Agonising over school choice

[llareggub]

Well, not really. Just can't understand the lengths to which people go to get their precious little darling into the right school.

Unless there is some legitimate need, why won't the local school do? Parent pressure might then drive up quality.

Obviously everyone wants the best for their child but what diference does a good school make to an average/above average child? Is there just a marginal diference?

Parental influence just as important/more important IMO.

I don't think I could teach in a school I wouldn't send my kids to... feels all a bit wrong, patronising, somehow...

I prefer Asda brand myself!

mummymagic - I disagree. I knew that I was doing my best for those children in the school, and that they did deserve to have a good education - even if a significant majority didn't feel that way at the time. However, I would not have wanted my child to be there, in that situation, if I could help it.

Yup I'd go for own brand... same cornflakes, half the price... you're being ripped off otherwise eh?

We have just moved some distance to ready ourselves for dd starting school in Sept. Went to the nearest school, which isn't our catchment, and loved it. Went to our catchment school and just were not keen - like Hulababy said, it just didn't feel right. So, after much deliberating I made the non-catchment school our first preference, and catchment second choice, and ended up getting in to neither. So we're still on the waiting list for both, and have been allocated another school, which I haven't yet even seen.
Feel sad, as we moved to get her into a better school, but it may not work out that way. I can't believe how difficult it all is.

We live in inner city London and a lot of the schools are in a real state. I couldn't have sent dd to either of our two most local schools, no way, she'd have totally floundered. One of them was a predominantly refugee school with huge staff / pupil turnover, very low levels of English and an ofsted report which was threatening closure of the school. The other was incredibly rough, I saw a couple of horrible things happening when we went to look round and the kids that go there were our neighbours. Again dd (very shy and quite socially awkward) would have had a nightmare there.

So we moved. Just 15 minutes away from where we were living. And she's at the nursery of a very nice school, not the best in the world but safe, friendly, multi-cultural (very important to us) and thriving. I won't find out until April if she's got a Reception place but my fingers are crossed. If she hasn't I'll go on the waiting list and she won't go to school until she gets a place.

I simply could not have lived with myself it I'd sent her to either of those other two schools, I would have worried all day and felt that all the values and work I've put into raising her in a particular way would have been wasted.

For us, private school will never be an option. Dp works in education and he's our main bread-winner. To survive in London and pay for schooling would be crippling.

lilybubble, you've just sent a chill down my spine with your post!

What do you mean by 'catchment' by the way? I don't think our schools work like that round here. The criteria for getting in is:

1. siblings
2. special needs
3. proximity to the school

Is that different for you? I was confused when you said you loved your 'closest' school ...

The primary schools in our area work on a catchment basis - although a statement of SN is first on the list. The catchment is not necessarily your closest school especially in our city which has quite strange catchments in order to widen the range of pupils IYSWIM.
If there are too many pupils in catchment, then they do it on proximity to the school. Hence there is no real choice because if you don't choose your catchment school first, it will probably be full by the time they look at the second choices and so you might not get into your first choice, and then your catchment school is full!
FWIW I definitely don't think that all private schools are better, but I totally respect ( but don't necessarily agree with the reasons!! ) peoples' decision to go private. I just think it's sad that so many schools are seen to be not good enough - school reputations are fickle and perculiar things...

Oh, imaginary friend, I'm sorry!
The catchment area of a school is based on historical boundaries. The school we loved has an area stretching immediately north of it. Even the street right opposite it is not in that area, so any children living there won't have got in. Crazy hey.
We knew this would probably be the outcome by putting our prefences as we did, but had I got into catchment school I wouldn't have been happy, so felt at least there was a chance of it.
Both the (nice) school and the council have admitted to me that the system is strange and needs reviewing, but that doesn't help either!
When we lived in London we had several schools close to us, and they seemed to take in children based on SEN, religious grounds where appropriate, siblings and then proximity. They didn't seem to have catchments as they do here in Hampshire.
Sorry to worry you, hope it all works out. Worrying, isn't it.

Interesting that the very best of the slightly distance C of E schools Cameron is considering for his daughter - state schools - have 50% of children whose first language isn't English even.

"Is my child's education more important than the greater good? " Well some people think so - Blair. Cameron is making may be a sacrifice to get elected and in effect probably marginally damaging his children and denying them the education they would otherwise have got in the private sector. I hope his wife can live with that. I wouldn't accept it.

Having got now my 3 oldest children out the other end of private education from 3 - 18 so an end product to view as it were I am happy that how they emerged in fairly large part was the result of the private schools as well as their genes and as well as their parents. One daughter got a job she's accepted today and I suspect she may not have so easily got it had she been at a state school.

Don;'t want to hijack the thread - but very many pupils in state schools do brilliantly too - private schools don't exclusively own or produce success

I was thinking, fair enough, fair enough, until I got to that bit:

"One daughter got a job she's accepted today and I suspect she may not have so easily got it had she been at a state school."

Yes, but the private schools do better. So why not if you can work hard enough to earn the fees pick the best?

Message withdrawn

imaginaryfriend, please don't worry. In some areas which primary school your child goes to depends on where you live in relation to boundaries on a map. If that is the case in your area, it will be stated in the school admissions criteria and in the general bumf from the LEA. There won't be any "hidden" catchment areas not declared in a school's published criteria.

(I couldn't entirely rule out the possibility that knowing the right handshake makes a difference, mind you...)

Not all private schools better. Some private schools are not academic schools and focus on other areas. Some state schools do very well, and are above private schools in the league tables.

However one thing private schools can do that state schools can't - remove those children causing the problems. It is now so hard to expel children from state schools, and the worst bit is that the children know this!

I haven't read all this thread but just feel the need to say that both my ds's are studying for PhD's and they were both 100% state-schooled.

We're definitely not part of the catchment area system, we're based on proximity to the school. And alas, hallgerda, even if I had a magic handshake it wouldn't work because in my borough of London (and most of them now i think) you don't apply to the school at all, you send an application form into the council and they allocate places then send the school the list of names. The schools don't seem particularly happy about this process (it only came into effect 2 years ago) but i think it's probably much fairer. With church schools you have to apply through the council plus hand in a supplementary form to the individual school.

As to what effect all this has on your education I'm uncertain. But I came from a fairly well-off family and went to a Catholic school in a good area and am educated to PhD level. Dp came from a very poor family and went to a normal state school, has a PhD and various research fellowships under his belt as well as being a university lecturer and a published author. He had no advantages given to him on a plate and has done far more with his education than I did.

Having said that, dp's school was a good school and he says how much they encouraged him to push his intelligence despite much family opposition about universities and education in general.

So my rambling conclusion is that it doesn't matter where you live or what kind of school you go to. It's the school itself that counts whether state, religious or other.

That's why we moved so dd could go to a good school. It's not posh, it's not the best, it's just what we wanted for her.

I think most parents want to choose the best school they can. I was thinking about it today, why some people succeed and others don't and a lot of it is to do with the personality you're born with too. My oldest child got a job she wanted and part of the reason for that was the minimum AAB + 2/1 from a good university requirements which of course you can get at state schools but another part was her broad interests and I suspect her accent and her confidence and I think some of that came from her private school. On the other hand if she had been a shy little thing even at the school she went to she would not have got that job.

her accent

that is the bit I find objectionable

it all evens out at uni. Takes a year or two sometimes for state kids to figure out that the loud, very confident students with no accent get by on bluster and over-confidence rather than academic or any other merit, and then it all evens out.

Except, of course, for employers who then choose on accent, connections and a strong show of confidence.

pd, anyone can adopt a better accent. I read the book about the black barrister from a poor bit of London abused by her mother. She doesn't speak anything like she used to speak as a child. It's not hard to change how you speak but to realise that how you speak affects how you're preceived may be that is something not everyone realises and many people don't want to play that game and are happy to keep away from those jobs where that type of thing might matter. Everyone was white she said on the interview'assessment day which is shortsighted and not typical of the city I know at the junior end. She was the only non Oxdridge too, although loads of Oxbridge students are from state schools anyway. Anyway it was just interesting to speculate.

but I would disagree with "better" accent and that's just in your first sentence. There are far too many differences in point of view here to even discuss it, I think.

Doesn't matter. Some jobs which some of us might regard as desirable you will do better in if you speak standard English and have good grammar. Anyone can say stuff that I'll speak how they like but they need to realise that can mean they won't succeed in some areas and they may not be bothered about that at all. (Of course many children in state schools speak like that anyway and I wasn't that happy with how my children and their friends spoke at their school for that matter, teenagers can mumble so much and say like etc... very irritating).

havig an accent does NOT mean that you don;t speak standard eNGLISH AND DON'T HAVE GOOD GRAMMAR. sorry for caps. There are fundamental differences of opinion here.