why do many families home Ed whist waiting for their preferred primary school?

[bristolsushi]

Am new to this forum. I have been living in Japan for 10 years and am thinking of relocating back to my mum's as she is getting old. It means I will live in sneyd park. Having read many forums about primary schools in Bristol I realize that when I come back to Bristol ( maybe in 4- 9 months time) my DD ( 5 yr old since Oct.) will definitely not get into any primary school near my house. When I contacted the LEA they said Sea Mills and somewhere else ( sorry can't remember offhand) were available at my time of calling. I noticed that many families seem to home Ed their kids until a place comes available. I was thinking of simply putting DD into wherever was available and putting my name on waiting lists near my house. Am I being naive? The fact that for e.g. Sea mills has spaces, does it mean it's a bad school which should be avoided at all costs? I left Bristol at 18 and while I visit every year I know nothing about the education scene at all. ( I went to Clifton high School when I was a child so know nothing about state schools). I am really clueless and any advice would be appreciated. Thx.

Not all schools with spaces will be bad schools. Accepting a place at the nearest school with places and going on waiting lists will be fine. If the nearest school with available places is more than 2 miles from where you will be living then the LEA will provide help with transport costs.
Infant class sizes are restricted to 30 pupils but when they start KS2 (which will be the September just before your child is 8) schools can take more than 30 pupils. Some areas of Bristol in the Clifton area have quite mobile populations due to the university and hospitals so it is not impossible that a closer place may come up. HTH and good luck with the move.

Thnx for the quick reply. The nearest schools to me would be stoke bishop C of E ( but as we are not religious then I assume DD would never get in right?) Next would be Elmlea which sounds as though it has a waiting list of thousands!! To be honest, I don't mind where DD goes but the impression I get is the parents who live in BS9 and BS8 area seem super stressed during admissions time when they can't get their 3 preferred choices. Am I missing something? Do they know things I don't? Why all the panic?

I also moved back to Bristol from Japan five years ago, and had a bit of a struggle to find a school place for DS (8 at the time) and somewhere to live at the same time. And unfortunately places in KS1 are in particularly short supply at the moment so you are unlikely to get a place in the closest school at first. However, there is always movement, so if you are prepared to travel a bit (will you have a car?) something should come up eventually. And as crazymum says, some of the good primaries in areas around Clifton, Redland etc have quite a bit of movement. Spaces also often come up in year 3 when children move to private schools, but that is a bit of a while to wait.

Don't worry about the religion thing - all the CofE primaries in north Bristol are voluntary controlled, which means that the local authority runs admissions and religion is absolutely not a factor. So you can look at Stoke Bishop, St Johns, Westbury, Christ Church (Clifton) etc as well as the non- denominational ones. Catholic schools do use religion as an entry criterion. There is also the new state primary in what used to be St Ursulas.

Whether or not to take a place at a school you don't like while you wait for a better one is up to you ( and no, Sea Mills hasn't had a great reputation, but it may be improving - go and have a look for yourself). Factors I would think about would be the benefits for your DD in being with other children, getting into a routine, getting used to the British system etc versus possibly being unsettled if she has to move schools again soon.

The panic is mainly because Bristol has a serious shortage of school places so lots of people living within 500m of three different good schools have not been getting into any of them, and are being allocated places in schools in much rougher areas miles away, so not within walking distance and not with their children's friends from nursery etc. but there is money being put into creating new school places, so things are set to improve.

Thanks for the advice exexpat. In my case, I'm really not bothered too much about where my daughter goes as long as she goes somewhere! Like you mentioned, I need DD to get used to a school routine, speaking in English all day and making friends so I don't feel home Ed is the best environment for her because she needs to experience British life. When you say sea mills doesn't have a good reputation what does this mean? As I have never been to any primary school before I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking out for. Do the standards differ so much from one school to the next? When I visited some primary schools with a friend in japan, they all seemed quite similar in standards to me....

Hi Bristolsushi,
Yes the standards do really vary. Even amongst the well-regarded schools there are differences which mean that one child would be happier at one school rather than another. I don't know much about Sea Mills school, except that it does not have a good reputation locally.

I have just had a look at the Ofsted report and the things that would concern me are the comments about pupils' behaviour and that a number of parents don't think bad behaviour is effectively punished.

The other bit is about the teaching .....(Quote from Ofsted) "No inadequate teaching was seen during the inspection but, equally, little teaching seen was consistently engaging or promoted progress that was better than satisfactory. Currently, the extent of challenge in lessons is sometimes too low and assessment information is not routinely used well enough to plan lessons that match tasks effectively to pupils' different needs and capabilities."

A lot of it comes down to where you feel your child will fit in. If you look around a few, you should get more of a feel for the school and whether you can see your child there.

As exexpat says, don't worry about some schools being C of E - entry is done on distance so religion is irrelevant. Some of the schools do have a lot of movement, so even if the list looks long, you may have a chance. It depends how close you are though. The panic locally has been caused by people being offered schools miles out of their area and away from all their friends, as there are simply not enough places to go round. Could another option be to send your daughter privately until a space came up? I know of people who have done that rather than home ed..... Good luck!

Good point from runoutofideas about fitting in.

I looked round a lot of schools, and of the two that turned out to have places for DS in the relevant year, I decided against the one that was very much white/middle-class/stable population, and went for the one that was more international (near the university - on my visit I spotted children from Japan, China, Korea, Russia, Somalia etc, and in total the school had probably at least 30 nationalities) and had a lot of turnover. It meant that it was easier for DS to fit in, because turning up mid-year from a foreign country was a very normal thing to do, no one raised an eyebrow at his background, and he didn't feel out of place there.

I would have been very reluctant to send him to somewhere like Sea Mills, not just because of worries over academic standards, but also the fact that it serves an almost exclusively white, low-income, less educated, fairly immobile community meant he would have stuck out like a sore thumb. He already went through that in Japan - he was the only non-Japanese child in his kindergarten, and struggled to fit in and make friends; when we moved him to a bilingual international school, he was still the only native English speaker in his class, but there was much greater diversity in terms of race/nationality/languages spoken at home, and he was much, much happier.

The replies have been really helpful. Private schooling really wouldn't be an option due to the cost. I re read the council's email and Avon Primary and Badockwood primary would be available. Do you know anything about them? I was told that reading Ofstead reports weren't really helpful until you actually went to the school to get a feel for it. I know some parents felt the outstanding schools weren't that great and some parents were really impressed with the satisfactory ones.

That can be true. Certainly you have to read between the lines of the Ofsted reports. I think it depends a lot on your expectations though....ie some of the parents at outstanding schools would moan even if it was perfect and some of the parents at satisfactory ones, in the nicest possible way, don't know any better. Big generalisation I know, but you really do have to go on your own gut feeling for your child.
Again I have no first hand experience of the schools you mention except that Badocks Wood is the one people are given if they don't get into Henleaze/Westbury on Trym and everyone fights tooth and nail to get their child in somewhere else. Avon, I don't know anything about at all, only that one parent I know was offered it initially but ended up with place at Elmlea which she was much happier with!

Ofsted reports certainly don't tell the whole story. But the fact that the three schools you have mentioned - Sea Mills, Avon and Badocks Wood - are the names that come up again and again as ones parents have been offered who can't get places in their local areas does tend to suggest that they are unpopular for a reason, if they can't fill their places with children in their own area.

A lot of the Ofsted rating seems to be based on Sats results, and unless a certain (high-ish) proportion of children are meeting national average expectations of levels, they will never be rated good or outstanding. This can be very unfair to schools in deprived areas or with many new immigrants, who could be doing amazing work with children and getting them to achieve well above what would be expected from their backgrounds. This is one reason people sometimes rave about schools rated merely satisfactory.

Things can also change - a school which has been in special measures and has had a new head, new staff, more money etc can sometimes be a very good place to send your child, as things can improve very rapidly, and it can take local perceptions and Ofsted ratings a while to catch up.

But as far as I know, none of those scenarios apply to Sea Mills etc.

Really, you need to have a look around the schools (as many as possible, even if they don't have places available immediately) and judge for yourself. Are you going to be able to make a research trip over to the UK before you actually move?

Based on your plan to live in Sneyd Park, I'd say the schools you should probably be looking at would be Stoke Bishop, Elmlea, Westbury CofE, Westbury Park, St Johns (just over the Downs near the top end of Whiteladies Road). Slightly further afield, Henleaze or Christ Church Clifton are also worth a look. And take a look at the ones the council has said have spaces, to see what you think.

When I moved to Horfield two and a half years ago, the only school place I could get was Upper Horfield (Southmead) or Sea Mills. my DD spent most of Recepton at Upper Horfield before getting her place at Ashley Down School which is the closest to where we live.

UH is like Sea Mills in that people throw their hands up in horror as it was in special measures a few years ago and it's in a pretty rough area. But both DD and I loved it and I think I preferred it to Ashley Down. Because it had been a failing school they had a super head and experienced teachers. And because it was in a deprived area, it had Sure Start funding and subsidised wrap around care which as a working lone parent was invaluable.

A MNet friend whose girls go to school in Clifton was telling me her DD had asked for a laptop for her 8th birthday because her class mate got one. My DD at this time was asking me why children were wearing daps in the snow and I explained it's because they had no money. I think my DD had the more valuable life lesson.

Like you, I really don't get the HE thing. For me school is about social skills and community as well as learning.

Sounds like I just need to come over and have a look for myself. When do the summer holidays start in the uk?
Queenofwhatever- very interesting to read your experience with UH. What did you love about it? Was it the teaching? When a school is in a "rough area" does that mean there are "gangs" in the playground or more bullying??

Coming over to look round is a very good idea. I think most schools break up around July 19th, but if possible I'd try to come at least a week or two before that because by the last week of the summer term normal classroom routines have usually gone out of the window, so you won't get a very accurate impression, and teachers may not want to be bothered with visitors.