Hello,
I'm finding it really hard to find out more about secondary schools (comprehensives).
Of course I've read Ofsted Reports and had a look at league tables.
And the two closest ones are not bad - both have gone up in the league tables during the last 5 years from around 64-ish% (with little ups and downs) to near 70% this year.
Maybe we appear a bit paranoid, but both my husband and I did not go to school in the UK ourselves, so while we seem to understand the basics I still suspect there're things we don't know about.
Our eldest is currently only in year 3, but we're considering moving house to be in the catchment area of a slightly better one, so we try to consider our options early.
The one we'd have to move house for has achieved about 8% better in the GCSEs than our two local comprehensives and also got a slightly better Ofsted report. This school also seems to place a higher emphasis on detailed uniform requirements and how to wear the uniform which the other schools don't. Sounds silly as I'm from a country where school uniform doesn't exist but I think here these details may be important - at least the pupils look tidy when the go home in the afternoon. Obviously I still don't know what they're like in the classroom when there's no open morning.
(The school is not that far away so I had a look at it, but it's too far away from where we live now to get a place.)
But we are not at all sure if moving is worth the hassle, the money and (possible) distress it might cause our children (the younger ones would have to change primary school).
The thing we're particularly worried about is that our eldest has SEN and therefore might possibly end up in the bottom set of a comprehensive and may then be among some rougher children.
I read in another thread that the top set children are usually well behaved, the middle set ok-ish with disruptions, and that the teacher of a bottom set has normally enough to do to tame the unruly children that there is no time for him/her to give the well behaved but not so clever children the attention they need (a teacher wrote that accordingly).
This really worries me! My son would probably not get a statement and his problems are considered to "mild" for him to attend a special school or unit.
Also, if we didn't get in to the school we'd have to move house for, in that area the other schools would be far worse than here (only around 30-40%!!).
We do not necessarily want to send all our children to the same school so would consider a selective state school if ds2 and/or ds3 showed the potential, but it's still far(!!) too early to predict if they'd stand a chance (and who can ever be sure about sth like that). There is one that could be reached from our current or would-be area.
Also read the thread about 1st preferences and found it shocking, not sure if the policy here is the same, will have to check that, but it would mean that ds2 and 3 could end up in a far worse school if we moved and they failed the entrance exam.
To clarify:
Would you consider comprehensives with GCSE results around 64-69% good/ok and would you stay if you'd almost certainly get your child into one of these?
Or would you move for the other school with higher results even though your SEN child might not be one of those who achieve good GCSE results anyway?
The peer group might be "better" for him, but it may as well not be the case, it's just so difficult to predict.
Area-wise we'd rather like to stay where we are, as the other area is a bit too villagey/suburban for our taste albeit nice, and the house prices there are higher than here (reason: that "better" school??).
We've already attended open evenings and open mornings of the schools in question and obviously each one presents itself in a very positive way, and all do sports, music, cookery, languages, pupil exchanges and other nice extras. Pupils seemed ok-nice in either, but then I assume the really badly behaved/rough pupils are normally not allowed to attend these events anyway so prospective parents are not put off (a teacher told me that - not one from the schools of course)
We definitely have to find out more about SEN provision though, but so far it seems pretty similar.
Btw we can't afford independent schools for all 3. Might scrape together sth to send one of them to one later on, either the SEN child who needs it most (there are apparently independent schools catering for his problems) or the one who shows the most potential, but really want to avoid it.
Would love to read your thoughts/experiences etc.