Should I send shy anxious son to large local primary school or smaller school further away?

[aronbeer]

We have recently moved to a new part of UK. Son has been offered a choice of place of one of two schools to start asap. DS is very shy and anxious and easily loses it at physical or emotional stresses, even ones that are very minor. He has only been to nursery before and went to a small and extremely nurturing nursery where he was happy (though it took a full year for me to be able to drop him off without him being distressed) and made friends.
The local school is large with a large barren playground. I had a chat with the head teacher about DS and she mentioned that a smaller school may suit him better. We have visited the one smaller school near-ish us which has a place and it is nice and I think he would settle better, but it is two villages away. So if he went there he wouldn't have any school friends nearby to play with.
I really don't know what to do. Send him a large school which may completely overwhelm him but where he may be able to make local friends (assuming he is not so overwhelmed that he fails to make friends) or a smaller school where his schoolmates will live near each other but not him?
Any thoughts on what I should do? I am very concerned about his ability to cope with school at all tbh, and am finding this decision paralysing. I have to decide today really..

My DCs, now adult, went to a small village school, no other option locally.
They had a horrible time with a lot of bullying.

They believe that a bigger school would have been better for reasons like those given by NightCzar.

Haven’t read through the thread but my immediate response would most certainly be the larger primary.

We moved Ds in Y2 and it was THE BEST move for us.

Regardless of whether your Ds is shy and introverted or outgoing, in a larger school you will have a much better chance at finding people of a similar nature. It’s not all about the social aspect but it has a huge impact, especially when they move up to KS2. A smaller school, in our case, seemed far too claustrophobic, small issues were magnified. There were only 6 boys in Ds whole year and yes, they can make friends from other year groups but you’re always going to be doing far more with your own cohort.

We absolutely never looked back and it was the best decision for us.

*moved Ds from a very small primary to a much larger one.

Yes Knaff, playground politics.

In the smaller primary we had exactly the same. We hadn’t grown up in the area, there were very strong bonds. We were made to feel welcome by some though which made school pick up more bearable.

The difference in the much larger at pick up is striking.