to ask your help in choosing a secondary...

[Partidgeinpeartree]

well, at least ask for some unbiased opinions...

We live in the suburbs of a big city. The following secondary schools we currently consider as options (will try to be neutral here). All offer more or less the same curriculum. Kids from my daughters primary will divide between school 1 and 2 mostly.
1 the local secondary: Nearby. Mostly attended by ´normal´ people from the area. Buildings are in need of maintenance. Often teachers may be absent. Small, so personal approach possible. Not known for being very academic but if you are good you will sail through to a good university.

1. The fancy secondary in the big city: Would require quite some commuting. Attended by the fancier people from our region. Bigger. Has name to be very strict and if you are a weaker student you are unlikely to finish there. Has excellent academic reputation.

3.The international school: Available to us because of my job. Some commuting required. Huge, so unlikely to get a lot of personal attention. Attended by expat-kids. Lots of language teaching. Quite inclusive, most students that start make it until the end. Has ok academic reputation.

The difficulty is that kid 1 appears now very bright and should be able to handle everything. Kid 2 less so for the moment. Schools 1 and 2 have a lottery system in place, so you cannot be certain of a place until last moment. We consider ourselves not ´fancy´ but we are also expats so the locals do not entirely see us as ´normal´ either (if that makes sense). What would you take for your kid and why?

1. Less stress for kids; closer; more likely to make friends locally / attend after school clubs etc.

Firstly there is absolutely no need to send your kids to the same secondary. My 3 go to 3 different schools.

Secondly there is no way you can tell. The schools my 3 have gone to have all been different to what I thought when I sent them. Plus they changed a lot over the years they attended.

Thirdly it doesn’t matter. One of my DC went to one of the top performing grammar schools in the country. The other went to the local not brilliant comprehensive. They both got identical GCSE results.

Because the thing that matters is your parenting not the school.

Ugh that’s a tough one. They all sound like good options though. I think unless your child is likely to be in the top half of the class at the fancy school (ie quite gifted) I’d send them to 1 or 3. It’s much better for confidence / leadership / life skills etc to be near the top of an average class in an average school, than to be average or below in a very academic school.

The people I’ve known who went to international schools spoke very highly of them and are now trilingual which opens up a lot of career options. Have a chat with your child as well and see what they think eg are they intimidated or excited by the size of the international school? As you’re expats will they fit in better at the international school? Etc etc.

Try not to overthink it. So much depends on who ends up in their class etc.

(I wouldn’t send the kids to different schools though. I know adults who have such a chip on their shoulder about not going to a grammar like their sibling and it really harmed their family relationship one being at the ‘clever’ school and one not...)