How many schools did you/should you visit before deciding where your child goes?

[RedRobyn2021]

First time doing this; I have two schools locally to visit over the next couple of weeks, one is Ofsted outstanding and the other is good, I think as far as I know they are a good choice of schools to look at but not sure if I should look further as well.

Please can I have some guidance from more experienced parents? I feel out of my depth and quite anxious about doing the right thing for DD

Op you don’t really have a choice so to speak. You probably won’t be able to decide.
You put your preferences down & if one of them is your catchment school- you’re most likely to get it. If it’s not, it’s highly doubtful you’ll get a space depending on if it’s a popular over subscribed or if it’s a high birthrate year.
Contact your local council & find out your catchment area first.

Yes for sure your last comment is true. But if someone doesn’t list their closest school then they may well not be offered that one. Your initial post could be read as meaning that you will be offered your closest school regardless. But if you don’t list it then it’s not automatic; also plenty of ppl actually list a further way away school first on their form and get offered it. I just felt your comment could be misread.

We looked at 3 local schools.

One of the schools we looked at is only a 5 min walk away. On paper, it’s not a bad school but there’s no green space at all, it’s just concrete. It might sound ridiculous to some, but that bothered me. My dd loves nature & it’s important to me that’s she’s around it. We still put it as our 3rd choice though as it was still preferable over 2 of the other schools in our area (which don’t have good reputations & we didn’t look round)

Dd got into our 1st choice, which is the one furthest away (a 25 min walk) It doesn’t bother us, we’ve always walked everywhere. If the weathers particularly bad, we just hop on a bus.
One of the reasons we put it as 1st choice (as well as the other obvious things) is in early years, they do a lot of outdoor play & learning, there’s plenty of fields and even a woodland where they do some lessons.

It’s always been a popular, oversubscribed school, dd probably wouldn’t have got a place 3 years ago but with falling birth rates, I knew she had a good chance. (My friend works in this area for the council and advised the same)

Am I right thinking your catchment area school has to make space for you if you want your child to go there?

Absolutely not, I'm afraid. "Catchment" is a misnomer, a misconception. They don't have to take anyone within a particular area.

Class sizes are legally restricted to 30 pupils. Schools will take those pupils in strict order of priority. When they are full, that's is, no more spaces.

It starts with children in the care system, then other criteria like having older siblings at the school, having additional needs the school can assist with, faith based (for religious schools), stuff like that.

The final one is closest to the school (as the crow flies). In some years there may be a high number of younger siblings, so the area they take pupils from when those slots are filled may be very small. In a low birth year, the area may be significantly larger.

In my DS1's year there were only 12 siblings out of 60 places. In DS2's year, 28 siblings. Had DS2 not been a younger sibling, he would not have qualified for a place in his school.

FIll all slots with close schools, but the choice for most parts of England is illusionary - you get where you are assigned. The main exception is when you put a less popular school as first choice when an oversubscribed one is your nearest.

Class sizes only restricted to 30 in KS1 (in England anyway).

I'm pretty sure we could get her in to either school.

Interesting you say that because the school that was marked "good" actually won an award recently for being nurturing

Like I said I think I will get a choice, I'm pretty sure the school that's slightly further has plenty of space and the other is my catchment area school so I do think if we want her to go there she can

Usually the council will have the allocations for the previous 3 years, so based on subscription criteria & distance you can work out if you would’ve got your child in the school that’s slightly further away in previous years, if so it sounds positive. Plus yes you should get your catchment school as a fall back as long as you put it as a preference.
Good luck

I notice you said one of them is very small - I would be cautious about that if it's a properly tiny village school - I know a school near here that has a total of about 40 children and 3 teachers in the entire school. It can have a lovely family feel, especially when they are little. But as they get older it can be a bit claustrophobic and limiting eg you may only have a handful of kids your age and if you happen not to click with them then you're stuck. They also don't have the bulk buying power to invest in things like online systems for coding etc. And some very small schools are at risk of closing if numbers fall and they're not viable. I went for our closest school, all others would have required driving to. The closest school is also bigger than the others and that has given my children opportunities they wouldn't have had at a smaller school. Being a short walk away is also very handy if we're running late or they forget something!

Admissions statistics and catchment arrangements really vary in different areas so nobody here can give you specific advice. Our council says on the website which children were admitted last year (eg all in catchment, all to a distance of x km, all in catchment plus all siblings outside catchment etc etc).
Obviously it will vary from year to year depending on numbers of siblings/births that year but it gives you an idea of how likely you are to get a place.

Oh and for your original question I visited two primaries but the second was only really because I felt it was a good idea to put something else. We live very close to the first so we really were guaranteed a place (check carefully for your area though). I didn't bother looking at any others for the younger sibling. We are now looking at secondaries and will have looked at 6 - we are in a grammar area though so it is complicated by not knowing whether the grammars are an option yet. If we were looking after the results come out of if child hadn't sat the test we wouldn't need to look at so many.

Fill up all the available places on the application e.g. if you can specify four schools, keep going until you have four you're able to rank.

In terms of choosing, you usually get a vibe about what'll be a good fit for your DC.

Don't just put one school down thinking they'll 'have' to give you that. They don't, and if you don't get a place based on admissions criteria, you'll get a place at whatever school is left after everyone's choices have been dished out, within about a 10 mile radius (but that is a long way as a school run!). I know people this has happened to!

Likewise, don't say 'I won't get in' and leave off the school you most want, as the order/ranking on the form counts for nothing in terms of admissions. If you don't get your first choice but are higher up on the list for your second choice than someone who made it their first choice, you will get the place. So you've nothing to lose by putting what you really want first. The school ranks the interested parents according to admissions criteria, then the council looks down the list in order, and only moves to the next name when the names above have a place either at that school, or their preferred school.

We looked round 4. Before we went in person I had an initial preference order:

School A (catchment school, write big)
School B (smaller school key close)
School C (tiny 15 child entry)
School D (village school further our of the city)

After visiting the order changed and we dropped one completely:

School D
School A
School C
School E (didn't visit but it was adjacent to her nursery and a lot of her nursery friends were going and it was an emergency backup as we were confident of a place at D or A based on previous years admissions)

School A was great on paper but in practice some aspects weren't great (they'd outgrown their facilities so very small lunch hall so kids just stayed with they're own year group all the tine. Also they gave us a really hard sell on results that actually put us off a bit for primary.

School D had had a poor Ofsted 6 years ago but improved hugely to the most recent visit. Then when we looked around it just felt so warm and welcoming, a natural next step from nursery. The school was very community oriented, with mixing across the years etc and we felt that would be a better environment.

@clary Yes sorry I just took if for granted that people would put the closest I guess.