Who here has moved their DC in Y6 in order to get into a specific secondary school?

[eatsleepyogarepeat]

What was it like for your DC? Were they happy about it? Do you regret it?

I’m considering it for my DC but they are concerned regarding making new friends and settling in somewhere new.

Any experiences?

Is this because the secondary offers priority places to children from that school?
(Don't get caught by people referring to it as a feeder school if they just mean kids usually go on from there to a certain school. it has to be in the admissions criteria.)

Tricky call, especially after all the disruption we've had in the last year.

We moved house between y5 and y6 to get a specific school, but the child stayed in his usual school, and we did a longer school run every day.
Completely worth it.

The secondary has admissions criteria that it is fed by a particular set of primaries. Any unfolded spaces after that go to other applicants I believe.

It’s a really good school. My thinking is that DC would make new friends and then move up to Y7 with the majority of those friends?

@LostInTime unfortunately moving isn’t an option for us

Sorry, I took "moving" in your OP to mean moving house rather than moving schools.

Is there space in the new school?

Roughly 6 children joined DS's school in year 6. All made friends v easily and yes they moved because the primary school is listed in admission criteria for the secondary school.

Not us, but it was very common at the DC's old junior school (it was a feeder school for the well regarded local secondary, which some years you couldn't get into unless you were in catchment+attending feeder).

My DD made close friends with 2 such girls that joined the school in Year 6, so I would say they settled down really easily. She wasn't the only one to be "bored" with previous friends and relish getting to know new people. Plus the new girls stayed in touch with old friends, although this did take a certain amount of facilitation on their parents' part.

I imagine it does depend on the sort of school you are moving to though. DC's school was 4 form entry, with high mobility and shuffled the classes every year, so the children were all used to change and new people. If you were joining a 1 form entry school where everyone had known each other since birth I imagine it would be rather different!

We did. We moved DS part way through YR6 and moved house too. All went well and DS made a nice set of friends quite quickly. No regrets.