Recent opinions on Shenley Academy

Unless I missed it, you don't say whether you DC is male or female.

If you can persuade employers to consider private route then I suggest talking to Priory or St. Georges (both mixed) or Edgbaston High (girls) who may be open to moving back a year..

However, for now I think all you can do is send them to Shenley as obviously they have to be somewhere.

Sorry OP this must feel very difficult for you and your DCs. Good luck with the new job

This will will depend on what your job is and your seniority but are you getting any kind or relocation package? Given the dreadful timing education wise could you negotiate a year of private schooling (or 2 years and put your child back a year so they are not advantaged with GCSE's) and look for a school willing to support this?

It's dreadful timing, I expect that you are aware that moving in Year 11 WILL impact your child's GCSE's.

Dh used to work at Shenley. They had one of those Superheads at the time who really turned the school around but apparently when she retired things dropped back a lot. I don't know what it is like now.

Ok, this is bad timing for your son.
Mu advice is, don’t mess around, get him into school, engage fully with his teachers and any information they can give you about courses etc, see what matches with his last school and what he has missed, buy the revision guides for his new courses and help him catch up the best he can.
I would worry less about the quality of school and much much more about getting him through GCSE’s which he might have missed a year of!

I do feel for you, having a forced move at this stage in your DC's school career.

Not knowing this school at all, are you 'skeptical and sad' because although Shenley was able to offer a place, the school is not able to offer all of the GCSE options that your DC had started in their previous school? Or is it that youe been told that this school is awful? Can any or all of the other schools (if only there was a place to offer at all) guarantee the magic combination of same options / same exam boards / having studied the same topics and texts in the same order as your DC's previous school? I would be really surprised if they could.

Legally, its your responsibility to ensure that your DC is receiving a suitable full-time education; realistically, if you decide not to send them in to the one school where a place is definitely available, you are electing to home educate. Are you able to do this?

Are you appealing for a place at the other 5 schools?

But as a pp pointed out, in 8/9 months' time, your DC will actually be sitting their exams. Better to have one change now an get on with it, than have the whole problem all over again at some even further point in the teaching of the multiple GCSE syllabuses.

I do feel for you, having a forced move at this stage in your DC's school career.

Not knowing this school at all, are you 'skeptical and sad' because although Shenley was able to offer a place, the school is not able to offer all of the GCSE options that your DC had started in their previous school? Or is it that youe been told that this school is awful? Can any or all of the other schools (if only there was a place to offer at all) guarantee the magic combination of same options / same exam boards / having studied the same topics and texts in the same order as your DC's previous school? I would be really surprised if they could.

Legally, its your responsibility to ensure that your DC is receiving a suitable full-time education; realistically, if you decide not to send them in to the one school where a place is definitely available, you are electing to home educate. Are you able to do this?

Are you appealing for a place at the other 5 schools?

But as a pp pointed out, in 8/9 months' time, your DC will actually be sitting their exams. Better to have one change now an get on with it, than have the whole problem all over again at some even further point in the teaching of the multiple GCSE syllabuses.

Eta I am fully aware that Ofsted isn't everything, but the school really is dire now, it has either gone downhill rapidly since its last Ofsted inspection in 2021, or it managed to hoodwink the inspectors good and proper on that occasion.

Mine are that much older now, I've not really been in conversations about secondary schools for a while, but, when I last heard, I was hearing a lot of positive things about Shenley Academy. It had improved massively from when my dc were in Primary / we were looking at secondaries.
I certainly don't hear of it being dire.

Though of course it is quite a challenging time to be joining any school - both socially as a 15 yr old, and also academically, just 8 / 9 months out from GCSEs.

Anyway, hopefully this will bump for someone to give you more current updates.