How much easier my life would be if I just sent my DD to the local state primary

[abgah]

At the moment she's at a private primary school.

The local state primary in my village is within walking distance.. it has an ofsted ' good ' rating.

The class size is of course 30 children per class. In DDs private primary, there are 15 children per class.

We made the decision to send her to private school because we thought she'd massively benefit from smaller class size and will enjoy better facilities.

But it's such a stress to send her there, mainly because it's 30 minutes away due to traffic really. I leave the house before 8 and I'm not back until after 9 in the mornings and the same in the evenings. It's absolutely exhausting.

I have recently started a job working from the office and getting back to pick her up is very stressful. My every day is massively stressful. I pay someone to drop her off on the mornings I go to work in the office but I do all the pickups.

It's just a huge stress but she's really thriving and loves her school so much. This is not even considering the huge financial burden it is on us to send her there.

I just keep going past the local primary school and thinking, is this going to be something I look back on and regret ? It's such a huge stress on us. I hope it will be worth it.

She goes to one of the through schools and we chose it for that reason, so she can stay on for secondary school more easily.

Are any parents in similar positions or have been in similar positions ? We really are just trying to do the best for her, no matter what the sacrifice. Like all parents are.

Is there not a minibus service she can go on?

But OP’s concern is stress around fitting in working hours with pickups, stress of being in traffic 2 hours a day several days a week and loss of time with her kid(s). Spare cash won’t fix those things.

100% I would move her to your local primary school. She doesn't sound as if she has any extra needs just that she's a regular 5 year old. I would also do it before your second child starts.
She will benefit from having a less stressed mum, less time spent in the car and of course she will benefit from her parents having more financial freedom.
You can always pay for a private tutor if your concerned about anything academically.
Go and hsve a look around, they will help upu make your mind up.

If we had the money for private,I'd definitely of sent my kids .
But I would of looked at the local secondary schools that the local primary feed in to .
Near me ,there was one school I would never send my kids to and one I would happily.
So basically if the local secondary is a good school ,I'd send her to the local primary that feeds in to it
If the local secondary isn't a good school ,I'd not.
Unless of course you think you might move by the time she's at secondary,then I'd probably leave her be

If you already pay someone to drop in the morning will this not have to continue whichever school she attends? Also the state school will finish at 3pm (or close to that) how will you be back from work to collect?

So you’ve got 7 more years of hell driving her to and from.

Switch to the state primary and save up for private secondary should that be the better option. Pay for tutoring if you need to.

Quality of life is just as important as class size - spending so long in the car everyday sounds miserable for both of you, and will leave you run ragged and shorter with her.

I don’t really get why people just say that “you can always pay for a tutor to supplement state” using cash saved from not paying school fees.

Surely it’s a big deal to take up a child’s precious free time outside school with extra study, and for them to be learning in a way that’s not integrated with their school curriculum? Delivered by someone who has no ability to discuss their overall progress and wellbeing with their other teachers?

Against a a backdrop of “if you don’t do this you won’t get into x school”. Horrible stress for a kid. I think that having a tutor reduces “quality of life” more than a long school run!

I think the private school is a red herring, lots of people drive for more than half an hour to do school drop offs/pickups in the way to and from work. Most of them do not have paid help to drive a child to school in the morning, they just bite the bullet as mostly everyone else and do what they need to.

If you think the school is right for her, leave her where she is, you will get used to the driving and the traffic soon. Half an hour in traffic is not exactly something most people would consider changing schools for if the kid is happy and thriving in school. Of course she can do well and thrive in the state school as well, but there will be an adjustment time, some children cope well some don’t. Some may even miss the driving, we did.

If DS and I are so close, it is very much owed to the hours we spent in the car talking, singing and joking when he was young, we certainly missed the 45 minutes drive I did 4 times a day, when he moved to the school across the road, which despite being classed as “good” was shite compared to the private school and also to the next 3 state schools he attended, which were outstanding in every way.

So… forget about the driving, the primary consideration is finding the right school for your child (note I said “right for”, not the best, not the private, not the expensive one but just the one that fits the needs of your child better).

Put her on the waiting list for the local one.

Both the privates we sent ours to were all through, like yours.
Of those kids that stayed all the way through in our first school they struggled to make friends when at Uni. Lots of drop outs.
Its good to switch things around a bit. They learn to meet new people.
Ours to three different schools in the end
State infants for a few years
We moved house so moved them to private preprep and prep ( all through school so they could have stayed there ) however
We moved them to another private for senior years ( mainly because there were more boarders and the facilities were better for that )
However it turned out to have a secondary benefit in that they made a whole new set of friends again and subsequently now find it very easy to make friends unlike their school friends from the first private.

In terms of travel and work
It was exhausting dropping off and picking up three kids often at different times. We’d have to hang around for ages if one or more had activities,
Thats the choice we made though and it’s not for ever. Once they got older they could stay at the school for dinner if one ( or more ) of them had an activity so we could at least pick them up at the same time. It also meant we could actually work as the school days are longer and school opens earlier and later.

30 mins in traffic one way is normal for most people I know. It's hardly stressful.

But I wouldn't put my child in private primary when there's a perfectly good state school on the door step.

Can you do this for the next thirteen years?

You mentioned kids, do you have another that you are going to pay for?

Okay, so move school. This is such a no-brainer.

Agree
Or just move house, if possible
We did. People do

I was a school teacher for over 30 years (20 years in state schools, then 15 years in the independent sector) and now work as a private tutor so I’ve read and written thousands of reports over the years. While I am in favour of reporting children’s progress in a positive way, I get very frustrated by the amount of ambiguous ‘teacherspeak’ used in some school reports.

In my experience, when a school report includes a reference to a child having “support” for something, this should usually be interpreted as the child needs help to do something most of their peers already do independently. Likewise, the phrase, “She is beginning to…,” is teacherspeak for ‘she is not yet doing something consistently that we expect most children this age to do.’ Therefore, assuming your child’s teacher is appropriately qualified and experienced, I think you are right to trust your instinct that your dd may not yet be focusing her attention appropriately, or listening to and following the instructions one might expect for her age. Having said that, she is very young and I believe many teachers expect far too much compliance with formal learning from reception children.

Regarding your OP about the horrid commute, given your DD is happy and settled and receiving the support she needs, I would definitely consider moving nearer the school as the first option, followed by finding a way to do less dropping off and picking up yourself by using a nanny, carshare or school minibus.

Many other posters have suggested you move her to the local state primary, then look at private options for secondary. I don’t know where you are located but in my local area (Cambridge) there are several problems with doing this. Firstly, unlike children in independent prep schools, children in state schools do not receive any help or support at school preparing for entrance exams to independent senior schools (which often include verbal reasoning, nonverbal reasoning, interviews and observed group tasks as well as the more traditional English and Maths tests). In my experience, state school pupils are less likely to have the confidence and extended vocabulary they need to do well in entrance tests.

Obviously, you can employ a private tutor to help with entrance preparation, but that often requires you to ferry DD to and from tuition and/or help with extra homework, which is an additional burden after a busy day at work. Furthermore, if they are happy with a group of friends in the local state primary, many children don’t want to go to a different senior school to their friends and resist the parent’s aims and tutor’s help preparing them for entrance exams because of this.

If your DD’s current school offer a passageway right through to 18, it would be a huge gamble to withdraw her now and hope she can get a place at an independent senior school in years to come. I would only consider moving her now if the local state primary feeds to an outstanding state secondary school that you would be happy for her to attend in years to come. Hence my advice to reduce your commuting stress by trying to move nearer her current school or lessen your commute somehow.

I think the first question is, does the school have a place for your child? Close to me you would be on a waiting list for months, possibly years.

What about your younger child? Will they go to the same school if you stay in private?

Will be easier to get the second into the local school if you have a child already in the school.

Unless your State option is dire I really see no point on Private Primary.
Mine went to a large 3 class entry and had a good experience and integrated into Private Secondary fine.
I would say though that now she's there it might be hard to move her.

I'm anti private school anyway, so I might be biased - but sounds like you want to move her, so do it!

Though equally I personally wouldn't want to move my daughter from school she was happy and thriving at.

@Nenen im not a teacher but I also read the report like you describe..

That, coupled with parents evening at nursery last year where they said she was struggling with sharing, turn taking etc and at the end I asked ' ok so I understand the areas of improvement and then said, but in general you don't have serious concerns about her ? ' and the teachers said , ' let's wait and see when we put more support in place and see if that helps '...

That was last year but still.

Our school ended up with 63. They did two classes of thirty and three stayed in nursery. They didn't have the funds for a third class

But that, there and back twice daily is 2 hours travelling to school.

+work +work commute, that’s a lot of travel time and I can see how this would cause stress

Yeah, still normal for most people I know wher3 our schools are a 30 min commute.

Have you considered cycling? Like you, we passed on the excellent local primary a 5-minute walk away in favour of a girls' prep school which is 6 minutes' drive at most times, or 30 minutes during the hideous school run.

We've bought an e-bike with seating for two (our youngest goes to nursery) so we can get to nursery, school and back in less than half the time it would take in a car. Nothing makes me feel more smug than cruising past a long queue of idle cars! More and more parents at our school are adopting e-bikes in order to avoid the traffic.

I do this every morning and then catch the train to work at my full time job!

If it were a laborious nightmare making me hate life, I would definitely just move them to the local primary. Private has its benefits, but life is too short to waste hundreds of hours fuming in a car.

If you’re back in the office how would you manage drop offs and pick ups at the local state primary? The school day could well be shorter?

I'm not sure why it's massively stressful due to the fact that someone else takes her in the mornings. So it's just pick up every day. Can't you put her into after-school provision if you get stuck in traffic? Can't you leave work earlier in case of extra traffic?