Better or Local?

[CheesePleaseCheese]

When picking your DC’s high school did you decided to just go local,
or for the ‘better’ school if it was further away?

what were your reasons?

I let my kids have some input, no point sending them where they don’t want to be.

Definitely better. Our "local" one is absolutely crap. It was crap when I went there in the 70s and hasn't improved since. It's constantly in special measures, been rebranded several times, new head teachers with new ideas who then resign after 2/3 years. I wouldn't send my worst enemies child there. It's got constantly falling roll numbers even though there's local population increase and the better schools are massively over subscribed. Inevitably it will end up closed down as it's down to about a quarter of its roll a couple of decades ago and has entire closed down/boarded up buildings that are no longer needed.

There was another similar one in the next town along, but that got closed down around five years ago for the same reasons.

There is actually a convoy of 8 or 9 specially chartered school buses taking the kids from the town across the county border to a secondary school in a village in the next county. It's grown massively, and that's solely because of the influx from our county as it's only a small village and never used to have a big secondary school. The "parents who care" send their kids on the buses across the county. Those who don't care send them to the crap comp, so it hasn't a chance really of improving.

We are fortunate to live in an area with a number of different high schools quite close to each other ,some are better than others
He went to the local RC school ,as he had been to the RC primary ,it was ok a good school not outstsnding but better then other choices

Better for both dc.

Grammar school area so that influenced choice - went for grammar over local (non-grammar). The reasoning was that if he didn’t like grammar, he could always move to local, but it would a lot harder to make the opposite move (impossible?).

Did you all drive your dc to school then?
or bus?

dc 1 - car, train, walk
dc2 - car, bus, or car, or walk/bus (various options)

It would have been nice to have a choice. Well, we had because one of the two schools DD would have been able to get into has a huge distance because noone wants it, it says a lot when a) our neighbour who works for the local police warned us against it and b) the head was found guilty of fraud.

DD walks around 35/40 minutes as there is a large golf course and train line in the way she has to walk around. She can take a bus for 1/2 the route but that's normally utterly crowded by the time it arrives at our nearest stop.

No choice here really. All the schools other than the local one are too far away to even be considered. And we don’t live in the sticks either.
Fortunately the local school is good.

Local. It makes such a positive difference to everyone's lives. They need independence as they get older, and I need to be able to get on with things without worrying about about them being stuck in another town.