I do not like my DC's school. I don't think it suits her. There are a lot of pupils in a small site, and it is noisy and busy. She is in Y1 and hasn't settled very well. She likes school, she has some good friends, but she is intensely shy with her teachers. Outside school she is bubbly and excitable. She is always moving and finds it hard to sit still.
Although she doesn't dislike school, she has been getting frequent tummy aches. I thought it might just be a bedtime not wanting to sleep thing, but it seems to be getting more frequent, and it is happening during the day before school as well. It may not be related to school, but I think it is because she is so tightly coiled at school, she is just feeling anxious.
The school has terrible communication with parents (not even an opportunity to write in reading diaries - we only have a tiny space to sign). In reception, we got to our first parents evening we were told that our daughter wasn't communicating AT ALL with teachers. She had told us she was scared of them, but she was basically not speaking at all, or even looking them in the eye. We were shocked because she was not like that at preschool and is not like that outside school. She can be a little shy, but nothing to the degree the school was telling us. After parents evening I phoned and discussed it with the teacher, and some measures were put in place. Over the next few months my DD told me it was getting better, and so we were shocked at the next parents evening to hear that nothing had changed. What concerned me was that the school had not bothered to consult with us even though we told them this was not usual. I then wrote a letter in June complaining about their rubbish communication, and basically after a meeting was told that she had settled in a bit better and they should have told us.
The school is considered good, locally and by Ofsted and it is just down the road. But it is very conservative (in my view), parents are kept at a distance, and I think that parents should be partners in their children's education.
So, the other school. It is a drive away, but it is a very small school (it is a new school and so only has 3 year groups at the moment). He headteacher is phenomenal (in my view), and it has a really strong set of teachers (again, in my view). The school has a really open creative ethos. They are focusing on developing critical thinking in a nurturing environment, and parents are not only encouraged but expected to be participants in their children's education. I think that it is going to be a really fantastic school. Because it is new, it is also not full at the moment. As a result, my DD would be in a class of 21 or so. As far as I can see, it feels like an opportunity for class sizes you would get in private school in a state school. If we could afford private, we would be travelling to that.
My DD is currently quite keen on the new school. She hasn't visited, but she wants to go. She is really keen on going to a smaller school. She has said she finds her current school loud and busy. I think that the smaller nurturing environment would really help her to come out of her shell, and would help her feel more relaxed in school. In a small school, she would get to know the other children in the school and it would help her to feel part of the school community.
So, to me, it seems obvious. The new school would be a 20-40 minute journey each way. It is a car journey where we can talk, listen to story and music tapes, do spelling home work, and hopefully other things. There also some other parents near us that we could hopefully carpool with.
But, everyone else (practically) seems to think it is a terrible idea, and that my DD should just stay where she is. I just don't want to leave her in a school which I don't think suits her at all, when there is a possible place in a school which I think would suit her much much better, and which would potentially be a considerably better school. Does a school commute have to be dreadful?? Is it not worth moving from something Blah to something that could be great?