How sensible is it to choose a primary school other than......

[Normsnockers]

... the one which is 2 minutes walk from our front door ?

Background to this is that we live extremely close to a local primary school which does not perform at all well in the league tables and more importantly frequently advertises that it has vacancies in all year classes plus from talking to neighbours it appears it has a reputation for not tackling bullying. I know 2 mothers who are not happy that their kids are there but cannot manage to transport them anywhere else that has a vacancy due to working patterns/ lack of transport.

We live on the edge of a city and I have identified a villagey type primary school which also has vacancies but this appears to be from the current local demographics (shortage of local babies for a few years now) and the fact that it was known as a backwards village school until a few years ago. It has leapt up the league tables recently and moreover I liked the feel of it and what I saw when I looked round. The head told me that they are proud of their stance on bullying and he hopes to improve further on their recent educational results improvements.

He said that if we really felt we could commit to the journey twice each day he could see no reason why ds shouldn't be accepted when we fill in our forms in November/December.

The trip will take about 20 mins one-way, 40 mins round-trip.

It is not on my way to work and I am expecting a baby in September who will probably be at a nursery close to work ,7 hours a day, by the time ds starts school in September 2007.

Do many parents go for this amount of morning and evening drop off/pick up routine/travel time in order to get what they perceive to be a better educational environment for their kids ?

Am I being unrealistic and setting myself up for a commuting/transporting burnout after a few months ?

My dh is either away too early in the morning and back too late in the evening or working away during the week and cannot share the transporting so I will be doing all of the drop off/pick-ups unless I get hired help who I trust to be responsible for driving with my ds on board.

Sorry this is a bit long but I would value the experience of other parents doing school runs as to the trade off between "on the doorstep convenience" and possibly "better schooling with a lot of daily parental effort".

Usually i would say there is a lot to say for proximity when you are balancing a tired 5 year old , a baby and a job. however, 20 minutes is no more than many people's average daily trip to school, and in your situation I would say go for it. Above say 30 - 40 minutes too much imo unless truly dire.

god, I have realised how lucky we are that our move came off, we got a place in the local school and our walk to it will take literally 2 minutes....I really will appreciate this when I think of some people's journeys to and fro in cars with fractious babies in tow....

We have a 20 min trip to school and it is a royal pain in the backside and I would rather she could walk to school, nip to a friends house for tea and all those lovely fantasies we conjur up when thinking about it. In reality everyone drives up to the gates, collect the children and disappears so she really could be at school anywhere.
Go for the one you feel most comfortable with.

Norms - I'd also think about what the Head said at your lovely village school - 'he saw no reason why you wouldn't be accepted...'. I know all Heads aren't as devious as some of the ones round here, but I've found that some Heads feel it's in their interests to encourage more applicants than they can place - so give parents perhaps undue reassurance that their children will get a place. Do some more research if you can about what both schools are really like, but also about likely pressure for places - round here, 2007 intake has higher 'birth rate' than 2006... Our Council education department gave my dh some pretty good information/advice (much to my surprise!)

I'm going 1.5 miles out of front door to a village school, mostly due to its size - its small :)
Yhe nearest school is HUGE adn not great

Lots of food for thought, thanks to everyone who has contributed so far.

To answer one query, dh works 50 miles away at the moment and his work will generally always be project based. In a couple of years he'll be somewhere different again so we base ourselves around where my work is other wise we'd be moving every 3 years or so.

It would be helpful if there was an LEA website with a regularly updated cumulative count of how many applications had been received for places at each school during the applications season.

The villagey school is actually 4 miles away but bizarrely enough is much quicker to get to at peak times than some in the city which are geographically much closer.

I need to keep my ear to the ground and try and find someone to keep me informed. Meanwhile at least I can be pretty sure of getting a place at the local school if applications for elsewhere fail.

I'd do the drive, too. I would not put my child in a school that had a poor record or poor reputation for handling bullying for any amount of money or convenience.

I would recommend that you make an appointment to have a good look around the more local school and talk to the head as soon as possible. And see whether you have some gut feeling after that.

Ofsted reports give you an idea, but four years on, I am not convinced that their findings would necessarily be all that relevant. Talk to any parents you can find but be aware that some people always moan about things, whilst others never complain. Take their comments into consideration, yes, but rely more on your gut feelings and instinct.

DD1 goes to a small village school and one of the best things about is that it has a very caring ethos. All of the teachers know all of the children and the older ones are encouraged to look after the younger ones. On the other hand, small classes mean that your son will have a smaller 'pot' of potential friends to choose from.

Realistically, I think you will find the school run a bit of a pain. But it's no worse than what a lot of other parents do and might well turn out to be worth it in the end.

I keep telling myself that lots of working parents have a work commute and I don't (well 5 minutes max) and that I should just consider myself very fortunate and put up with a school commute instead but I am inherently lazy !

I know I must visit the local school and see how I feel.

Its also very annoying that schools can go from good to bad or vice versa in just one change of head teacher.

My dd goes to a school 3 mins walk from my house. It's not great in terms of league tables but it's got a nice inclusive ethos and a fab headteacher. 5 years ago it was on special measures.

Having lugged my dd into work with me for 4 years so she could attend a work place nursery I love the fact that she no longer has to commute. All her friends are nearby ( three on our road alone) and arranging tea dates etc is very very easy.

I would go and see the local school asap. As far as I am concerned the local school would have to be dire to justify the commute to the other one

Bear in mind that most kids who come from loving supportive homes do just fine in almost any school, particularly at primary age.

Have confidence in your child's abilities!

My kids don't go to the nearest local school (which we can probably see from our gate) but to one which is about 5-10 minutes drive away (about 30 minutes walk which is not feasible at the moment). In the summer we sometimes drive halfway and then walk the rest though. Without going into the whole reasons behind our choice, I think overall I am happy that we chose the one further away but it would be nice if it was closer!

Regarding friends nearby - certainly in my area kids don't play on the street or even in neighbours gardens like they did when we were kids so don't know if they would miss out really. And sometimes it's nice to have friends from outside school too - if there is a falling out with schoolfriends they still have other friends to play with. But then lots of other kids on our road don't go to the "local" school as there are at least three others within a 15 minute walk.

One thing you might want to factor in is the amount of time hanging about waiting for them to go in in the morning and come out in the afternoon. Even though the actual driving only takes 5-10 minutes, the actual time out of the house is more like 30 minutes (or more if I hang about chatting!)

It depends of course…on the child and the schools available. But we have always felt strongly that we wanted our children to go to the local school if at all possible. Our school is 5 mins walk away and although it’s not brilliant according to the league tables, it’s improving hugely, and more importantly it has a lovely caring ethos. The children are polite and courteous (well they are in school anyway, and the ones I know are out of school too). The ability to walk there is largely irrelevant as 3 days a week I have to drive my youngest to childcare before I take the eldest 2 to school anyway, but 2 days a week I work at home and then we walk. The more important aspect is having local friends for them all. Mine are lucky in that we live in a safe cul-de-sac and can play out…and their friends are also school friends. If they have school friends back to play it’s easy to walk them home afterwards without having to tackle rush hour traffic. In a few years I can see them being able to walk to and from school alone and to friends who live further away than our street. I was brought up in rural isolation and although I’d love to give them the house and garden that I had, I really envy their access to instant playmates and easy friendships. The school would have to have real problems before I’d think any other way.

Would agree that unless you have some special circumstances - religion is one for some parents of course, special educ needs another, I would always opt for the local school. Our daughter has SEN and we had the pick of the schools in the boro but ended up with the closest - we reasoned that there would have to be something terribly wrong with it not to pick it. It hasn't got the best league table results but is a lovely caring school and most of her class are in the surrounding streets so it has a real community feel. But we are in London - if you are in rural areas and getting into your car anyway, maybe 5 or 10 minutes doesn't make any difference.

We thought about this – the local school is ok – not top of the league tables – and didn’t have a wonderful reputation – not a bad one – just not wonderful. We looked at the local RC school which had a better reputation (although similar ofsted and league table results), and I would have liked dd to go to an RC school – but it would have meant a 45 minute taxi ride each way - a long time when you are only four. In the end we opted for the local school as I felt it was important that dd had friends in the local community. It has worked very well. Dd is doing wonderfully academically and socially. She knows most of the local children and feels very much part of the local community through knowing everyone at school (we are in a rural area). She has gone from being a little bit quiet and shy to being happy and confident. She is not too exhausted through too much travelling and is able to run / skip or cycle to school at 6 :)

In the end it has to depend on how bad the local school is and how good the alternative is but I wouldn’t underestimate the value of being local, at least for the first few years at primary school.

Aaaaaargh !

Had a "discussion" with dh last night about my progress in respect of researching primary schools.

It appears that he is fixated with the fact that the local school is in the bottom 10% of primary schools as far as our LEA league tables go and the villagey one is in the top 5%. As far as he is concerned this rules out any debate and he will not even go and visit the local one. (he had to cancel last minute leaving me to visit the villagey one by myself anyway so only I could make a true comparison of the atmosphere/feel of each).

Dh is very much a figures and statistics man and often doesn't pick up on touchy/feely vibes.

I will have a battle to convince him to be more open minded and to consider ds's potential social life during the primary school years as important if I do decide that the local school is O.K. and sooooo much more convenient.

I don't think you can take this any further until you have visited the local school - do it by yourself if your dh is against it. You might hate it and then the decision will be made for you!

If you do like the feel of it you need to try to find out why it is not doing well in the league tables, as this important to your dh. If it's because the kids it has are generally not the brightest, that is one thing. If it's because the teaching is poor quality, that is another.

I think the social advantages of going to the local school are only important if you feel confident that your son will be happy there and make friendships that you actually want to encourage (from your previous posts I think you have some concerns about the behaviour of some of the children attending.)

One of the factors in not sending my dd to the local school was that she is quite bright (but not exceptional) and I didn't want her to feel different in the event the majority of the class were average or below. I'm sure schools handle it better now but I remember being picked on for being a "swot" (though ironically I wasn't because I didn't have to work too hard to do well) so this coloured my views.

friend of mine did htis ( bti there wasnt ans issue iwht the level of school admittedly\0 and her ds is really left out

he wishes he went to our s chool

We have always had to drive ours. The first school was about 10 minutes but we moved them for a number of reasons and ended up with a very convoluted hour long journey each way (3 different schools!). From a social side it made little difference- they all went to other people's houses quite regularly- it just involved a longer/later drive to pick them up. It was a pain, but it is worth it when your child is clearly much happier at school.

Can I put my 2p in: like you, NN, I went to a primary school rather a long way from my home, and was very isolated indeed as a child in consequence. I've sent my DD1 to a school which isn't the nearest to us but is within walking distance (well, by my somewhat draconian definition of walking distance, anyway - it's 30 minutes if we have DD2 sauntering along beside us, 20 minutes otherwise, 15 minutes for me - and an hour's round trip walk in the morning dropping DD2 at her childminder and back to school but honestly it's a nice walk )...but seriously, having DD1's friends 10 minutes' walk away, round the corner, droppable-in on, is absolutely lovely. Compared to my own childhood, I would say opt for the school you prefer...and then move near it. We're actually planning to move closer to DD1's school, given that with DD2 we're somewhat committed to it for another - erk - eight or so years.

With regard to spaces at the village school, when you visit you will be able to see how many children roughly there are in each class compared with the number allowed. This will give you a fair idea of how likely you are to get in. The LEA website may not give you a running total of the number of applications so far but sometimes from their downloads of instructions/applications it will give you the total number of applications and places for the previous few years.

Another thought, are there any other schools you could be looking at within a shortish travelling distance? Personally, I wouldn't rule anything out at this stage. You definitely need to visit both the village and the local school. An important thing mentioned in articles I have read on selecting schools is to be around at the start/end of the day to see what the behaviour/parents are like. It sounds as if you have already done this and are not happy with what you have seen.

I do not think "the going to the local school" thing is the most important. Your children will be there for a number of years and the influence of the school and their peers will be strong, particularly as they get older.

There are two reception classes at the villagey school and they state numbers recently as 55 admitted to the reception class. By my reckoning this leaves a surplus of 5 places min.

Other nearish schools in the city itself (as recommended by parents we are friendly with) are all over subscribed and round here, it's sibling priority first and then door to door distance that gets you first past the post.