England or Wales Mner who has applied for a place at a state school in the last 5 years or so? Please complete a survey: chance to win £100 NOW CLOSED

[AnnMumsnet]

Here at MNHQ, we want to find out more about how you select a school for your child and what factors you consider.

This survey is open to all Mners who have applied for a place at a state school in the last 5 years or so in England and Wales only.

Everyone who completes the survey will be put into a prize draw where one MNer will win a £100 shopping voucher.

Here's the link again; www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/573Z3VJ

Thanks
MNHQ

I'm another whose child's primary went from 'good' to special measures.
I kept him at the school because I trusted that the new head knew what she was doing (she had called OFSTED in herself when she took over).
The school was out of special measures and rated good again within the year.

Done.

We need to move away from the aspiration of "choice" for school applications. In many areas there simply is no choice.
But fundamentally, we need enough schools. Moving to accademy status is not going to magically generate the school places required. Stop messing with curriculums and paperwork targets, and focus on school places where they are needed.

My secondary choice was a bit misleading. I had choice because my eldest got into a school from the waiting list a few years ago, and I just about had the right age gap that my youngest would get a place there is we applied on sibling grounds. I could also get into my closest school, but its not one we even applied to. The school my DD prefered is Catholic and unfortunately offered no places for non-Catholics in her year. So she got a place at her siblings school, which was out second choice (and has been brilliant for her).

I can't answer the first question! We didn't have a choice, there was (according to the council when I called and asked them) NO state school locally where my child would have got a place from our current address. We have 4 schools within 900m and were too far away from any of them to get a place.

"Fortunately" we had exceptional medical/social need and were placed in a higher admissions category and got a place anyway, but it wasn't simple.

I've picked option 3 of the question, but please take this ^^ in mind when considering the answers!

That's shocking Rue who exactly is in the catchment area if a, roughly, 10 minute walk is too far? I'm so glad for village life sometimes!

There are quite a lot of "black holes" where people can live and not be likely to get a place at any school, especially in London, and even more so for secondary.

As TheColdDoesBotherMeAnyway has already pointed out, we have Estyn in Wales not Ofsted. Wondering if whoever commissioned the survey realises that Wales has a completely separate education system?

Done

BernardsarenotalwaysSaints & ChessieFL & TheColdDoesBotherMeAnyway have amended that now, sorry!

And have noted the Welsh comments

I put that I didn't have a choice for Q1, only likely to get into one school. in reality I thought that, only looked round the two I thought we had a chance of, but then didn't get into either - luckily I had filled my 6 choices with the next 4 closest non-Catholic schools, and school 3 is actually better than school 2 would have been. We were about 150 on the waiting list for school 2, for 60 places...

There's no option to express the view that all children should go to their local school (and that 'parental choice' is merely an illusion imposed by Thatcher in the 80s as part of her package of measures to loosen the hold of the LAs on schools.) Not does it reflect the position that many of us in rural areas have: that there is literally one secondary school in your town/area and so choice is only available to people who have the time/money/inclination to drive their children 14 miles away to the next town (where there is an almost identical comp also serving the local community)

Some of us actively don't want choice because it's just used as another stick to beat teachers with - by creating an entirely artificial 'market' for schools (which the current government are clearly about to turn into an actual market) when education is a human right, not a commodity.

In our semi-rural area, secondary 'choice' comes down to "Can you afford £500/yr for the bus fares?" An awful lot of people can't.

Done, hope that's ok as we now home educate (but DS did start reception in 2013 so still counts hopefully)

Anyone know if the academy thing will have an impact on faith schools? I.e. Please can we not have them anymore.

em - no, there are a number of Christian academy chains. Weren't some of them teaching creationism as "science" up till it was banned in 2014?

I thought academies meant MORE faith schools in future, Emin. That was supposed to be a selling point for academies because we all know us pagan atheist heathens raise our children to be feral ASBO badge wearers- kids who go to faith schools "perform better" and parents are deluded if they think an ordinary school might be good enough desperate for their kids to go to only "the best schools"

...And because the academy groups have to be run by charitable trusts & volunteers.... churches are used to coordinating and setting up groups of volunteers in management committees.

done

There is never an option on any survey (not just this one) to say that you have more than one child of the same age. Surely people who write surveys would be interested if you had four 10 year olds (not many people have quads admittedly) or two 5 year olds. Or maybe not.

llijkk it's the same in our area as well, we have a choice of one secondary school unless we are Catholics.

There should be an option for 'views of sibling taken into account' - when we chose a school for DS it was influenced by DD who was in her teens and was adamant that he should not go to her old school - for good reason; she left after a year and moved schools at 13.

I am afraid the questions won't allow a useful evaluation of the situation. Like others have said, one of the biggest problems is that of no school offered - or some random school miles away offered that would never have been within your contemplation at the time of application. That's the big issue - for primary and secondary. Your questions need to draw that out

Done.

possumMama wins a £100 voucher for completing the survey

I was at the first big free school meeting several years back. The FIRST question Gove was asked was 'can we teach creationism?' The second was 'you talked about it being important to recruit good teachers...can you tell us how to do that? '

Not sure which is more dispiriting - schools run by religious idiots or schools run by people who have no idea how to recruit good teachers.