesitation. Having said that, I'm a tightarse & DH wouldn't countenance either choice anyway! What we would do ourselves isn't a template for what other people should do though, it's only opinion and there are no rights of wrongs.

Averages aren't that helpful because some A level classes are tiny. The (excellent) grammar that we looked at said that it regularly had 32-34 in a class in Y7. Not sure how much of a problem it is. In a school with few behaviour problems, it's unlikely to cause disruption. But I would question more the workload on the teacher and the potential knock on impact of that.

Stanley, I think you might be mistaken. Perhaps confusing SEN support with EHCPs/statements? Having looked at the data for 2014/15 for Dorset, Poole and Bournemouth LAs (as they then were) there isn't a MS secondary with more than 5.3% of pupils with a statement or EHCP.

@MarchingFrogs that would be me & in relation to paying out for an independent as the grammar was busting at the seams, so relevant in that context. Just done a Google & average class sizes in Secondaries are apparently 21.7 and those with classes of over 30 a small (well, ish, still not desirable!) - percentage - www.google.co.uk/amp/s/schoolsweek.co.uk/secondary-class-sizes-rise-for-fourth-year-running/amp/

I’d send them all to state and gift them their share of the £110k for the deposit for a house when old enough.

That to me is a better investment in their future than private school, especially when your state option is good.

Going back a bit (sorry, can't remember who actually posted it), but the statement, but there won’t be more than 30 in the grammar is not necessarily true. The 30 pupil maximum rule applies only to KS1 and even then, may be overridden by a child or children falling into an 'excepted' category as per the Admissions Code. There is no legal maximum for KS2 upwards. Top set Maths groups for GCSE, for example, are often over 30, even in schools where tutor groups are 30 or under.

Not that having more, or indeed fewer, than than 30 in a class is necessarily of huge relevance.

I don't need to be able to afford indie, the LA will pay via the EHCP, especially since the current provision is a very expensive EOTAS package. Under a different name I have previously discussed schools within England for DS1 on the SN boards. That is why I was interested in where you were because it is certainly not something I, or others, have come across before.

There isn't a MS secondary in Dorest or Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole LAs that currently has anywhere near 20 or 25% of their population with EHCPs.

I’m sorry I haven’t read the whole thread but I wanted to add that I have 2 kids in private school and the number of their friends that still have tutors is huge - so don’t assume that the private school will provide everything you need.

In your position I would try the state school and consider moving for GCSEs if you don’t think it’s working out.

@Rittyrib, thank you for answering at least one of my questions.

Nothing is obvious. I am extremely glad that you had the kind of support that you had from your teachers. (And parents obviously.) I am curently having a pm conversation with another academic on a thread on another totally different forum who tells me that at his school in the west country "We were of course enmired in a culture of low expectations, with careers teachers who extolled the virtues of working in wet fish shops or if you were really good you could look forward to an apprenticeship as an electrician with a local firm. Or if you were a girl with neat writing, maybe a nurse if you worked very, very hard."

Although things are not quite as bad as this now there are still schools up and down the country where the low expectations of the staff lead to lower successful applications to RG unis than there should be. This is what I am trying to counter. Again, I ask, am I so wrong for trying to do this?

There are many other questions I have posed to you and others in this thread. and I have received no answers. But as I think we all know, no answer in itself is an answer.

A shame as I honestly do think we are all trying to do the best for children. If the response from MN to my books was the only yardstick by which I measured the correctness of my decision to go along with the requests and encouragement to write them, I do not think I would have done.

Just as with parents' evenings, where the parents you really want to talk to never turn up, it would appear that the parents I really need to give the heads up to their children about the book are not going to be on here. But a few have been and some have read it and passed it on and their comments have been favourable.

Sleep tight, and thanks for all the info. Stan.

@SJane48S, I am a realist. Although my books are written for students from disadvantaged bacgrounds, and their teachers, I am obviously aware that there are parents who have the money to make choices that other cannot. I am no hair shirt, and am not going to castigate anyone who has the money and wishes to spend it on their childrens education.

I do try to "champion the poor" but at the same time if someone with money comes on here and asks advice I will give it. This may seem paradoxical to you, but after all, what would be the point in giving bad advice to someone who can afford to buy proper provision for their children? I try at all times to be even handed.

@10brokengreenbottles, East Dorset, just north of Bournemouth. Creamed comp, creamed by 4 grammars and umpteen indies. Has such a large SEND dept and has such good provision that statemented students from all around came to the school. Still do as far as I know.

I have taught many students with this sort of issue and vividly remember a lovely lad with muscular dystrophy who was top of my A level class and wanted to do French at uni, despite his obvious difficulties with the spoken language. He and his mum went off on a fact-finding mission to France and came back disappointed to find that provision for people with his disability was so poor that he didn't think, even with his mum accompanying him, he could do the year abroad so he did something else.

Do not know where you live but if you tell others on here they will let you know what they think. If you can afford an indie I would have thought that might be your best bet, but I have no experience of this so will comment no further other than to wish you well with your quest.

Sorry you rather got caught in the crossfire there.

I haven't come back because I've been busy, I find this thread has taken a bit of a surreal turn, my questioning of one posters dubious comment about uni admissions seems to have turned into a slightly bizarre and self-involved defence of their quest to bring succour to poor university applicants.

But if you really want an answer to your question, I was helped by my teachers and I had deeply supportive parents, as is presumably obvious - is there a 'gotcha' here? Back in my day uni admissions to Oxbridge were as transparent as mud. Luckily especially with the internet this is no longer the case. There are things that private schools will always have the edge on through virtue of intake and resources, but hopefully less and less through any sense of their producing candidates whose face fits. The old boys network in Oxbridge colleges isn't quite dead, alas, but it's not in nearly as good a shape as even a few decades ago.

I'm off now!

I don’t imagine that any of us think that aiding State school children from disadvantaged backgrounds is a bad thing Stanley! I imagine Titchys posts were aggravated by the ‘geeky admissions tutors’ remark, the word oik though is not something we should be using in 2019 I would agree. I do find your posts a little erratic though if I’m honest, one minute advocating packing your children off to boarding school if the local State isn’t great and the next being the champion of the poor who’s book isn’t for the likes of children in State schools in leafy suburbs!

Anyway - this has all gone completely off the rails (and apologies @WillowSummerSloth, don’t think my short musing on what private school did for me was at all relevant!). @Wincher, completely get where you are coming from, my DH is of a similar mindset, a definite no for Indies & Grammars and I’ve had a pang or two. I’m sure your DS will do well, at the end of the day a bright child who is happy will succeed! I hope the broader school search is going well @WillowSummerSloth. The whole process is a bit of a fraught horror!

The thread seems to have been a bit derailed, but I started reading it with interest as we are in a similar boat. Similar household income, but two kids rather than three, live in a very mixed part of inner London with historically fairly terrible secondaries, so we always thought we would move out of town a bit for secondary. However our eldest is now in year 5 so this year we did the rounds of some of the secondary open evenings. We saw our ultra local state comp, a comp in a leafier area a mile or so away (we would just about be in catchment) and a faith school in the area we had planned to move to (I am a churchgoer). The faith school really didn't do it for us at all and it would drive atheist DH mad. The leafier comp with playing fields and honours boards etc was all a bit meh, the kids were disinterested and the buildings were shabby. Our local comp - only gets about 45% 5 A-Cs or whatever it is now - really blew us away. Kids were really enthused, we really got the impression they push bright kids hard.

However i do still wish we could look at private. I do worry about all the issues with state education and underfunding etc. DH and I were both privately educated. But DH is really against it morally. He also doesn't like the idea of grammars - we are in catchment for a couple of super selectives, though I'm not totally sure DS would be bright enough.

It's been interesting to read people's comments. Realistically I think DS will be happy at our local comp with all his friends. But I will still yearn for the rugby fields and honours boards... My issues not his.