We moved area about 2 years ago & were unable to secure a place for either of our dc`s at our very local school that serves the estate we live on. I have spent the last 2 years leaving the house earlier & earlier (because of increasing traffic) driving them the nightmare, un walkable journey to our next nearest school. It is a nice enough school, & academically I cant fault it. But its a very small school with small year groups & mixed classes. Because of this my youngest has consistently had issues over lack of suitable friends to play with & intermittent bullying. She also has a minor special need that is not being met adequately. Eldest is happy there & seems to be in a lovely class with people that accept her for who she is. She is incredibly shy & sensitive & will burst into tears at the drop of a hat. She is very lucky she is not being bullied. Although she seems to spend a lot of time clinging to her sister rather than joining in the other kids games.
Yesterday evening I checked my phone messages to find a message there from our local school to say they finally have space for both of my dc & they can start in the new year if I wish. I need to decide quickly though because other people are interested in the spaces.
My immediate thought was, "its too late to move them now" but having had the evening to think about it more I started to go over the good & bad points for moving them in my head.
Good points:
1, We could walk/scooter to school. This is such a big thing for me as I hate being reliant on a car that never seems to be particularly reliable. Its so embarrassing having to cadge lifts off people whenever mine or dh`s car is out of action (he will take mine to work if his is out) It seems to happen every few months & it would be so fab not to have to worry about that.
And of course the added bonus that we would save at least £50 a month during term time in petrol money.
2, Local school local friends that we can walk to easily. Children could get to know the kids on our estate, which just hasnt happened yet because they are not at the local school, & they are too shy to go & approach people they dont know. Could help bring my eldest out of her shell, hopefully.
3, Larger school, more possible friends. No mixed age teaching, more after school clubs, events etc.
4, Already know a lot of kids from the school through after school clubs. I used to work at the school & know a lot of the staff/pupils already. I know its a nice school.
5, I think I forgot to mention that we could leave the house a whole 20-25 minutes later in the morning (& 10 minutes in the afternoon) if we moved them. No stress of getting out of the door by 820am in order to secure a parking space as far away from the school as we can safely park (in order to get just a few minutes exercise a day) or being just a few minutes later & having to park somewhere silly about 3/4 of a mile the other side of the school. We could saunter off to school at 840am & still get there in plenty of time.
Bad,
1, Eldest is in year 4 & will be entering a very established year group. She is very shy & sensitive, im worried about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Although she does know at least 3 people in that class already, 2 of them having transfered from their current school & her current class.
2, It could all go horribly wrong.
3, Much larger class sizes. 30 in each instead of 20/22, but not mixed ages.
My gut feeling is that dd2 needs to move schools because of friendship issues & dd1 is fine where she is. This would be a very difficult scenario & im inclined to try them out at the local school & if it all goes wrong I could always move one or both of them back to their old school.
What are your thoughts? Congratulations! (& thanks) if you got this far.