Anyone with experience of your child being in the first intake of a new school?

[oliviaaah]

There's a new free school hoping to open in 2014 in our area and if it gets the site it wants, it will be our closest school. I'd be interested to hear from people whose children have been in the first cohort of a new school. I'm trying to imagine what it might be like for those children to have their whole secondary experience with no-one above them in the school. Will they be independent-minded entrepreneurial pioneers or will they be cocky big fish who get a nasty shock when they move into higher education?

Sorry, just to be clear I'm talking about a secondary school.

No personal experience but having seen schools near me like this open, they have a huge rush in the first year, and then interest tails off, struggle to recruit quality staff and students are often isolated from the rest of the community through sports fixtures as they don't have the scope to enter mixed year teams etc

Personally, I wouldn't do it.

Thanks Littleturkish and MNE for your replies. Its a fair point Littleturkish about interest tailing off, although in this area the impulse for the new school came from an imminent chronic shortage of places which isn't going to go away. The new school will be four form entry from the start with statistics from the Council showing an ongoing need for places.

So yes, MNE my DS would be rattling round the school, which I do worry about, but at least it would be with 120 other children....

Anyone else with any experience?

IMO it really depends on your child. I worked at a school a while ago where this happened (but a primary).
Some children, usually the quieter and less confident types, thrived and as far as I could see it wasn't a huge problem for them.
Other children struggled. Some children who didn't naturally fit in with their classmates e.g. exceptionally mature or ASD, struggled not having other year groups to play with and model behavior from. This is less of an issue in secondary IMO.
There is also the issue of no older role models to aspire to (equally none to be lead astray by or copy bad behavior from).
The quality of education the children had in the first few years was so high though. All facilities were able to be accessed far more e.g. could use the hall/gym/art room/music room whenever rather than being limited by other classes using it.
The children in the first year were really well known by all staff and in many ways felt it was very much 'their school'.
You can balance it out by finding mixed age out of school activities.

I teach at a school that was new when I was hired. It was wonderful. The head teacher was able to recruit staff he really wanted and head hunted them. We officially began work six months before the school opened, and we were all able to choose our own learning materials (going shopping in an educational supply shop and being told to set up a whole classroom and bill to the school is a teacher's dream!!). Everything was new and state of the art, smart boards in every classroom, enough computers for students to use, able to pick and choose what we thought was best. Six months to write your curriculum and work on learning materials. Everyone started the year with a real enthusiasm and push to excel.

We made sure that we did a lot of interactions with other schools in the area, and participated in some mixed activities (dance, school plays, sports day, etc). By second year we had enough people wanting to transfer in that we could run the full complement of classes and now it's a normal sized school. All the original staff are still there, as well as new intake, and the principal gets to pick and choose from huge number of applicants.

Like anything, it comes down to the quality of the leadership. A poor principal is going to make a hash of a new school, and a good one will make it a success.