I am a teacher, and I work at a state school that is 2 form entry, has a "Good" OFSTED rating, and our Early Years provision (where I work) is Outstanding. We are the ONLY Good school in the area (a very deprived area), and we got it mostly because of our provision for children with severe emotional or behavioural difficulties.
I had always planned to have my DS come to my school, of course the main reason is because it's practical and would be easy to have him come with me into school and just have a child-minder for after school hours, but also because the teachers there are on the whole very dedicated and we get good results overall. However, more recently I have noticed the increasing bad behaviour of some of the pupils further up the school, and how disruptive it is to the lives and education of the rest of the class. Teachers and/or TAs are often chasing students around the school, coaxing them back into classrooms and micromanaging such disruptive behaviour that I feel the education and enjoyment of the many are getting overlooked. This is happening daily, all the upper school teachers are so stressed and are spending all their energy on these "difficult" children. I don't want my son to have a half-hearted education because so much of the good work that teachers do is spent on the most challenging pupils.
I have worked out that what we are already paying monthly in day nursery fees is only £100 short of what it would cost to send him to an independent school not far from where I work. Small class sizes (they guarantee less than twenty, average of 12 in a class), great resources, but obviously we would be less well off which means no holidays 'til I get promoted (or my DH does), less trips out, etc.
WWYD? Has anyone made the switch from state to independent, or vice versa? What were your opinions on either?