Only secondary school is bad - what lengths to avoid?

There's always people saying about the hope of improvement, but then you see schools like the following that look to have a good Ofsted but have teachers striking and being stabbed in the school. Yet many people move to the area in the hopes of getting one of the top grammar schools in the country

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5ynn00032o

Our local High school is dire, live in a strange part of town in a lovely suburb, with a huge, really troubled estate on the other side of a dual carriageway. I would have moved, but was lucky enough to get my dc into the Catholic system thanks to DH's side of the family. We regularly go to church, the dc made their Forst Holy Communion etc. Aside from that option I would have moved.
I went to a sink school and it delayed my progression for years, I messed about, got in with the wild girls, worked way below my ability and was never challenged on it, didn't end up going to uni until my 20s, I would never allow my dc to attend a poor school.

While I agree that it is poor if a school is not very good and yet students still have to attend, tbf if you do live in a grammar area @Curlewwoohoo there is another school – the grammar school?

The fact that the sec mod has poorer behaviour (often linked to lower ability for a number of reasons) and yes, perhaps no sixth form which will put teachers off is not astonishing I guess. People often try to move to the grammar area but need to remember that the majority of DC in the area will not end up at the grammar. Not saying that this is you btw and obvs it’s not much help to you currently.

You are where you are and while a lot of the suggestions on this thread are indeed a bit late as you are currently awaiting an offer, I think @cantkeepawayforever has a good list of what to do. Be sure to accept the place and talk the school up to your DC; if friends are going there it may end better than you fear. Is private an option at all even if for KS4 only?

The area I live in is well within the catchment for the best school in the area. As a result there's a premium on house prices/rent. You'd be amazed how many families move into the area until after their DC begin year seven, then off they go.
What I have seen is even in struggling schools that in set one DC want to learn and aren't distruprive, anything lower and the pupil's behaviour is much worse, to the point it affects the learning.

I have moved in a similar situation. Everyone said ‘bright kids will do well anywhere’, but my kid isn’t bright and was already pretty lacklustre about school. I would have sent him to a school that was just a bit mediocre but our local comp was similar to yours: huge amounts of disruption in lessons and teachers voting with their feet. I was pretty sure that if my DS went there he would come out minimally educated and possibly in a gang. Only you know how bad the school is and how much education matters to you.

@Curlewwoohoo you might be close to me, especially if the school you're talking about has been in the local news recently...
If so, your options are a long bus ride/drive away (if you're lucky enough to get a place at the "viable" alternative i can think of), private, or move.
If it is the same location, a friend got their eldest into one of the superselectives, but that's not an option for most people.

Too late now for the ‘normal’ admissions round anyway. You would be a late application anywhere, and thus dealt with after all on-time state applications have been allocated.

So your possible actions are:

• see where you are allocated - you may be surprised
• stay on the waiting list for your higher choices
• see whether any other schools that you would prefer have spaces : if they have no waiting list, any place can be yours, wherever you live
• find any non-selective privates that have spaces, either now or post application day (when those holding places but getting their state school offer may drop out)
• start the moving process, including investigating where would have places for an in-year application. While appealing for and winning a place in a new area would need you to be fully moved, have disposed of your old house etc to make you credible amongst other applicants, taking an empty place, as long as you can take it up within a week or do, may not be as stringent
• try out this school fir a period of time, with the ‘escape routes’ planned and primed ready to go, or ready to go for eg Y8 or 9.

Our LA specifies that the address used for applications is your main residence and that this is also the address used for GP/hospital and current school, plus other LA services such as the library.

Anything else is fraud.

The only school place offered to us was at a failing comprehensive that even Ofsted said wasn't safe. Having taken a closer look, ds applied for a scholarship at a small local independent, and when he won it, I mortgaged my soul.

As it happens, it has worked out, but a fairly high risk strategy 😓And I only have one dc.

So you've already applied and are just waiting to see what you are allocated?

That means a lot of the suggestions on this thread are irrelevant.

Your best option might be to go in with an open mind, particularly if DC is with a good crowd of friends from primary school, and look to go to drastic Option B in Year 8/9 if it is as bad as you fear.

How far are you from a properly comprehensive area?

The difficulty of a selective system at 11+ - such as where you currently live - is that the minority of pupils ‘selected’ (who go the the grammar) leave the majority in a school which has a disproportionate number of SEN, FSM, LAC etc children, and those from backgrounds with little regard for education or consequences for poir behaviour. These schools are harder to teach in and do not offer A levels as a rule, and thus good teachers in shortage subjects (in an era of teacher shortages) will tend to choose elsewhere - and there may well be a higher degree of work related stress (or even physical injury) so teacher absence is likely to be higher.

You may need to move away from the edge of selective counties as well, as there are sometimes edge effects where the most able / ambitious/ focused on education will still commute into the selective area.

Balance the cost of moving vs the cost of private education in the nearest non-selective private with a good reputation for SEN and limited extra charges for SEN support. The latter type of school, especially if small, rural and relatively low fees, is particularly vulnerable to closure, however - check finances carefully.

Well you really do have only three options.

1. Send the child to the poor school and support as much as you can
2. Pay for private
3. Move

Obviously some of these options are more feasible than others, depending where you are. We are in Scotland and have none of this "rank in order of preference" stuff when it comes to schools. And the nearest state selective school from me is in Penrith.

I would move. In fact we are moving for secondary. Not because the local schools are bad but because DS has dyslexia and we want him in a dyslexia specialist school. I think moving for schools is completely fine and normal and not an extreme.

If you temporarily rent somewhere you would have to give up your old property, you can’t keep your old property and rent a new one just to be able to put the new address down on applications, that would be admissions fraud.

I went to work in a non teacher role at a better school, they allow children of employees a school space.

Realistically at this point, your options are moving house, going private, homeschooling or giving the school a try and seeing how your DS copes.
We both don't want to move house or homeschool, and DH is vehemently opposed to private schools, so if we end up in this position (which we might for DS2), we'll give the school a try and keep a close eye on DS2, while also remaining on the waiting lists for all the other local schools. We'd also be willing to supplement the school offer with extracurriculars and tutors if necessary.
For us personally, we also have several Studio schools nearly, which start at Year Nine, so that would be another option. Those are pretty rare though.
I'm assuming your DS wouldn't be eligible for an EHCP? Some dyslexic children are (my cousin's daughter is), but only at the more severe end.

Yep. It's LAC in criteria 1 and "the twenty-two children whose permanent home address is closest to the School at the date of application." in criteria 2, then siblings, then the various aptitude places.

Posted too soon. It looks like the criteria have changed.

It is literally opposite the gates of the school. I know families further along the same street that didn't qualify for catchment. No idea of the details. In my day, the "in catchment" was the lowest priority after siblings. The exam and music places plus the Islington places were top priority and nunbers were fixed. The sibling numbers changed each year and I suppose the catchment places varied because of that. I am going back over 15 years.

There is one small house opposite DAO that regularly changes hands for extortionate amounts of money. It is probably the only house that qualifies for catchment once all the other places are filled.

If it is actually opposite, it would qualify for the '22 nearest applicants' which is ahead of all selective criteria

London is full of state schools that have a small percentage of selective places based on academic or music ability and a long list of other criteria based on catchment, siblings, looked after status, all complicated.
The competition for places at these schools is the stuff of nightmares. The grammar school near me is arguably less challenging but has no catchment area.
The same children sit the exams at around 6 of the schools nearest to their homes.
2 of mine went to DAO and 1 went to the grammar. The one that went to the grammar didn't get into DAO.
There is one small house opposite DAO that regularly changes hands for extortionate amounts of money. It is probably the only house that qualifies for catchment once all the other places are filled.

We've been in exactly this situation. In a town with a number of schools, but only 2 that we would get a place at due to tightly defined GPAs and demand. One has a really poor behavioural and academic performance (but is working hard to change under newish leadership) and the other is the next weakest in the area in terms of academic performance, but it is does have better behaviour and stronger leadership.

Our DD is in year 6 now and took entrance exams for 2 of the 3 schools she was eligible to go for in the county. These are our closest selective schools and are both 25+ miles away. She had about 18 months of Atom Prime to help her prepare for the required standards, as well as a pretty dull summer last year, with slightly more regular exam preparation work.

She is pretty bright, but applications these places has gone up by about 2 to 3x per place over the past couple of years. She was also in the secondary catchment area for both schools, so was effectively needing to be somewhere around the top 10 to 20% of applicants to have a chance at the remaining places once the main catchment area places were filled.

It was quite a bit of work for her and for us, as well as being a very stressful September and October until we got the results. Fortunately in our county we get told if they have done enough to be offered a place, are on the waiting list, or haven't hit the required standard. She passed both, so it gave her and us a choice out of the two.

I don't regret doing what we did and hopefully it gives her a much better school opportunity than one of the two local ones. I fully understand why some parents do whatever they can to get their child in to a better school. Had ours not had the potential to pass the exams, then I'm sure we might have planned ahead and looked at a house move instead. I felt a lot of pressure to do as much as I could to give her the best opportunity with her schooling and hopefully we've achieved that.

We tied ourselves in knots for secondary and I have zero regrets. Our local comp is still not out of inadequate despite a good new head, and I’m not prepared to waste 2 or 3 years of secondary education for the school to get its act together such that it can actually find a stable cohort of good maths teachers.

No amount of pastoral care or nice extracurricular activities can make up for crappy teaching and a poor ethos around learning. I’ve seen too normal kids be completely turned off learning because the school environment was poor, and it was too hard to turn them around even when the school improved.