to prioritise the gifted school place?

[MissMud]

Hiya

I will try to be brief! We live in a big city (not in the UK), which has a catchment system and also a small number of schools - six in the whole city - which run 'gifted' programmes for children. We have 3DC. Moved to this specific (v expensive), part of the city because in catchment for good school. DD1 and DD2 both attend, DS due to start in Sept. We are renting and rent is a huge chunk of our income.

DD2 and DS both took the entrance tests for the gifted programmes a few months back. We heard back recently and DS was offered a place at our last choice. But places at all are hen's teeth.

Getting to this school and getting the older DCs to theirs is going to be a logistical nightmare - realistically DD1 will end up being in charge of getting DD2 to school (they will be 12 and 7), while I travel for an hour with DS.

I don't know... our local school is a good one, but we are just renting so there is no security, I feel like we should be doing everything we can to ensure DS gets the best start he can. I am thinking we should move closer to the gifted school - there is a possibility then that DD2 could get in as an in-year sibling applicant and DD1 is old enough to travel to the school here (she can keep her place as her year is not oversubscribed), if we are careful to be near public transport.

What do you think?

Could he not to the test again at the same age as dd2 is now & maybe get into your first choices?

It was last choice due to geography, but yes it means DS got 135 points (would've needed 140 to get in to the one nearer us). DD2 got 103.

DS1 can retake the same test, apparently many people test their kids every year to try and get them in to closer gifted schools. There is also a school bus which goes to the gifted school from somewhere an easy journey (2 train stops), from us so we are looking into that. Thanks for the thoughts though. I agree it's not fair for DD1 to be in charge of DD2 without a parent around; we would probably try to organise it so DH could take DS to school and then go on to work.