To wonder if you would send your child to a school you had a bad experience at

[catsonlaps]

Daft, I know. For one thing, I'm 35, and child hasn't even been born yet But this is more hypothetical than literal so stay with me.

Secondary school was horrific for me and without wanting to exaggerate or be dramatic, I do think it pretty much ruined (or was a major contributer anyway; I tend to think things happen in combinations) any chance of me ever having a happy and fulfilled relationship.

I liked some the teachers and they liked me, and I did always have friends there but the bullying was terrible. It is, and always has been, a slightly run down comp in a slightly run down part of town.

This school is one of several in the area a child who grew up here could feasibly go to - we straddle a couple of counties and LAs.

WIBU to hypothetically NOT send a child to that school, even though it's the best one - one is a church academy in special measures and one is a similar comp in RI. My old comp is 'good.' But no way could I face sending my child there ...

Doesn't apply to me, but a friend refused to send her children to the selective, expensive and pushy school she attended on the grounds that the personnel might have changed, but the overly-competitive ethos hadn't. She was bullied there too.

I have done.
Very similar to you, bullying at secondary has had an impact on my adult life.
All through primary I vowed my daughter would go to a different secondary however my DD begged to go with her friends and DH supported her. He incidentally went to the same school several years above me and loved it there.
So DD went. Some of the same teachers are there. My daughter has had the children of some of my bullies in her year. The initial meetings and parents evenings were hellish for me.
My daughter has thrived there despite the school going into special measures during her first year. She is about to leave and predicted fantastic GCSE results. My second child started in September and so far is really loving school. Overall the experience has been helpful for me and has provided a degree of closure.

If our future DC are like me, DH has said we can think about sending them to the school he was unhappy at. I would've LOVED to have gone to his school, and I think he would have fitted in well at mine.

However, that is all dependant on one staff member no longer being there, because he has been clear that under no circumstances will that person have control over any of his children like they did over him.

I wouldn't send my DD to my old Secondary. I chose that school because most of my friends from Primary were going there (as they all lived closer to this Secondary than I did). If I had a do-over, I would go to the nearer school which had a better reputation. I made a silly decision based on a silly pre-teen POV, and I wish my parents had tried harder to talk me out of it.

The staff and pupils may have changed, but the culture often continues. I know my old HT is still at the school. I'm sure his line of thinking continues to shape the ethos.

I had the option of doing so, but the school in question was quite far down my list, so I actually never got around to viewing it. If I had been to view it I would have been very vigilant for the problems (teaching staff attitude) I had as a pupil there.

If I'd seen it and thought it seemed totally different then yes, I would send DC there.

Logically the school will have changed completely, but I couldn't. I moved across the world after leaving my secondary school, but no matter how much I'd moved on, I found that when I was back visiting and anyone mentioned it, tears would well up.

I'd hesitate, since I think many of the problems I and my siblings had can be attributed to the school being too big, with too many children for teachers to manage effectively, and I doubt that has changed.

For primary school I did. The school had completely changed. Unfortunately, the local population hadn't, so she had her own bad experience there. Secondary school was much better because she went to an independent.

I've moved away from the county I grew up in, so it's academic, but I am pretty anti selective girls' schools because the environment breeds bullying as well as high risk for certain psychological problems. I have a couple of friends from school still in the area and they might do - they had quite a different experience to me in some ways.

Counselling is useful in many ways - it has helped me feel validated, and stopped me being too rigid in thinking, else I might throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater where it comes to making future choices.

I was bullied horribly by children at my school. When it came time to choose sxhool for ds we had moved back to the area and the bullies were either working at the school or had kids attending. None of them seemed any nicer than I remembered so it was a no brainier I sent ds to school 7 miles away.
He is really happy. I am happy he has lots of lovely friends and I don't have to interact with the people who made my life miserable.
Win win

I think when you send your children to school it actually brings back a lot of memories of your own schooldays at each stage.

So, actually, though the school will have changed, I may say no - for the very reason that it will awaken a lot within you. However, you obviously still have a lot of pain inside you about these days, I wonder if there is anything you can do, not counselling, maybe CBT? Otherwise these thoughts may blight your life and also that of your child as you try to deal with them.

No I wouldn't.

I spent a miserable 4 years at one high school, and although the building burnt down and the catchment changed and now includes DC from an affluent new build estate (in my day most people were in FSM and I was teased for being posh because both my parent had jobs) I just couldn't ever send my DC there.

Some people fight to get their kids in as it now has a good reputation.

The bullying I experienced has had a very long lasting effect.

With the best will in the world, I think you need to move on. The bullying was 20 years ago, those that bullied you are adults with their own lives who don't give a second thought to you or school, why should you waste your adult life thinking about them? They are probably nice grown up women with their own families now (and I write this as someone who was bullied at school).

Besides which, as previous posters rightly say, the staff and pupils will be totally different so you'd be wrong to reject the school on those grounds.

I have actually done it! My Daughter currently goes to the Primary school I went to and in September she will go to the same secondary.

I had a bloody miserable time at secondary school, bullied and friendless for most of it.
I had always thought that there would be no way DD would go to that school but when we went to see it before doing the application it was her favorite and mine so that's where she is going.

I will admit on the walk up to the school when we went to have a look around I had a sick feeling in my stomach, but it has changed so much since I was a kid, I'm glad I gave it a chance.

My dad goes to my previous high school. I hated school, had no friends and was a school refuser.
My dd is doing well there and it is a great school that provides many great opportunities for the students. It is the best school for my kids. The student support is now outstanding.
My experience is not hers, we are different people.
It is strange having to step inside the place, which used to make vomit with anxiety when I was there.
It's not the same place , different students, teachers rules. A school is more than the building anyway so in some respects she is going to a "different" school.

Slightly different here. However DD2 had a bad experience at the first secondary school we sent her to. the communication wasnt good from school either. When it came to DS and DD3 they were both told that school was not an option for them. Both accepted it no argument however I have had lots of people say it was strange as all children were different. Yet I also have had lots going on about how strange it was that I had not picked the same school for ds and dd3 that dd1 and now 2 is in.. Cant win.

I grew up in a different country so not possible to send mine to schools I went to. However yes I would have done had we lived near by as I know they would have changed.

When my nephew walked around one of the locals schools a teacher recognised his father (who had gone there) nephew was that put off by this he didn't pick the school. (that would have been very well suited to him)

well, I'd have to say "no"

A friend of mine worked at my old school, one day with me in her car she wanted to "just pop in and get something from my desk"
which was fine except I started hyperventilating when she started to drive down the road to the school.

So I can't imagine being able to cope with parent-teacher meetings etc in that place at all.

Therefore, I'd have to conclude I would not be able to send my children to a school with which I would not be able to engage.

It won't be an issue, I live a 3 hour drive from there now.

I sent my two to the secondary I went to myself. I didn't have a great experience, but my children are very different from me, both socially and academically and I knew they would be fine. The school has changed a lot since I went in the 80s (also changed site) and it has a very good reputation - when I went it was a bit of a 'if you can't get in anywhere else, you go there' type of school. Also, schooling in general has changed, while there is more pressure to do well (more assessments, tests etc - but that is every state school), there is a lot more pastoral care, most schools have a zero-tolerance policy to bullying whereas there was no 'anti-bullying' culture 30 years ago.
So my answer is, if the school has changed and parents' are happy with it, then there is no harm in looking. I obviously looked round a couple of times before deciding. It was a very close call between that for first choice and another school, so much so we were changing our minds regularly, but I knew that they would probably do better academically at my old one so we put that down and left it in the lap of the gods (obviously you don't always get your first choice anyway).

I'm still in my old home town but we're out of catchment for my old school. I didn't send my daughter there. I sent her to one of the schools with a better reputation but, at the same time, there is a reputation for bitchiness, which it had back then and still has now. She is nothing like me, however. She's a feisty little madam and handles it well so far.

I can't say I would have or wouldn't have sent her there. I would have had a look round for old times' sake, though - but with caution. From what I hear, it is still not that great a school in spite of several changes of head. Sometimes it is the demographic, too, which feeds from itself. All of the schools in our area seem to be in the same place in the league tables as they were, with a little variation here and there .

Am doing now. Ds attends my old Secondary, where I was bullied throughout and hated every minute.

Some if the teachers are the same (25 years later!). He is happy. It's his school now. My school was 25 years ago in another time and another world. It is weird, and it's hard to project. But that's parenting anyway, dealing with weird and not projecting on our kids.

No. I was bullied out of a local secondary school 25yrs ago and I wouldn't send my dc's there. Too many crappy memories.

My secondary is now an academy and has had a lot of buildings knocked down and rebuilt, I don't think I could send my DCs there though. It was only 1 boy really who bullied me and put me down for 3 years but it really had an affect on me. Plus it generally served semi deprived areas and we had a very high teenage pregnancy rate, drugs, affairs with teachers and sixth fomers etc. It was generally pretty rough and it still serves the same areas so I wouldn't send mine there. Plus as I wasn't a top student but I could pretty much pass everything without much involvement I was kind of left to it. If I had been pushed that bit more I could have done much better. The teachers weren't really interested though.

The school closest to me is probably worse than my old one so they would take be going there either. A few more nearby are also very poor. At the moment DS wants to do his 11+ so we shall see. If not then I don't know really. The good ones are quite far away and quite probably oversubscribed but we don't have catchments so nothing to stop us applying. I just want mine to have a better experience than me. We didn't even look around any others, it was local school and that was it.