to ask how important primary school is? Would it be okay to leave him at this school?

[AmberrrS]

DS is in Reception, we aren't in a particularly rich area... There's a variety of different houses, but we purchased a new one. It's lovely and the perfect house (BTW we hadn't even conceived DS at this point, so didn't even think of schools). However, there's 3 bloody prep schools! That are our closest schools. There is literally no schools in our catchment. We still put down all the good schools that were close by, even though they were out of catchment. We didn't get any instead they gave us the closest catchment and only catchment school - it's 8 miles away. It's awful. I thought I'd give it a go, just to see as I know not all schools are what OFSTED say. He doesn't like it... He comes home crying every single afternoon he refuses to let go of me. He sits hugging the TA all day, who is lovely, but has no issue telling me that that's the only thing he has done. She says it's okay because he was upset, which it's nice to know she cares, but I feel like it's feeding DS's sadness of you see what I mean? At breaktime he gets knocked over by older children (they don't have a separate playground) and has been pushed off the slide, but his class teacher said that it was because he has been told he isn't allowed on it, as only yr 1 + is allowed well why on earth let them be around it then! He's 4! He doesn't know that he can't go on it and if he does it's acceptable for older kids to push him

Sometimes the children get moved to the corridor to 'play' as their classroom needs to be used by a different class, so the children often wander off. DS had accidentally sat in a yr 1 lesson due to him not getting out the classroom quick enough before the yr 1 class went in.

It's a shambles. He only started on the 1st!

It's rated inadequate and I agree... Unfortunately we both work, we're not rich, we are both on national average wage, so doing okay and have an income of about £50,000 joined. I just don't know if it's worth looking at the preps... It seems like most of the children around us go to one of the 3. We wouldn't be able to go on holiday (which we do once a year) our mortgage is very high and we have a younger daughter so we need to think about the cost of her going too, so we would be very short of cash. Is it worth it?

Or would you leave him there for a bit longer and see how it goes? It's just quite far too and I literally feel like I'm dumping him at some kind of awful place.

How important is primary school?

Mummy, what doesn't add up? Apparently he doesn't as its catchment. As it does add up, I use the government website.

Seven, I'll look

Don't use the government website, use google and look for the schools in your area that way. does he not get free school transport if the only school that they allocated you with places is 8 miles away?

But it lists all the schools

Well, it's the only catchment school so I assumed it was tough

Where do the children for the outstanding junior school come from? Find out what their feeder school is.

The school doesn't sound great, but I would think very carefully about whether my child's personality and level of emotional development would cause them to find settling in any school very difficult.
The school my dds go to is absolutely wonderful, but there are always a few children in reception who take a good month to settle in.

Re paying: if I had my time again I would home school to y3, then state primary, pay from 11 to 16, and then state sixth form. Home school I already said why. Primary, you can make up at home for the curriculum failures with ease. Formal school to 16 gets them them through all the "tricks" of gcse marking. By a level they're in a good study habit.

Then again if you have a good secondary school then you can save a decent house deposit.

Anyway I just wouldn't pay for primary. It's a house deposit and you could easily teach yourself what they need.

Can you do the prep school until he is old enough for the junior school?

I would wait on moving until you have investigated as to what the secondary schools are like. If the secondary schools are rubbish, might be worth thinking about a move.

As for the religious one--I am very atheist, but if it was one way to remove my child from a harmful school environment, I would do it. How about just going there and seeing what it is like?

Outstanding juniors is interesting. Can you manage fees for both DC just for infants and then transfer them back to state for juniors? What are the admissions criteria? Now is the time to make sure that you will meet them, and / or look seriously into getting DS into the feeder school. It doesn't make sense that the infant school catchment doesn't cover you but he juniors does - that would be very unusual. Who sets the catchments? Are they genuine predetermined catchment areas or simply defined by the admissions distances year on year?

We had this for eldest. We had 5 schools within 1.5 miles, we applied to the 3 nearest but as they were not in our catchment area we didn't get into any. We were allocated our nearest catchment area school 5 miles away. (went to see it from the outside, every window was broken and their was a drug dealer at the school gate). Came home and rang the LEA to enquire about appealing. I was told in no uncertain terms that we had no grounds to appeal and that school was where my dd was going.

Having seen that for primary if the LEA allocate a school that was not one of your choices and is over 2 miles away then they have to provide a taxi. I then agreed that if what he said was true and that was my dd's school I would need a taxi each morning and after a school as the school was over 2 miles from our home.

There was a little bit of bluster and "We will have to get back to you " and the phone call was ended. With in a short time the phone rang. It was our 1 st choice school offerers us a place.

Are you paying/getting him to and from his school. If so look into the rules on travel distance and your LEA sending your dc to a school not of your choosing. At the very least demand a taxi

Our catchment and postcode is strange as it is as though someone drew an elongated lozenge with a small (under 25) houses at one end, lots of fields and a part of a large town at the other end. All same postcode and school catchment zone but around 7 miles apart

as a july baby, i would honestly take him back out, put him back in pre-school and apply to defer him, if not, then find a different school to put in at yr1.

I'd visit all the preps. Ask what the fees and extras and sibling discounts are. Dds fees have hardly gone up in 6 years and longer school day is standard so I don't pay wrap around care. Only 2 weeks more hols than state but onsite summer Hol care. It sounds like private infants then state junior/senior is a real option. Ask schools re childcare vouchers and early years funding. Dds school accepted vouchers until they were legal school age term after 5 - I didn't have to pay real money until then 2 lots of childcare vouchers and early years funding paid the fees. some people do this whilst they wait for a state place to come up only same as them being in nursery.

Your current school isn't your catchment school. It's just that you didn't get any of your choices, and it was the closest school left with any spaces.

Whereabouts are you? City, town, village, rural? There must be more schools around, get on all the waiting lists. How far away is your nearest state primary school? Did it have a defined catchment area?

May, I'm telling you now that it is our catchment school... It just is! It's the only school that is in our catchment area

I would take him out too. There is no upside to persevering and see if he settles, because the school is not local, its organisation and resources are inadequate, and staff attitude is complacent.

Moving is a huge financial decision. Make sure it is possible to get him into the junior as I imagine the feeder infants children will have piority? I would visit the RI Jewish school too it may be better than on paper, if not at least rule it out before going the Prep route.

I would also take him out because for one thing the school is too far away and secondly they do not seem to be kind, which to my mind is the most important thing.

I would get in touch with my MP about the lack of provision of state schools in your area, that is attrocious.

The RI Jewish school may well be a stop gap. You can withdraw him from worship. I don't think Judaism is that far from Christianity. Most schools in the uk are Christian and Christians have a lot in common with Jews. Jews don't actively seek to convert. It would be interesting to know how many non Jewish families there are.

It's expensive and stressful to move house so I wouldn't do that if you love where you live.
Did you say you are on the waiting list for a couple of good, closer infant schools? If you haven't already, I would ring the school office and find out how high up the waiting list you are. Ask them roughly how long you think it will be until you are top of the list. (I did this and was told it would likely be a couple of years as very oversubscribed school - so we decided to pay for prep school).
If you are near the top of the list, I would hold out for that. If not, perhaps consider paying for pre prep as long as you can guarantee a space at the good state junior school. I think realistically on your salary level, paying beyond pre prep would be very hard.
Good luck! The first few years of school are (I believe) the most important, however, if you read and do simple maths with your child at home, you can help a lot.

What do you mean when you say that it's the only school within your catchment area? how are you defining catchment?

Usually in areas with catchments, it's the schools that have a catchment area, not you. They have a list of streets that are considered priority areas and people in those streets come ahead of others in the admission criteria. All the streets in the area would be allocated to one (or sometimes two) schools; there might also be a few schools in the area that don't have specific catchments as they have different admission criteria.

So does your current school have a catchment that gets priority over other streets, and you are in it? And because of strange shaped catchment areas, you are specifically not in the catchments of all the nearer schools? It's a huge distance for a catchment to cover in a non-rural area, but sometimes they are very strange shapes!

It seems odd that you could be in catchment for the Junior school but not the Infant school that it's linked to. Or do you just mean that it's in your borough or something, whereas the infant school is not?

You might check where you are on the waiting list for the non-catchment but better schools that are nearer, because now that term has started, a lot of people might have gone private or left the schools or whatever, and they could have places now - or in the near future. You could always home school for a few months and hope that a place comes up at one of these, because by then, it's more likely that distance will be a determining factor in who gets in.

I'm going by the school's catchment. There's a school that is really close to us, walking distance but we are out of the school's catchment. It was our first choice.

Still not really clear what you mean.

Perhaps you are looking at the distances of people who were offered places last year? Is that what you mean by catchment? That's a very different thing, and it could be that the terminology is what is confusing people here. It might be that you are in a 'black hole' for admissions, not being quite close enough to any schools, which is a really frustrating place to be in.

If that is the case, I'd still stay on the waiting lists of all the closer schools, and hope that someone leaves (for private, or moves away, or is settled at another school and doesn't take their place up if they're higher on the waiting list, etc). And either stay put for the moment, or home school, or go back to nursery until he turns five if the school lets you defer your place even after you've started.

We are not in the area that the school would consider a high priority, so the distance between us and the school and how oversubscribed it is. There's an online thing that lets you see if you're in their catchment area.

Crotchet

Some areas have admissions criteria where priority is given to anyone living in certain streets which are listed (or coloured in on a map). so say that is criteria number 3 (after looked after children & siblings)

The OP would only be considered for a place after all the people living in those streets have been allocated a place even if they live 3 miles away & she lives 1 mile away.