Guidance on where to send my DD please

[LyraBelaqua]

My DD starts school in 2014 and I have always planned on sending her to our local primary school which is about 10 mins walk from our house. I was reading the Ofsted reports yesterday and they are rated as good and I was happy with this. Then I started looking at other primary schools in our area which are all rated good but they have much small pupil:teacher ratios and about 90 pupils as opposed to 315 in the school I am planning on. Then to confuse matters more they are planning to build a new combined infant/junior school in the year DD starts so this may cause some disruption I think as its on the same site and will then mean a school of about 600 kids.

I don't know what to do, I've never really been interested in pushing to get my kids into a rural school (all about 5 mins drive from us) when there is one so close to us but I'm a bit concerned that in making things easier for DH and me I will be doing DD a disservice and now I'm confused.

Any ideas, advice or experience you could impart on me would be greatly received thanks.

90 pupils sounds tiny to me. It is about 13 per year and that is quite a small year group. Is the 315 an infant school or full age range primary? It sounds like a nice size for a primary. Will the new school take over from the old one or be additional to? Why are they building such a big school? Is there a significant shortage of places in your area? Have you looked at your DD's likelihood of getting a place at the various schools?

Have you visited any of the schools?

Are they increasing the size of an although primary or merging an infant and juniors.

If the first, it could mean they are planning o close some of these rural schools. Such small schools can be uneconomical, struggle to provide a full curriculum, and provide a very limited friendship circle.

Good point about limited friends mummytime. 315 is just infants school (302 in junior) which is currently on the same site as junior school the plan is they will build new school in adjacent field then move all the kids in together the demolish old schools but things rarely go to plan with building in my experience. I went to these schools myself but have not visited any yet. It's likely she will get into the big school no probs and kids mostly seem to get where they want around here, except if you want to get into the one OUTSTANDING school. Will look into likelihood of getting a place. Thanks for advice.

That is quite big for an infants school. I think that would prefer 1-2 form intake schools, so not small and not big. I would be a bit concerned by schools where DD was likely to be taught by the same teacher for more than 1 year, as it could be great, but could be awful.

All the schools in our area are 3 form entry. seems a normal size to me!with infants and junior schools they're not large as primary schools with that size intake would be.

We only really have full age range primaries round here, probably partly because separate infants and juniors would be too small.