Choosing a primary school

[jellybeanJ]

I am very torn over my choice of primary school.

On the one hand, we have a school that is 1 minute away. KS2 SATs results are very good. Area probably a bit deprived, but that doesn't bother me. Head is OK - nothing inspiring. However, they don't seem to me to put emphasis on much other than the academic. If they do, it seems that this information is not easy to come across. The tour of the school wasn't given by the Head, which I wasn't impressed with.

On the other hand, there is a school 10-15 mins walk away. KS2 results nowhere near as good. However, head is inspiring and relatively new. They seem to do so much extra-curricular stuff - entering sports competitions and dance shows, doing music evenings. Also spelling bees etc. It seemed a mroe rounded experience to me.

Both schools 'good'.

How much emphasis should I be putting on the academic? Is it ridiculous to even consider a school so much further away when a very good school is right around the corner?

I should add - she will know another child at school number 1, but probably none at school number 2

I think you should not expect a Head to show you around. Could they realistically do this for 40 parents? I think they have other things to do! Delegating showing parents around is perfectly ok.

You should not just be looking at results. The other school may have a significantly different intake and what you need to look at is Progress. What progress have the children made during their time at the school? Ask each Head (or the office) to let you know what their key areas are for improvement. These will almost certainly be academic but give a very important window into the ethos and mindset of the school.

All schools must cover art, music, RE and sport so you can ask your nearest school for info on how this is covered in school if it is not in the prospectus. The prospectus will be online.

I do agree with you that an inspiring head, lots of extra curicular and a more exciting curriculum is a good school, but you do also need to consider quality of teaching. Academics have to count but I woud suggest a new head will be trying to up the sats results and the progress so how this is going to be done would interest me.

Are you sure you can secure a place at both schools? Where I live 10-15 minuet walk away from a school would not be close enough to be sure of a place. Even 1 minuet away wouldn't be a guarantee here, not if previous bulge years have caused an all sibling intake (happened at DDs school) or other criteria than distance was applied first.

Thanks. This was the only school we've been to where the head didn't show us round (we've been to 6 schools) and so it did affect our view of it.

The 1st school does cover this, but they don't seem to promote the extra-curricular in the same way. They don't put themselves forward for competitons, they do music but don't put on shows. They also don't have a prospectus and their website is very poor.

Yes we can probably get into either.

I definitely prefer the one 10 minutes away overall, but am concerned that it would be short-sighted to pick a school with poorer results over one with very good results!

PS Progress scores are also higher at school 1.