Page 3 | Did you check league tables when choosing a school for your DC?

irishe · 09/01/2015 23:58

Yes I looked at the stats for our catchment primary and associated secondary. Primary looked dire, multiple changes of head in recent years, inspection reports showed school was struggling and had been for many years. We moved area within the same city, mostly for this reason. Current primary is mid range in performance tables but is spoken of very highly by local parents. Also it feeds into secondary with reasonable results.

BramwellBrown · 10/01/2015 04:10

yes, but it wasn't a big part of the decision, for DS' secondary I was pretty sure where I wanted him to go anyway and was just looking out of curiosity and for DD's primary I looked at everything available and visited to see if the closest school, which she'd been offered was as bad as rumour had it, it was worse.

Surreyblah · 10/01/2015 08:26

Yes, in London and where we were moving to. The data is really useful.

Our local secondary's gcse stats are dire! So will try to avoid it!

redskybynight · 10/01/2015 09:09

Not the point here but I have found among some friends in real life that many parent interpret %5 GCSEs A*-C to mean % probability that my child will get this if they go to this school.

My own very well educated parents are firmly in the mindset that as the highly selective school that my DB's children go gets significantly better results than the rather bog standard comprehensive my own go to, that it must be a better school. Well it might be a better school but you can't deduce that solely on exam results.

lljkk · 10/01/2015 09:42

Sometimes, but pretty sure I haven't sometimes, too.
I can easily believe 2/3 of parent of talk to haven't looked.

PiratePanda · 10/01/2015 13:19

No, as there was fuck-all point. In our large town, all the schools are pretty good (and those that have been rated "outstanding" game-players or surrounded by mansions rather than actually outstanding), but no one has a snowball's chance in hell of getting into anything other than their catchment school. Unless they're Catholic (even the CofE schools work on a catchment basis). So there is actually no choice, just an illusion of choice, which is frankly the worst of both worlds.

We're perfectly happy with DS's school and like that it, and all his little friends, are close by.

PiratePanda · 10/01/2015 13:20

No, as there was fuck-all point. In our large town, all the schools are pretty good (and those that have been rated "outstanding" game-players or surrounded by mansions rather than actually outstanding), but no one has a snowball's chance in hell of getting into anything other than their catchment school. Unless they're Catholic (even the CofE schools work on a catchment basis). So there is actually no choice, just an illusion of choice, which is frankly the worst of both worlds.

We're perfectly happy with DS's school and like that it, and all his little friends, are close by.

foursquare · 11/01/2015 18:24

We moved from W London to SW London just before DD started Reception so I checked both primary and secondary schools Ofsted reports and league tables, and made sure we weren't moving to a 'black hole' area. We're extremely happy with the primary school.

Secondary choices are between local state community (pretty good at the moment and we're clearly in the catchment area), an outstanding state girls school (we might not get in as distance varies every year), and Tiffin girls - if DD can get in :) I'm a bit reluctant to send her to a girls' school so I'm hoping the community mixed school keeps their standards.

SnowWhiteAteTheApple · 12/01/2015 21:20

When choosing a school we did look at league tables as results are important although we placed more importance on the Ofsted report as it held much more detail. After studying those, we did visits.