To ask you honestly how good your local state school is

[bliepenco]

Just that really. I’ve heard so many bad things about state. If you are totally honest, is there violence, disruption etc? What do your kids say about their days? I’m worried about Dd starting school as have no understanding of the state sector (not from the uk) and have read some bleak things about it!

What do you mean by the 'quality of the children not very good'? You say there is no bullying so what effect are these 'poor quality' children having on your children?

I'm not sure how children can be 'poor quality'. That statement seems unkind and judgemental.

We moved house when the kids were small, from next to the best school in the town, to a catchment for the worst! We wanted a nicer house and didn't think forward enough. We went private.

We live in a nice area, all the schools are fairly good to be honest. The primary schools here are mostly very good and most of the high schools are above national average academically.

Having said that they still struggle with lack of funding, high teacher turnover and some poor student behaviour in classes. These are issues in virtually all schools though. I think the only way the private schools deal with behaviour better is that they can easily remove poor behavior students. We had one transfered to our school from the local private as they wouldn't tolerate him anymore.

Ours was rated “good” but the class my daughter was in had a lot of children with additional needs of which the school was very supportive and nurturing. Unfortunately these children were very disruptive and at times violent, my daughter was hit by a child and was told “it’s ok” it wasn’t. We didn’t want her school years to be spent with these kids so we moved her to an independent school. It seems a low bar when reception kids are told being assaulted in their classroom is ok. If she had been in a different year group with a different set of peers we likely wouldn’t have moved her but I’m not tolerating violence in the classroom.

Our local state school is great, DS has really flourished there and DD is settling into Y7 well.

However there are other state schools in the same town which really aren't great.

I moved to this part of town when my DC were small as I knew there was a selection of good schools here.

If are able to do so, then it's very normal for families to move to be near good schools rather than just sending their DC to the local school by default.

How old is your DD?

Have you done any research on your local schools? You need to look at their OFSTED reports, ask for opinions from local parents, and understand the admissions criteria well so you know which schools your child has a chance of actually getting into. Look at "admissions" on your council website for lots of information about local schools, admissions criteria etc.

Priority is usually done by distance (after siblings, looked after children etc) but there are often also catchment areas (or "community areas" as our council calls them) so you need to check which schools are in your catchment area.

You give a list of preferences for the school, a long time in advance (in our area we do it the October before the new school year I think). Typically you get 3 choices but in London you get 6 IIRC.

In most areas, if your first choice is full, you're not penalised for not putting your 2nd choice first when they look at who will get into that school. So put your genuine 1st choice 1st. (But do check how it works in your area.)

Also Kent does a Grammar school system so if you're there, you need to to find out about that.

If you're in Scotland ignore most of what I'm said, there you do simply go to the nearest school, you don't get a choice.

Keep posting here, we can help you make sense of the system!

Good luck 😊

@thepariscrimefiles i answered it already in my previous post. Please read this. Its not about poor. Its the mannerism. I’m sure not all council estate kids like this. My bestfriend is in council house and she and her son is lovely.

Have you read my other post? Yes i’m not british and english its not my first language. I dont have anything agains the financial means. Only the mannerism. Do you think its right to teach your children to steal ice cream in softplay? Or do you think its right to take my son shoes home just because he wants it?.

my bestfriend lives in council estate and she and her son is lovely. I know not all council estate kids are horrible. I know my post gonna trigger some people and i’m sorry for that. Its really good for you to think educations its important.

like you said i’m not from here. So i don't have many experiences about school here. But what i see in my son old school, so many parents swearing with their kids, lots of them do children drop off with bathrobe. I see one or two parents seems not sober enough to take the kids to school. The children also swear a lot and they just year 1. Meanwhile in his school now, i dont see it of that.

regarding ehcp i dont know much about this. I thought he choose to go to school anywhere. So maybe i’m wrong.

Thanks for responding. I just had a problem with the language you used in your earlier post. If you had said poorly or badly behaved children rather than poor quality children, your post would have been OK.

We had an excellent infant and junior schools and then on to all girls grammar school. All Ofsted outstanding. House prices certainly reflect it though and we are very lucky we were able to choose to live near these schools. Outside of the state grammar school the state secondary school for this area is good-ish depending who you ask. But absolutely huge so a real mix of kids and behaviour, some good, some utterly feral. The school as a result is run on strict sanctions and rules and doesn’t suit everyone. Lots of people leave but they always have a waiting list to replace them. There are pockets of violence and bullying there but most large secondary schools with a wide demographic will have that. I don’t see our DD thriving in that sort of environment. Fortunately we had another option as she is quite academic and wanted to try for grammar school which is a calmer environment and fairly low risk for violence.

Primary is excellent - actually all the primary schools in our area are very good. Secondary is a different matter, 2 failing schools within walking distance, wouldn't get into ones in the next town, not sure what well do apart from hope for a significant improvement!

Excellent primary and secondary options near me. All state schools.

I thought our schools were good, the kids seemed happy, no bullying, plenty of teacher support etc... They both ended up with first class honours...

Dd 22 is doing teacher training and on a placement... it is a "posh" Mumsnet leafy suburb school and says daily how much nicer it is. How good behaviour is simply the expected norm, how the kids all engage with learning.

Are you in Cornwall? I am and could have written this

@Femme2804 ok I understand that and your experience I can totally relate to. It was just the way it came across in your first point as you said there was no bullying but the quality of children wasn't good. I do agree that unfortunately some parents do have that attitude and those behaviours would put me off too. It is true that many children in affluent areas or excellent catchments will have different attitudes towards education because parents have paid into it in some way or another. However, I have seen kids from council estates in our areas, many migrant kids whose parents are pushing for the Slough grammars and many go there. They do this despite some challenges of influences and attitudes around them.

Wow thanks for the replies!

we are living rurally at the moment. I don’t know how to navigate the system, our child is 3 in January so a bit of time to think about it. The area we live in is mixed really, some very nice houses but also some run down. I guess like anywhere.

I live in a small town with one secondary school in a very mixed catchment. There are groups of kids who are not interested in learning, but my DC were not affected by their presence; those who wanted to work hard and succeed were supported to do so. There was a good balance between discipline and common sense, including in the uniform policy. 6th form was excellent. No school is perfect; our nearest private school has had major issues with drugs and bullying, far worse than our state school.

Scotland

local primary is lovely with the dedication and hard work of the staff evident. No real behaviour problems.

Only comprehensive available at secondary. None of our council areas high schools get especially good results, and looking at our catchment school the exam results are falling year on year apart from a very upward blip during Covid 🧐. People still talk about it as though it is a significantly better school than the adjacent one that everyone has always looked down on but results are now pretty similar although possibly behaviour is still an issue at the other school.

Behaviour is an unaddressed problem in Scotland as expulsion has been removed as a viable option without any resources to deal with these pupils staying in schools.

Our primary school was great, I’m not sure that we appreciated quite how good it was at the time.

However, this thread is making me feel really sad because it makes me realise quite how bad our catchment secondary is - academics, behaviour, pastoral, extracurricular. It was a good and popular school when we applied for my oldest to go there 5 years ago, but has gone further and further down hill since then, and become the one that nobody wants to go to. We were in denial for a long time but had to move them to private, as no other option was available when it went badly wrong for them last year. Youngest is still there, we had no option to send them anywhere else because out of catchment schools were all oversubscribed for catchment children, but are planning to move them to private once oldest has finished because we can’t afford two at once.

The inequalities between state and private schools is being discussed a lot at the moment but in reality the gap between different state schools seems far greater to me.

Primary - my DCs and the others closest to me are all good.

Secondary - mixed bunch in my city, some excellent, some OK, 2 have a bad reputation.

There are a few children who are disruptive or have behavioural issues in my child's class at primary school.
It's a good school though and I don't think children should be shielded from other sorts of children and they need to learn how to deal with difficult people, assuming the badly behaved ones are in the minority and not overruling the teacher!

Like many others primary excellent, secondary absolutely dreadful and we are not in a grammar area before anyone suggests that as an alternative to private.

OK, so your DD will be starting school in September 2026, when she's 4.

You will need to apply for the school you want (and your back up choices) by the primary applications deadline. This deadline is set by the Government and will likely be mid-January 2026. (This year it's Jan 15).

That might seem like a long way away, but you need to start looking at schools now, ideally.

Best case scenario - you find out a bit about your local schools and know you're happy to send her to a local school.

Not ideal scenario - you find out your local schools are awful and decide you need to move. If you need to do this, you only have a year and a couple of months to work out where you want to move to, move house. You need your name on a doucment like your council tax bill to prove residence for the school.

Worst case scenario - you don't look at schools till next year, you realise you don't like any of them but there's not enough time to move.

It's worth finding out now, also, if there is a nursery attached to the school(s) you like, and if DC going there get priority. (It varies from school to school. At the one my DC went to, it made no difference if your DC went to the school nursery, but at some it does push you up the priority list).

If I was you, this is what I'd do:

1. Find out about how the admission process works generally: see this Government page for this year's admissions: https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2024/01/12/primary-school-admissions-2024-apply-deadline/

1. Find the admissions page on your local council website. Find your local council website using your postcode here: https://www.gov.uk/find-local-council

1. Read the admissions section. Work our what schools your address is "in catchment" for. (Or they may call it "community area" or similar).

1. Look at the schools closest to you (within catchment) and read the school Ofsted Report. https://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/ (Ofsted reports won't tell you everything about a school, of course, but it will give you a good idea of what you're dealing with.)

1. Post your local area (under a different name if you want to remain anon) and ask Mumsnetters what the schools in that area are like.

1. Look at the websites of your local schools and see if they have open evenings coming up. Schools will be doing their open evenings around now, probably. You don't need to wait till next year to you along. If there's a possibility you might move, I'd go this year if possible (that's what we did).

We were convinced we wanted one school "on paper" but when we visited we found the ethos of each our two local schools was very different and one suited our values much better than the other. Totally subjective and not something we could get from a report.

Good luck!

First primary was terrible (had outstanding Ofsted though!). I think it was just a new school and poorly led. Moved DCs in yr 1&2 to another state primary. That was a brilliant school! DCs did v well there, were happy, teachers were v nice, supportive, children made good academic progress, hardly any bullying or anything on the school that I was aware of, school seemed like a happy place where children could make great friendships and learn well.

Now they r at secondary (massive 8 form entry comprehensive) and it's a fantastic place. Obviously the class sizes are bigger than you'd want in an ideal world. But, the majority of kids that go there are nice enough. Teachers on the whole are pretty good. The school has some good extra curricular activities on offer, school trips are fab, GCSE grades are all v positive (lots of grade 7 to 9s, and good progress scores and improvements for those further down the grade structure, high pass rate at GCSE), parents generally only have good things to say about it, hardly any bullying as far as I can tell, children come home happy every day, the kids seem to think it's cool to work hard, like maths etc.., do well academically, school seems caring & nurturing, teachers seem generally happy and enthusiastic, communication with parents is good. Can't fault it really (so far!)

I have one at primary and one at secondary. The primary school is excellent, as was the one we were at before we moved. Lovely schools with really supportive staff, everyone knows everyone, good ethos, just a really caring happy place.

Eldest in secondary and there are issues like every school. Some fights, some truancy, some kids just being little shits. But this is the real world. Mine does absolutely great and hasn’t had any issues. She sticks with her friends and stays out of the drama. It’s been nothing but positive for her.

For comparison, Dh and I both went to private (boarding) schools, Dh in the uk and me abroad. There was still a good deal of bullying, there were fights, drugs, Dh dealt with horrible hazing. But there was very little intervention because the school had strong motivation not to upset certain parents perceived to be key donors to the school coffers. 🙄