To ask how many of you use your local/nearest school?

[monkeymamma]

When we moved to our current house I was pregnant with dc1. I noticed there was a newish, nice looking school here and thought 'ah good, that's where the baby will go to school when the time comes.' Ds is now 3 and all anyone seems to talk about is the school question. Many people seem keen to avoid the local school (it Required Improvement at last offsted, has a new head, and a large intake from both social housing and local traveller community). Everyone wants to send their dc to an alternative school but the others round here are 'good'/'requires improvement' apart from one small village school (v.v small, middle class intake, not what I have in mind for my dc - I feel like they'll learn more about life in a more diverse environment) which is outstanding. No one ever gets their child in there anyway from where we live (ie nowhere near said village).
Anyway sorry to go off on detailed tangent - my thought ws that it seems the 'normal' thing to do to try to shop around rather than using the school nearest to you. Is that your experience also? Or did anyone find this whole business more straightforward?

DD1 is due to start in September. We have put our local school as No1, it got a 'good' ofsted report last year. She currently goes to the pre school there and we are very happy with the setting, its a small village school and all the kids on the street go there and their parents love it too. The second closest school is apparently an 'outstanding' rated ofsted school. We had a look around but werent overly impressed, my friend wants her boy to go there as as the local 1 is 'an average school for average kids'! Charming! She wont get in the 'outstanding' 1 so needs to get used to the idea of the "average" 1.

My dd goes to the nearest local school 10 minutes walk away. It went from Good to Requiring Improvement a year ago. I am feeling uncertain at the moment as to whether it is the best choice.

local, but not catchment school.

3 good primaries within 0.5 of a mile. I went with gut instinct and chose the one with the most welcoming head. turns out to have been a good choice.

My DDs go to the local school- a two minute walk away- which has been rated as outstanding for over ten years now and is a brilliant school. We are lucky to live so close to it as it is oversubscribed. I worry about secondary school as I don't think there are any near us that I rate at all.

We have about 4-5 local schools, one CoE, one Catholic, 3 state schools. All about 8-10 min walk, we chose the CoE which is good, the state schools are one outstanding (impossible catchment area) one requires imrovement and one good with outstanding features. The Catholic one was not even considered.

What we did was to start with the Ofsted and then go to local playgroups in the area and get the gossip from other parents (invaluable) Also most schools have summer fetes, christmas fetes fundraising events etc. Go to those as well as open days to get a feel for the school.

All in all we couldn't be happier with our choice, it's a lovely little school with great teachers and I really don't see what the outstanding ofsted rating would bring...

Good luck and my advice is that if you do have decent schools around where you can get in, don't worry too much!

I have just applied for dc1 and did not choose the local
He has speech and language difficulties so we have opted for a specialist school which focuses purely on speech difficulties. My second choice was the second closest school purely because when I compared the two our nearest gave no information other than a link to a government page about their special needs programme whereas our second closest had a full page of detailed information. Our second ds starts the year after and will attend the same school as his brother purely because I can't do 2 school runs

Ours go to the local secondary - so local that I can see it from our upstairs balcony (it's about 2 mins walk).

It doesn't have the most fantastic intake - about 2/3 of the kids are from deprived families - but it has a good, stable teaching team and I like the head. So far, apart from last year when DD's class was a bit difficult, we have had few issues.

There are huge advantages to using a local school - better socially for your kids, no time lost travelling, it's easy to pop in to see a teacher if necessary, makes getting involved much simpler. It's going to be a shock to the system next year when DD moves up to a sixth form college 45 minutes away :-/

yes for primary, no for secondary.

Yes for Primary and Secondary, both good schools.

We don't as the head was an awful woman who tried to use her slant on Christianity to make me feel like an abysmal mother. It's a shame as the school is 3 minutes away and one of the reasons we chose this village.

That head has since left but as DS is settled into another school we are not willing to move him.

Yes for primary, couldn't get a place at two closest secondaries, so she is at the third closest to us about 2 miles away.

Dd goes to our nearest school. It's excellent and would have been our first choice if we lived in the general area but it wasn't the closest school, iykwim.

But, a lot of parents in our village don't like the school for some unknown reason (it has a good inspection report and good results) and feel sorry for us that our child goes to it. It's very odd.

Outstanding infant school

Either good or outstanding junior school (can't remember )

Both less than 10 min walk both one of two in the village

Good senior school just over 20 mins walk, only one in the village

Other schools both primary and secondary must be 3+ miles away

We do - local independent which happens to be closer than the catchment primary [misses point] .

If we hadn't decided on that though, I would have been happy with any of the three primaries which are more or less equidistant and would almost certainly have gone with the one which is our official catchment school, because we would have got transport provided to that one.

We didn't have one closest choice from our house when dc started school, all of them required a car journey, so we went with the one we thought was best, which was also OFSTED outstanding.

I would actively avoid a school that wasn't at least rated good.

we use both good rated primaries in our area - dds go to the one we used to live nearest to, and which at the time I thought suited them best and ds goes to the one we live nearly next to now as he is disabled and attends the sn resource base within the school.

As I am RC, both mine went to the catholic primary which was not the geographically nearest school, but not that far off.

For secondary school my son went to the geographically nearest school although it was not officially our catchment school (strange boundaries in our town dating back to the days of the girls grammar and boys grammar which are now girls and boys single sex comps.). My daughter went to the girls single sex comp, but we had to go on a waiting list for a couple of months. The catchment school at the time had poor results and a disproportionate amount of special needs children.

Ours go to our nearest school which 'requires improvement' which we're very happy with. It's in an area of mixed housing (former council estate but now with lots of owner occupiers alongside social housing). Because of a lot of people choosing to drive their kids to the 'nice' village schools ( which are bursting at the seams) my kids are in classes of 23 and 18, both with teacher and full time TA.

I think it is a perfectly 'normal' and understandable thing to look for the best education for your child as you can get. If the local school isn't right then it's a parents choice to look for somewhere else.
My daughter goes to the local school. Small village school, no other within easy distance. BUT if she was very unhappy there I'd have no issue with looking elsewhere.
You must pick what you think suits your child and pay no attention to other people's choices.

Mine goes to the village school, which I believe is currently 'requires improvement'. My understanding of the situation is that there were/are a few old dinosaurs (inc. the head) who are not particularly understanding of Ofsted's hoops and buzzwords, because I don't have much of a problem with it and Dd seems to be making progress. Got my parents (both retired teaching dinosaurs) to give the inspection report the once over read between the lines and they didn't have any worries.
Hilariously enough, the 'outstanding' school a few villages away, which the snobby parents around here send their kids to, has recently been thrown into special measures!
Dd loves walking to school by herself and playing out with her friends, and there is a good mix of children/backgrounds who go there. The behaviour/ethos there is good and she's quite happy.

DS is at the local school because the next nearest is 4 miles away and there is no public transport at sensible times. When he is a little older he will go to the nearest secondary school , 4 miles away, by school bus.

My local school went from 'Outstanding' to 'Inadequate' in 3 years due to progress from Y2 to Y6 not being good enough (data triggering the inspection and data driving the judgement - both 'apparently' used by 'weak' inspectors according to OFSTED).
My child has just started the nursery class and I am very happy with the level of care and education he is receiving. He is well nurtured, comes home positive, tired which is a good thing, and singing and chatting about what he has done. In five weeks, I have noticed a dramatic improvement in his social skills, his confidence and his ability to recall stories, count, recite etc, etc.
Schools are mainly judged on data - which is actually a poor way to say if a school is good or not. OFSTED only spend a day and a half observing lessons and 5 or so minutes quizzing staff and pupils in various groups. I do not judge a school by a 'word' but by the happiness and well-being of it's pupils. A child will learn and have a zest for it if they are happy and well cared for. A baby will only thrive if their basic needs are met and the same goes for our primary children.
As a primary school teacher, I am well versed into the 'ins and outs' of OFSTED and do not trust them whatsoever. I also know that many (not all) 'Outstanding' schools are pushy with targets, ignore the SEN and strugglers, are workload pushers and generally have unhappy staff. The next nearest school to us is 'Outstanding' yet undersubscribed. A friend movd to a village between mine and the one with the 'Outstanding' school before her boys were born and vowed to send her child to an 'Outstanding' primary. Since the OFSTED grade demotion in our village, she still chose to send him there because the opinion of parents and the general 'feel' of the school suited her and best for her children. I also know of an ex-pupil whose parents chased' OFSTED 'good' grades and in Y5, in her FOURTH school. Apparently she has difficulty maintaining friendships.

We have a school on our road, a 1 minute walk from us.

When ds1 was 2.5 I phoned to find out about registration and gave all his details over the phone. I asked the receptionist when we could pop in and see the school/maybe meet the teacher and got met with a completely derisory response along the lines of 'well you'll obviously get a glimpse of his classroom on his first day. But we don't do viewings'.

I wouldn't leave my dog in a kennel without viewing it first, let alone my child in a school.

So we enquired at the next nearest school, about 1.5 miles away. The response was completely different. We were welcomed and booked in for an appointment straight away. When we turned up, we went into the nursery class (ds1 was not quite 3) and ds went immediately to a stack of toys. The nursery teacher spent ten minutes with us and ds1 was so engrossed in playing with the toys she shooed us off with the deputy head to go and view the rest of the school and told us to leave him there

When we got back after 15 minutes the teacher was sitting doing painting with him and he hadn't even noticed we'd gone!

It is a wonderful, small family orientated school and I thank my lucky stars that circumstances led us to look at it.

Primary yes, secondary no. Almost everyone in the village, from council houses to multi million houses sends their children to the village primary school. But it's a good school with no major problems and most people probably moved to the village with or expecting children and knew they were happy with the school. However at secondary probably half go private/grammar/out of catchment comp.

We have 3 schools within walking distance. My DC don't go to the closest (or the best according to ofsted!), but another I prefered, all of half a mile further away.

I wanted my children to go to a local primary school, but I wanted a choice too which is one of the reasons I wouldn't live in a village.

Lots of people here have thought it strange I didn't pick the closest school though, even though the one we went for still isn't far at all.
Whereas I think the idea if choosing the 'best' is much more of a thing on the wealthier villages around here, with lots of competition for places.