How important is local in secondary state choice?

School 2 gets rather good results for a non-selective state school. And, as it's undersubscribed, this is not likely to be solely because it has a strong intake.

So, I'd suggest it's doing something right.

I would focus more on the quality of teaching and ethos of the school. To me those are the priorities. Choice of subjects, extracurriculars, local friends are nice to haves. If kids in school 2 aren’t actually focusing during lessons, I would be concerned about behaviour management and quality of teaching.

The OP has already said that the allocated, original first preference, school is Michaela.

Neither school is ‘local’. A local secondary in London means walking or a short bus or cycle ride.

What are the two schools? I would seek specific advice in the two schools.

I see the thread has rather moved on, and I also wouldn't class either 40 or 50 minutes on public transport as "local".

However, my own experience is that my DC's went to a genuinely local school (15 minutes walk) where most of the students lived an easy walk or cycle ride away and they both then made friends with the children who lived several miles away with no obvious way to get there, so we still ended up being a regular taxi service.

But I would generally agree it's a good thing to have friends that the DC can meet under their own stream, although presumably meeting somewhere central would always be an option?

As someone whose child has travelled 6 miles across London to his school since 2017 - clearly I don’t rank being local as that high a priority (that said your options aren’t particularly local either!). Subject choice followed by general ethos (basically if I could abide by their rules) for me ranked a lot higher than exam results

My son was in an admission criteria where I had close to free choice of London schools although I had a door to door travel time cut off of c45 minutes and even then only simple journeys with minimal changes. I ruled out Michaela due to the lack of GCSE options - including single sciences. It is a brilliant school, just not one that fitted my son. Another school that came close was Mossboune Community but although they offer a broad range of subjects, have great facilities and their exam results are excellent - some of their rules were crazy and I found the school really arrogant.

People were surprised by the school I did choose - the exam results were good but not brilliant, they facilities were limited to academic subjects only (no tech or business) but it suited him perfectly and he has done very well there. I can’t say there weren’t issues (no school is perfect) but I am glad with the choice I made.

10 minutes is nothing - if your son will benefit from a broader curriculum get yourself on the waiting list for your second choice school and see what happens.

I disagree about them catering to the middle bands. Grammars are very very very underfunded. They get less money than most mainstream schools. That'll be why they don't have those options. The boys independent schools as well as the co-ed ones also have those options. I've always found it odd that girls independents are so 'traditional" in their curriculum.

Exactly. It's not really anything to do with Oxbridge tbh. Also GCSE PE and Food Tech is not easy!

But but but
and I am not saying you agree - but surely even a candidate for Oxford might want to take DT GCSE or business GCSE or drama or food tech. It's very snobbish of someone if they actually think that smart students only want to or should be allowed to take traditional subjects. My younger DC are both bright and both took subjects not offered at this school (PE, drama, computing). In fact DS2 took PE A level and his mate who is at Cambridge took business GCSE.

I get that. All about high grades. Similar to grammars near us. Few options. No options like PE m, sociology or psychology or foot tech.
They aren't catering for the middle bands who might want to pursue careers in sports or catering or beauty. Why teach business B tech when all your students are aiming for oxbridge.

I've seen lots about the school. Im a school governor so like to educate myself on different models. I had just assumed normal curriculum & loads options. Eye opener

Watch the documentary "Britain's strictest Headteacher" about the school. I must say I actually liked the school after watching it, although my own daughter would absolutely hate the draconian strict discipline. I think try school 1 and if he hates it, you can always switch to school 2.

@Zwicky just to add to my pp, Michaelas GCSE options are quite similar to most inner city private schools. I was very shocked at how narrow their curriculum was, esp the girls independent schools.

I think you’ve misunderstood the gcse choices. There are 10 subjects on your list as science is 3 GCSEs (or 2 if combined) plus Eng Lang and Eng Lit makes 12.

They will probably do
maths
chemistry
biology
physics
english lang
english lit

and 3 from history, geography, art, music, RE, french

So no choice of languages (tbf, some schools actually teach several but individual dc get allocated one in y7 and that’s the one they can do at gcse), no drama, no DT or food tech, no computer science, no BTEC subjects (engineering, ICT), no PE.
Whether this is an issue depends very much on the child. I like the Michaela ethos, broadly speaking, but it’s certainly not for everyone. I think all of those subjects are perfectly good at ks4 but it’s a bit odd that there isn’t a broader curriculum at ks3. No ICT or comp sci is surprising.

The headmistress has actually spoken about this a few times. They really struggled to get any borough to allow them to open a school and when Brent did, they refused to give them anything but a shitty old office block. They don't have the space for anything else. The other Michaela school they're opening (if that's still happening) was meant to have lots more options.

Really interesting looking at the school web site. No gcse music. No gcse PE no mention of any vocational stuff or things like food tech. It's a very narrow curriculum which is probably why they get good results. Lots of the same on repeat

I didn't know Micheala restricted choices so much. That's not in all the marketing or documentaries. Our school offers over 30 options to choose from

Neither are especially local, and school 1 with its random allocation doesn’t necessarily mean your dc will be any nearer friends than school 2. If you don’t mind the options offered I’d stick with school 1.

Ignoring the merits or otherwise of the two schools and sticking to the "localness" issue, one thing to consider is the make up of the rest of the school.
My DC's secondary school is about 20 miles away but we are in a rural area and it is not at all unusual for children to travel that far or further to school. So there is nothing odd about my DC and they aren't excluded in any way from friendship groups meeting outside of school or anything as the majority are in the same boat. And a high percentage of pupils come from very small village primary schools so only know a handful of others when they start so there was never any issue of trying to join in with big friendship groups already established from primary school.
However, I'd probably feel differently about a school where everyone else lived very close by and have come from the same few primaries. I think that it could be difficult socially to be one of very few non locals. Obviously the academic provision is the top priority but I do think children thrive in environments where they are happy so social factors do matter. I think there's a big difference to travelling a long way to a school with a very mixed population of pupils to one where the child will be the odd one out, especially if all their old primary school friends are going elsewhere - that does risk social isolation as they might not quite fit in at school,and could become a bit of an outsider in their home environment too.

Having just done GCSE choices with DD I would never choose a school with such limited choices. She hates Art, French and Geography with a passion but is very happy to do design and technology, Spanish and PE. She wants to go into design,, which needs an art subject but would have been a nightmare if she got art.
We did not know this in year 7!

@SpringOfContentment they do offer GCSE geography. But no CS and no GCSE PE and no tech and no drama. The choices of music and art are so odd in a way as they will not appeal to a lot of students, whereas tech and drama are much more generally interesting IME.

DS1 took food tech and it inspired his career choice; DD loved drama GCSE best of all; and DS2 took computing and PE, then PE for A level. It wouldn;t have been the school for them - but it may suit your DS OP. I think the "local" aspect is a red herring as you are clearly not local to either school.

Tricky one but you have got given your first choice, I would have thought the authority is unlikely to offer a place now at school 2 unless there are spaces.
but the “local” factor makes no difference if it’s 40m vs 50m. I know London is different but I wouldn’t consider anything that is not walking distance “local”. So in terms of these two schools the difference is negligible. I would be worried about the narrow curriculum in school 1.

Given the school name, I've done some reading.
No GCSE geography which I missed on first reading, plus limited other choices. It reads like Triple science vs art is an option choice, but everything else is fixed.
Might suit a certain type of child, but my son chose Geography, computing and triple science. It wouldn't have suited him.
So, from what you know of your son currently, is humanities and arts likely to be his thing? In which case go for it 8f it liked it on visiting.
If STEM or practical subjects are likely to be his thing, try and get into school 2.

Ah I thought maybe it was Michaela, that explains it. Yeh that's not a school I would want my child to attend.