Hi Keyfindings. This is a tough one. I will give you my reasoning for what we decided with dd.
My dd is the same age as yours and we have opted for her to stay in her small school. Hers is private and the A level options are limited but they have the courses she’d like to do. She has been offered a place in 2 other larger schools, one private and one state. I was hoping to get her back into state, partly for cost and partly to get her out of her comfort zone.
We took her out of state school in year 9 as she wasn’t coping and I was hoping a few years in a protected environment would help her to gain resilience. However she developed anorexia in year 11 and needs the familiarity and stability especially as it looks as though she may have pretty much the full monty of anorexia, ARFID, autism and PDA. She therefore needs very few food choices to be able to eat. So in her current school they either eat food from the canteen or go to the coop next door to buy lunch whereas in the bigger schools there is more choice and therefore more ways to confuse her.
As for friends, she isn’t really great friends with any of the girls, who decided to stay. She has become irritated by some of girls she used to hang out with (only one is staying) and all of the other girls she used to hang out with at school are leaving. I hope this irritation will settle as it is part of her ED. She is also friendly with a couple of the other girls, who are staying but they’re different from her so she’s not likely to hang out with them. She is, however, really good friends with a couple of the boys and has plans to hang out with them. I think she finds the boys less complicated and she can’t handle complexity right now, which is why she’s withdrawn from some of her female friends.
As for your dd, I see she’s been excluded from a group of girls. I understand your dd will have been really hurt. I had similar happen to me when my dad was ill and died, at the same age as our dds. Looking at things from their perspective, it will have been hard for them to deal with my dad’s death and your dd’s illness and sometimes it is easier to just withdraw. Adults also withdraw from tough situations so it’s unsurprising children do too. I know from my personal experience being left behind / excluded takes a massive toll on your mental health. However, your dd does have friends, who stuck by her. Idk if you have explained any of this to your dd as it possibly isn’t personal rather they just don’t have the cognitive ability, maturity and experience to handle her ED so they found it easier to carry on their lives without her.
As you say, things might change for your dd with these girls. She has a couple of good friends, who are sticking by her and I presume looking after her to the best of their ability. For my dd, friends like this have been brilliant and they are the ones, who helped me to get dd eating again when she had 2 weeks of extreme starvation, and have taken her out to eat, kept her going, one even took dd on holiday with her (the family are very experienced with ED). Unfortunately she isn’t at school with any of them but good friends in my book are invaluable.
For my dd changing schools even to the much larger and yes, much more organised private school wouldn’t suit her at all. Moreover the school is all girls and this is the last thing she needs right now. The other option, the state school is just too large and overwhelming for her. We also looked at an FE college but dd wasn’t comfortable at all.
I do understand what you’re saying about a fresh start. For my dd, it’s a no brainer and much as I thought going to a different school would broaden her horizons, this wouldn’t be right for her. She needs the familiarity to recover and her current school is like an old shoe, which fits.
Changing schools at this difficult time will be tough. I actually did that at exactly the same age. I knew no one. And I definitely didn’t blossom. I made a poor choice. But didn’t have the parental support or enough awareness to understand I needed to leave that school. As a result of my experiences I don’t keep in contact with anyone from either school.
You sound much more supportive and if your dd makes a choice to go to the larger school and it is the wrong one, there is often leeway to change schools up until Christmas. So if your dd thinks she’s made a mistake she will perhaps be able to change during this time. From my personal experience and that of my dd I would say stay with what you know. But idk if this is right for your dd. And at the end of the day, even if she stays for a while or even a year and realises she is ready for the larger school, I imagine it would still be possible to change to the other school and do 3 years of 6th form. This for me would be a question to ask them or perhaps the LEA. Idk how it works.