Currently live in Horsham, son has a lovely catholic school to start in September, one intake of 30 a year.
Problem is there is no catholic secondary school anywhere near which is a problem for us being a practising family.
The secondary's near are leatherhead ( could never afford ) and barnham ( a good option as my mother and brother are in Chichester.
We are stuck in a tenancy until March now however the local catholic primary do have a place and he could start in January as oppose to September so only 2 months of driving the 60 mile round trip.
We would then have to really hope that a decent rental came up at the time we need it as the journey is too far / will cost too much in petrol to do for any longer than those 2 months.
My issue is that the school we have got id high performing, 90% of children achieving level 4 or above as oppose to 48% in the other one. The other one also teach in mixed ability classes through year 1/2, 3/4 and 5/6 which the current one dont and on our visit to the new possible one the headteacher informed me that currently around 50% of children are non English speaking on entry ( mainly Eastern European ) which was almost used as the reason for the low results.
The upside would be being closer to family, affording a 3 bed rental rather than 2 bed and hopefully the children would make some friends they would take over to secondary whereas here they won't have anyone starting secondary with them as the kids all go onto either private education or single sexed schools neither of which we can do / want.
I'm really confused, my husband says 5 years is a long time to go to a not great school ( he mainly disliked the fact that because it's right in bognor town it's very comcrete and they have no grass playing areas whereas the current one has masses ) and my mum says to think of the kids at 11 knowing nobody going to secondary school :-(