Choosing a private senior school

[MrPickles73]

DS1 is in yr 6 at a coed prep and will stay there til yr 8 and move to private senior school for yr 9.
I'm wondering how people go about preparing a short list of schools and how many you visited with / without child.
Ideally we want a day school but I'm not fixed on single sex / coed. More interested in the school itself. If we consider weekly / flexi boarding then there are more options..

We have 2 coed day schools near us which are the obvious choices but our prep school is encouraging us to throw the net wider.. so we can also consider single sex flexi boarding, another coed day, three more coed weekly boarding and another single sex weekly boarding...
So then I have 8 schools in total. All have pros and cons on paper, none seem ideal. Should we visit them all (feels like too many)? Do we need to visit this term? In terms of admissions there is no big rush as non use iseb and either use CE or own exam in yr 8.

I personally would visit all eight by yourself and then shortlist it to three of four that you are happy for your son to go to and take him to see only those. In not showing him the schools you don’t like it also helps when it comes to getting his input on the decision.

I honestly wouldn’t have visited the school my DD is at if I had just gone by the website. Our prep head recommended it so I went to see it and it blew me away. I had never considered boarding before (in fact, I was a bit “over my dead body”), but she flexi boards Monday through to Thursday and is having a blast. Best decision we ever made.

Our second choice was a local grammar school. It didn’t have the flashy facilities or small class sizes but we loved the buzz of it. We would have all been equally as happy if she had ended up there.

So not all schools are equal. They have different feels and atmospheres. You can’t get that from a website or prospectus. So whilst it might seem like overkill, there is a huge benefit in doing a pre screening before taking the whole family.

Thank you Zodlebud I fear we initially made an error with the prep school by judging places without seeing them and had to change after a couple of years to a place we had previously dismissed .
So I'm trying not to repeat the same mistakes...
DH and I had visited the 2 day schools nearest to us prior to lockdown but due to lockdown we haven't visited any in years 5 or 6. And DS hasn't seen any.

We are the same with the boarding - v against it, but already at the prep he is doing one or two nights a week flexi boarding which he loves (just so he can attend after school clubs) though I miss him! I think I could cope with a night or two at senior school but not full boarding.

If you are looking at schools that offer boarding then check they don’t have Saturday morning school. Many still do.

I loved the vibe at the two full boarding schools I visited (again on the advice of our prep head - he said she is perfectly suited to boarding) but it felt far too invasive into family life. The children were allowed home at weekends but the reality of that meant from late Saturday afternoon after school and matches until Sunday evening when they are back for chapel. For us that just wouldn’t work.

The four nights a week thing seems like the perfect balance. She has all the time for her extra curricular stuff and being with friends but a real balance with family life too. The school is very committed to the importance of family too. In pre Covid times there were numerous events for the family to attend, and they are open to you taking your child home for a night if they are having a bad day etc. We are definitely not kept at arms length.

Look at it as a fact finding mission. I have actually been looking for my other child recently. The online open days have actually been a good way of working out whether or not to visit in person. I have discounted one school as I had some concerns about the very low numbers of children taking separate sciences at GCSE and, combined with a few other things that cropped up in the Q&A it just didn’t feel right.

You are right about the saturday school, we find at prep school it really cuts down the weekend. I think the 4 nights a week flexi / weekly boarding could be the perfect compromise.

I've managed to expand my list to 10 schools. And of those 3 don't have saturday school...