Primary school in a secondary school environment? Does anyone experience this?

[2kidsintow]

The county where I live is looking at merging some of the schools in the area. One of the high schools has many empty places and there are several options on the table in the consultation period to save £. One is simply to merge the high schools and shift a level provision to another school, which makes sense.

Another option is to make provision for a primary school within the secondary, having age 3-18 on the same site. My daughter's school or my nieces schools are the two schools that would be considered to choose which one to move to the high school site.

I don't understand why....both primary schools are large and full and have invested a lot of money in the facilities.

I'm curious to know if anyone has experience of this sort of situation and what they think of it.

Not quite the same but one of my dcs goes to the junior department of a 3-18 school. The schools have separate teaching staff and management teams, though the Head of the junior school is on the SMT of the senior school.

The advantages include:-
junior school being able to make use of senior school facilities including theatre, labs, sports hall, pool, school nurse etc
continuity for the family - many children in ds's class have older siblings it the senior school, so they watch each other's matches, sports days etc.
Some activities can be organised well across both schools including PTA events, but also extra curricular activities and performances

That said the senior school is a successful one which is oversubscribed, and most children automatically transfer to the senior school. Working in the environment of a failing school would be different I suspect.

I would also look carefully to make sure they are not removing high school places just before a surge comes through primary schools.