To make my daughter change schools when she doesn't want to ?

[Angstisme]

I have three motivations here

1. She is best friends with a girl who is vile towards her, throws apples at her when she comes to our house to play, lies to get her into trouble, over dominates DD.

Yet she puts up with it day after day, even the child's own mother said I wish one day my DD would turn around and tell her to F* off (which as they are 7 I die but you get the sentiment here). DD has one other child aside of the girl who she's good friends and plays at school with but never outside, so that strikes me they aren't that great friends otherwise the mother would be arranging playdates right ? I'm outting myself a bit here, but she invited 20 kids to her 7th Birthday and 3 turned up, 3 at least had the decency to tell me.

1. We've just had her sats through, she is absolutely average right across the board, fine but her dad and i have 9 A'Levels and 3 degree's between us, I'm wondering what the hell is going wrong, the other school is more academic.

1. Our eldest is moving no matter what, she cannot stand another day in her current school and whilst she is a year above in reading and english she is behind for maths, another friends child failed 11+ because of her maths, I believe the school doesn't do maths well.

Do I just make her move, I really do want to say I am the adult here, I've made my choice you're moving but of course you never want to see your child crying and upset and I believe she'll put us through that for a while, plus if we've got this wrong there's no going back.

Any advice at all ?

ah, so there's nothing actually wrong with the school? just their friends...
in all honesty then, I wouldn't move her. I'd go and speak to the head.
It took me 2 years to move my boys (had to wait a yr so ds2 could move into the juniors with his brother).. and I knew the school was crap... complete crap through and through.
I knew I was doing the right thing
even though it has worked out brilliantly, it has not been easy, for me, or for them.
It's difficult for them to start again with new rules, new teachers, new friendship groups.
Don't take school moving lightly, it is a major deal to the dc's especially if dd2 doesn't respond well to change.

Cornsilk, - They both know they are not allowed to cross the road and as DH, who is watching them the whole time looks down the street he sees the two of them stood at the curb considering crossing the road, X goes into the road, my DD stands watching whilst the other girl calls her over into the road. DH lets his presence be known and child X says I was just trying to stop our DD from crossing the road. Now as DH has watched all this he says to the child do not lie to me I saw the whole thing shall I go and tell your mother ? She looks a bit contrite and says no.
Yesterday at the school fare they are going around the stalls together and my DD wins on the raffle, child X is annoyed she didn't win so she steals a toy from the raffle and hides it in her bag, it's that sort of thing that gets up my nose and just makes me want to keep my child away from her, but at that school she is DD's best friend.

Clary it is a one form entry school and everyone else seems to have made best friends from birth so when we arrived we got the ones that were left over or new to the area too. We've lived here 4 years so still new comers lol

Ingles2, just their friends is too big a part of school for me to leave this any longer for DD1 at least she has literally been ignored for 18 months now. The school know this.
She needs a fresh start and can stay at this new school until she's 18 so she is going.

Scarlet I was hoping everyone would say what you have, it's the tears I'm dreading but i'm 85/90% sure I'm doing the right thing moving them.

The worry is, as it seems to be chiefly a friends issue here, that they may be in an event worse position at a new school?

sorry pressed post too soon.

even worse position - ie they will be the new girls and their new classes will hav ebeen established for years?

I agree with Clary - the friendship thing may or may not be helped by moving schools - it's a gamble really.

It is a gamble you're both right.
The classes aren't that established because it's an old well established boys school which has just started taking girls this year.
I guess my feelings are that yes it's a gamble but if things aren't improved on the friends side then at least we get an improvement on the academic side. Or at least we've given it a shot, the other school don't do maths, science as well as the new one. Plus there are lots of extra cirriculum activities they'd get to try at the new school which aren't available currently, sports, music etc

Is the new school private?

It is but I am not being drawn into the old private v's state thing, I called every state school in the area to check for places before we even visited the private one as it'll mean bread and water for Dh and I

I'm just wondering where you are - being nosey! There's a school like that near me.

Lol well please don't say if you work it out !
Does yours have a red and black uniform ?

No!

I would choose the school you feel is best for your children. I doubt they would ever choose to move to an unknown situation.

However if you have DDs I would think carefully about moving them to a school with significantly more boys than girls. Will there be enough girls in their classes/yr group for them to choose friends? If you think there will be a large influx of girls in the private school it would probably be fine to move your DDs there.

If both your DDs are this unhappy in the current school I think you are making the right decision to move them. Just make sure that you have looked at all the school options available (state and private) before deciding on the next school.

I agree with happywoble. I would think carefully about sending your dds to a school where there are very few girls and where the staff are unused to working with girls. If anything, the problems could be magnified.

sorry - happywomble, obviously.

Happywomble is right - if your girls have difficulties making / maintaining friendships, they will need a much larger pool of girls to have the possibility of being friends with. Also girls friendships and disagreements are notoriously difficult for teachers to deal with and if the staff are not used to them, then they will not find it easy to support your girls if they continue to have difficulties.

I'm sure your girls are delightful, but if friendships are a concern for all of them, I think you should give a bit of thought to why that is and try to deal with those problems, as they are likely to continue whatever school they go to.

Thank you for all the comments, I think half the problem is that they are real tomboys, probably should have said that earlier, that was the main appeal of the boys with some girls school. Mine are the girls who want to play Dr Who and come home head to toe in muck.
Hubby and I have had another chat and we would have died to go to the new school so we're going to move her and then if doesn't work out for any reason she can move at 11 that's only 3 years away it won't kill her.
Thanks again.

Oh well in that case, a boys school might be perfect for them

Don't make her move.

You need to encourage her to stand up to her 'friend'. It is important that she does. It might be that is she gives this girl the bum's rush she might gain some new friends.

SATs results are not a good reason. Just because you and your DH are academic does not mean that your DC will be. And certainly not at 7!

If your eldest hates the school then she should leave, but don't force DD2 to do so. The friendship issues are important but if she wants to stay please let her so she can sort it our for herself.

whether you move her or not, please make sure you do not build any expectations of her on your own and your dh's achievements

my parents have 4 degrees between them and are definitely the intellectual type; it took their eldest child a long time to find the right path in life because of an unspoken assumption that he would be the same; turned out in the end the right thing for him to do was working on a ferry- whereas his two younger siblings went on to become researching academics; he is now both happy and successful, but it took a long time to get there

I am a university teacher; my eldest is definitely g&t; my youngest is in the bottom/next to bottom set, not because the school has failed him, but simply because he is a different person; wouldn't be at all surprised if she ends up doing a PhD and he does something vocational- I'll be equally proud of them both

it does seem as if you are projecting your own wishes onto your dds; "we would have died to go to the new school" rings alarm bells with me,as it does sound as if you think your dd ought to want exactly the same things as you would

Of course you can take the decision to move your child to a different school - I don't think that at primary level children are in any way qualified to make a judgement about their education. That is the parents' responsibility entirely.

I can speak from experience as I attended 5 different primary schools - my parents were always moving.

It was horrible feeling left out as all the other kids had known each other since nursery and had shared experiences and memories. It was also disappointing to get used to a school, make friends and start feeling comfortable there, only to be moved on again after a few terms. I don't feel that I really 'belonged' to any of the schools. I went over the same topics twice, and completely missed out on others, as each school's curriculum wasn't necessarily in sync with the next.

As an adult, I rarely stay in a job for longer than a year, and the longest I have ever stayed in one job is 18 months. I also move house a lot - not sure if any of this is connected to my schooling.

On the plus side, I do think I am less shy, more adaptable and better at making new friends than I would have been if I'd stayed in one school.

With respect mama we aren't talking about 5 moves it's one and if all goes well they could stay until they are 18 years old, so that would then be the same amount of schools as the rest of the children in the UK.
Personally when I look around at people who have lived in one area all their lives attended the local school themselves and have never moved more than 10 miles from their family home (a lot people around here) I feel rather sorry for them and that really isn't what I'd want for my children either.

It sounds like you've already made your decision and fwiw I think it's the right one. I have changed my kids' schools for various reasons and I have never regretted it - I made the decision I needed to make at the time; it's never someting you do lightly. I always asked for opinions, but made it very clear that the grown ups made the ultimate decision.

As others have said, don't get too hung up on academic parents = academic kids. DH and I have lots of pieces of paper between us so I just assumed my kids would sail through school. Bit of a shock to the system when the fist two turned out to be dyslexic I now really focus on the things that THEY are good at rather than what I would like them to be good at.