To wonder why when choosing a school parents go for the easiest option despite it not always being the best choice for their kids.

[Jackpack]

My Ds is due to start high school in September. We put down a catholic school with a great reputation, good feel to it and with excellent ofsted reports and results and for our second choice we put down an equally good community school, both around 2.5 miles away. My Ds does go to Catholic primary so he'll move up with the majority of his friends, most of whom live closer to the school but he'll also have kids in his year that live close by to us as one of our local primaries is a feeder to the secondary, so making friends local shouldn't be a problem.

The reason I chose these two schools is quite simple, the rest in our town are diabolical, in every way imaginable. I wouldn't ever want my child to go there and if we'd have been allocated one of these schools then I'd have quit my job to joke school him. That's how bad they are! So, there are I think seven children in our street in the same year as my Ds so they are going to secondary as well this year. Each of their parents have chosen one of the failing schools to send them to and two of my friends, and a family member have chosen to do the same.

Obviously it is their choice to send their child to whichever school they like but why on earth they have chosen these schools i don't know, but then it dawned on me, because it's easier for them, the parents not the child I mean.

Sending their kids to the nearest school means they won't have to get up early and drive them to school. One of my friends was on Facebook recently raving that she can stay in bed longer come September as she won't have to take her child to school. I mean come on. I realise that a lot of kids do go local and there are certainly advantages to that including walking with friends etc but what's more important, thier kids get to walk to school with friends or that they get a better education. If all the schools in the area are equally as good then o can see why parents would want their kids to go to the local school, but when they're all exceptionally bad why not try for a better school slightly further away. It's just seems like laziness to me.

I'm thrilled my children will have a short walk to their secondary.

I had a long commute to mine - wastes time, if bus was late or didn't turn up it caused issues for me couldn't take part in a lot of after school events and activities.

There are worse schools in our area and better - though couldn't afford to live in the better catchments. It has a channelling intake but does quite well with them and it seems very nurturing with plan to build more and more independence.

If they chose to come straight back and not do after school stuff - they'll have loads of time to get homework done and therefore easy to do other things in evening.

So yes - I think close is better and easier for all or us.

Various reasons:

1. School friends
2. Curriculum and after school options available
3. Ofsted ratings these days aren't worth the paper they're written on (academisation through the back door etc).
4. A school could be outstanding yet have a shit atmosphere, and one requiring improvement could be a vibrant community looking out for each other.(personal experience as a teacher)
5. Good, self motivated students will do well regardlesss.
6. Last but not least, the biggest influence on how well a child is doing is the parents and whether they value education. Fact.

Mumsnet is fucking weird at times. Op I totally agree with you. I was brought up in a shit part of Glasgow but the catchment area for good secondary schools wasn't as strict as it is now so I went to a great high school in a different part of the city. My son is now at the same high school because we were fortunate enough to move within the catchment a few yrs ago ( now very strict about enrolment from other areas). My kids education is important to me so yeah I'm glad my kid is at a top rated school and I don't give a shit if others think I'm smug.

Glitter no one thinks you are smug - it's the fact the op is judging other people choices that is getting everyone's back up..... why aren't we as gornw adults allowed to chose where to send our children for whatever reason?? Why is down to the OP to judge harshly against her own standards?? We are not all the same?? There could be a million and one reasons for chosen to send a child to the closest school however it is rated.... OP simply doesn't know why??? But is happy to judge it as poor parenting??

Exactly.

Glitter you have obviously thought about it and made the best decision for your child given the options available to you. The OP has probably done the same. Whether they are the decisions that other people would make is beside the point: you've made the best ones for your kids, and you are in the best position to judge that. Great.

The problem is the OP assumes people making a different decision from her are lazy. When others point out these people may have their own, very good, reasons for making a decision different to hers, she bangs on about why her decision was right for her kid. Which no-one was disputing in the first place, as she's obviously the best person to make that judgement - and frankly, I doubt anyone cares that much either.

Her posts on this thread are either evidence of her being very thick, having a near sociopathic inability to distinguish between her decisions and someone else's decisions, or deliberately trying to wind people up. I'm going for thick.

I refuse to discuss the catholic side of things. I mentioned it was a catholic school and that's the end of it.

Yeah that was going to work

Her posts on this thread are either evidence of her being very thick, having a near sociopathic inability to distinguish between her decisions and someone else's decisions, or deliberately trying to wind people up. I'm going for thick.

Perhaps she was joke schooled.

Another example of an OPer that refuses to take onboard any opinions of others. OP is right, everyone else can do one. Why bother posting in the first place if this is your attitude?

I will be sending my DC to the local, not so popular school because it's the best choice for them and easiest logistically for me. So that makes me an uncaring and lazy parent. I work F/T and we are not Catholic. It is relevant!

Also Op please proof read, the school my children will be attending hopefully won't be no joke?

The reason why I've chosen to send my DC to the nearest primary school (currently rated Requires Improvement) rather than apply to an 'outstanding' one a few miles away is because I believe that a school should be at the heart of the community built around it. I love that the children my DC will play out on the road with also attend the same school and recognise each other from there. I also don't see the point in causing extra environmental damage by driving unnecessary journey.

Additionally I have witnessed the problems caused for families living in villages with 'desirable' schools when those schools get filled with kids driven in from nearby towns, when said town families get preference for places if siblings already attend, meaning that people living a stone's throw from the school get alienated from their own village community by being forced to ship their own kids to a school in the nearest town.

Our school has a really mixed catchment, in the middle of a council estate but also in catchment for several affluent villages, wide range of ethnicities etc. In my eyes it's the perfect preparation for my DC entering the real world after they leave school- she won't have come into contact solely with middle class kids of parents with upturned noses avoiding the 'unsavoury' families of the local school.

If we so wanted to, we could actually afford private school for our DCs, never mind cherry pick a 'better' state school. However as you can probably tell, I place a high value on belonging to our local, socially and ethnically varied community.

I'm another one who is interested in your definition of 'dire'. Where I grew up and my sister still lives and teaches the schools that are considered 'dire' really aren't in the context of the national picture. They may not be 'as good' as other local schools but they are still pretty good schools apart from the one, that was dreadful 20 years ago and still is

To put those 'dire schools' in context, one of what is considered the worst schools there is about as good as the best schools in my area, So maybe your idea of 'dire' isn't really.

I am due to apply for schools this year, and the choice isn't great - the better schools are out of authority, and whilst one of the schools in probably closest to the house as it is out of authority logistically it will be difficult between work commitments and smaller children - it isn't as easy as being able to just drive them the few miles up the road.

Our admission zone school really isn't great and I sometimes wonder what makes people choose that school but I am sure they have done it because they feel that it is the right school for them, whatever their 'right' might be.

I am also hesitant at putting out of area choices in her choices as there is a high chance she won't get them and then she could end up being placed in a school that she didn't like/didn't want.

I tend not to tell people about the internal turmoil that I am having about school choices, because I don't want to come over as judgemental of their choices, so I keep quiet and just tell people that it is a big decision and we will look at all the schools.

Distance is largely irrelevant - my nearest school is not our admission zone school, so she would be further down the pegging order than someone who lives 2/3 times the distance away given how the zone works.

Surely Eton College is the best school in England?
Why haven't you bothered to get him in there, OP? Too hard?

The school you decide is best and which you choose to send your dc to, may turn out not to be the right one at all. My DH was sent to a grammar school (because his db went there) instead of the local one where all his friends went. He hated his school with a passion, and didn't do well at all.

I ended up having to travel miles to mine as we moved to a different town (no choice in the matter - DDad's job) and the nearest school was full. My parents were told to choose another school in the town and were given a list. They picked the one furthest away from where we lived because it was the only one where I would be eligible for a free school bus. So I ended up spending an hour and a half on the bus every day, and lived nowhere near any of my schoolfriends. Hated it.

Because of our own horrible school experiences we were never going to impose our views & choose a school for our dd - we let her decide where she wanted to go (the nearest and easiest), and we didn't even bother to visit any of the other options (that was lazy of us wasn't it?).

Sometimes the easiest option turns out to be the best one.

I'm using the faith school issue as an example of why the school someone else thinks is the best might not be the one I think is the best. It's not the only example of that sort of thing, but it is one of the easier ones to understand.

Unless you know these other families very well, you don't know all the factors that went into their school decision. You'll be happier if you give people the benefit of the doubt and assume they had good reasons for making the choices they did.

It's not your job to decide what school every kid should go to. You probably wouldn't like it at all if that were your job.

Because no school is perfect - they all have pros and cons. And because every parent has different priorities.

My DC would easily have got into the academically high flying school but that's not the one I chose. I wanted them to go to a school that knew the kids well, valued their wellbeing above all else, and let them know that they could become anything they wanted - a hairdresser or a neurosurgeon, not one that would view them as a failure if they didn't go to a Russell Group university.

I wanted them to go to a school where they were part of a community that included all faiths, all cultures, all social classes. Where they learned to interact with many different traditions and behaviours.

Being near to home was also a factor as I feel being part of the local community is important. Run down buildings didn't matter one jot to me.

Those were my priorities and I chose the school that fit best with those priorities (and others that I haven't listed). However when people have asked why I chose that school my answers have varied from an answer even fuller than the one above to a simple "it was easiest" depending on how much time I had, whether I really fancied a chat (or whether I felt I was being asked to justify myself) and whether I felt it was any if that person's business. Just because people give you a short basic answer doesn't mean they have put no thought into it, it just means that they don't feel the need to justify their choices to you.

And when I get to the stage where I don't have to do the school run again I'll probably say hurray on Facebook. It doesn't mean that if it was needed I wouldn't drive to the ends of the earth for my DC.

OP - what is the school's RE curriculum? Do they teach about any other religions? Will the children receive any sex and relationships education?

[confused

but I only go to church when the kids need to go

That would be never then, surely...

OP = worst advert for catholic schools ever.

I'm a teacher. I've worked in local schools that have been judged as outstanding, and at schools that have been judged as satisfactory. Guess which one I decided to send my own children to? Not a chance in hell that I would have sent them to the outstanding school. The teachers were constantly stressed and on edge. When Ofsted came in, they arranged for some of the children who had behaviour issues to be out of school that day. In the satisfactory school (which in that time, was satisfactory and not another term for notice to improve), there was a much nicer atmosphere. The staff were happier and so were more enthusiastic about their job, they cared more about teaching children the curriculum, rather than just for the SATS (which was what the outstanding school did). Schools that are judged as 'failing' are given more support, more funding and there are more observations done on teachers. Schools can change in an instant as well. Just because it is outstanding now doesn't mean it will be in three years time, and vice versa. A local secondary school was failing. A super head was put in place and it is now one of the most sought after schools in the city, and the waiting lists are ridiculous. Ofsted generally means very little in the grand scheme of things.

coffee you sound just like my mum. People where I grew up clamour to send their children to one particular school that has always had great academic results. Parents are generally lawyers or doctors (because nobody else can afford to buy a house within catchment). The ethos of the school is horrible though. There's little support for special needs, no focus on the arts or sports. The kids are just hothouses for academic success. She always said it was the last school she'd want her children going to.

As it was we had a choice of 3. I chose one 4.5 miles away with a very wide catchment area, my sister 3. We both got very rounded educations.

That is exactly it SouperSal. The outstanding school used to tell prospective parents with SEN children that the other school was better suited for their needs and talk about how good it was with behaviour and SEN in an attempt to stop them applying for the school. It was really backhanded and terrible behaviour, but they shot themselves in the foot really. I would never ever go on an Ofsted report for a school, and always advise my non-teacher friends who are looking at schools to ignore them.

I find your post incredibly patronising.

We chose DS's school based on the fact that:

a it is close and therefore he doesn't need to rely on mummy or daddy to drive him there

b it is a very average school, but will never improve if parents who care about their children's education only"cherry-pick" the best schools for their little darlings. Not all parents have the luxury of a car.

c I am opposed to faith schools full stop. All schools should be secular IMO

d DS will mix with all sorts of different people - a bit like real life if you like.

So well done you for putting so much thought and effort in. If only we could all have done that.

MN is full of people who are so politically correct but I would wonder the same myself. Personally, I wouldn't send my child to a failing school (have done it before, it's not pretty) because why give them added obstacles to learning? I also believe that on the whole Ofsted reports are relatively reliable. Sure, if they've failed on paperwork and form filling I might overlook it but if the teaching and behaviour is poor then who am I, an outsider, to decide that's not true? My experience with a failing school isn't that loads of money is thrown at it and it all becomes fine very quickly.

What actually happens is that there is a period of unrest when lots of people move their children. A new head comes in and makes necessary changes, the good teachers then resign and move somewhere without such issues, the poor teachers stay because they can't get a job elsewhere and it's then hard to recruit good teachers because a failing school is rarely a first choice post for experienced high performing teachers.

Eventually it may turn but it takes time. I wouldn't choose one. I think Requires Improvment is different and the pluses may outweigh the negatives but an Inadequate school, never.

Maybe the OP needs to come back and tell us whether all the schools she finds diabolical do have "Inadequate" Ofsted ratings.

Yes, the schools I'm talking about are all rated Inadequate bu Ofsted.