I feel sick - may have made a terrible mistake with school primary choice

[exrebel]

I feel like a complete idiot who should not be in charge of a child. After all research and considerations, I think I picked the worst school and now it is too late as I have accepted the place, and I put it first choice as well, so I cannot appeal really

A woman I chat to sometimes on the way home made me think again. Well she did not say anything I did not know already but I prioritised other factors and was being principled.

Where do I go from here? what you would do next to get DD to another school? I can ring around and put her in popular school waiting list? Delay until she is 5 and re-apply? Is this possible to re-apply next year? Apply to another borough, near work? Not sure if there are any state schools inside the city of London though. I would consider private education in emergency but many don?t have after school provision and cant pay fee and childcare too.

CS CS... which one is that.....the big one?
no very far from that one

It's disappointing when people love or loathe a school that they have never been to or are otherwise in no position to judge.

I also dislike it if their kid is in a school of 1000 pupils and they assume that everyone else is having the same experience that their child is (or was, they have usually pulled them by this point) and therefore the school is bad.\

I have music pupils that go to lots of different schools - and I'll tell you something for free - it not really a good indicator of anything really as far as I can see for music - so why would it be for anything else?

Go and visit the school again and remind yourself why you liked it enough to have made it your first choice.

I like the feel of S school, exrebel (or did when i visited it a few times a few years back). Seemed like a great community school and v inclusive in a positive welcoming way. I would be happy to send mine there (unless it has changed dramatically). Honestly- give it a go. As you say, you can always look elsewhere if dd isn't happy.

I used to do projects in that school, Exrebel! A long time ago, admittedly - but even then it had the characteristics you describe. It was a lovely school...and from working in many schools with a high ratio of recent immigrants, one thing I can tell you is that they come from families determined to make the best of it. In general, the children work hard and want to settle quickly and do well. The schools have separate pots of funding te ensure that they get extra support.

See how your dd gest on and how you like it once you really get to know it. There seems to be a lot of movement in schools in the first year or so - so if you don't like it after all, you can do whatever needs to be done to try and move her.

Good luck. Honestly - having the school close by has improved our quality of life no end! (we put DS in a school a littl way away because he will need a school with flat access for a significant part of his schooling - and we then moved house to be v close once we settled into the school - so much better, having a neighbourhood school)

Please don't pay too much attention to league tables. We have a school near us which is significantly higher up the league tables than all the others and paretns struggle to get in, but if you look at bit deeper, you discover that because it's a mile or two out of town, it's sort of self-selecting. It's really hard to get to if you don't have a car, for example, and is not in striking distance of any of the council estates, so its intake is overwhelmingly "middle class"for want of a better term. Given this, IMO it would be shameful if it WASN"T way up the league tables, if you see what I mean. It's very important to look at the value added.
By the way, whay are people so reluctant to name the schools they are talking about? Is there a mumsnet rule I don't know about?

Just for my own information - is it against mumsnet etiquette to name a school?

I certainly couldn't as a teacher in a school - mums might be on here!!!!
Not that I have anything to hide but it is nice to post in anonymity!

When I chose a school for DS1 it wasn't the local really popular school (a) that was doing really well in the League tables, it was 'the other one' (b).

Most people were surprised. We got a lot of comments. When he started School B most people assumed that he hadn't got into School A and that we must be very upset and probably on the waiting list for it. OUr school sounds, on the surface, very like the school you have chosen. We are in Hackney.

We chose School B because it felt right, the head is great, and it's very inclusive.

Our school now has an outstanding Ofsted report, an amazing reputation and a waiting list as long as the Thames. It is now the more popular school.

DS1 is in Year 3 now, things can change in four years. Go with your gut feeling, she is your child. If you think she will thrive there then she probably will.

exrebel, it's hard to say why but I thought CD was a very tough school and the teachers were very hard and unfriendly. SF on the other hand seemed to be making such an effort and had a lovely, warm atmosphere. If I was chosing between CD and SF I'd go for SF. I'm not just saying that to reassure you, I really would.

spudmasher, do you teach in a SE London school then?

It seems a shame that this woman has got you so worried (it is a big decision about which school you choose for your child but as others have pointed out not irreversible) about your decision. She doesn't sound like she really knows what she is talking about - just all about justifying her own decision. I hope you come to a decision you are happy with and that your DD enjoys school.

hi

writing from work now...but I think I have had very good comments here, I agree.

I know why I chose the school and i seemed to have forgotten all about it, and the words of doom of that lady keep sneaking into my head.

Like "she will not get into a 'good' secondary school later on because she has gone to SF, and oh god perish the the thought that she will loose out on academic achievement (reputable university and so on) her reasoning ( and that of the majority of parents when choosing the schools, it seems) implies that I have precluded my child from becoming a doctor or a lawyer....he said that a 'friend' of hers moved her kid to CD and found that the kid was behind.

I thought SF was warm, inclusive, well resourced, that kind of school I would fit in as a parent as well, and i would want to get involved with, very much strong on creativity it seemed. I thought this school has got potential and could become a very good school, it just has a reputation problem. Naive?

Ignore the secondary school thing. It doesn't make any difference which primary school you go to - it's all to do with proximity to where you live. Unless you live in an 11+ area, in which case, you might need to "top up" a bit when she gets to year 6. But you'd have to do that whatever school she went to - most people do.

exrebel - it sounds as if she was actually bolstering and justifying her own choice of schoolbecause she is secretly aware and a little self-conscious that her choice has included an element of prejudiced snobbery in it!!

good point why did not i think of that?

I have lost my brain

It's also very common for parents to work hard to try and preserve the reputation of 'their' school by deterring committed families 'like them' from breaking away and giving a 'rival' school a good hearing!

exrebel - I have been in a similar position of second-guessing my choice because of comments made by other parents.

Your daughter's future school sounds lovely. I also agree that it would be unlikely to have a breakfast and after school club unless it had a high enough proportion of parents who work. Once your daughter is at the school, you'll be able to make your own judgement and annoy this other woman (hopefully) by saying you are very happy with the school and your dughter is flourishing.

so you thought about it a lot, talked to people, looked at the schools and made your decision - then you panicked about it being maybe the wrong decision. Sounds perfectly normal to me. Doesn't everyone do that?

I think you got some very good advice on here. I agree with LIZ, go and have another very good look at the school. I also agree with frogs, you don't have just a short time to find an alternative so you needn't panic but you should get to work, put her name down on waiting lists now, keep calling to check if a place is available, start school and STILL look around.

FWIW to be really honest with you, I would not send my dc there because the academic side of things is very important to me. I would not put dd somewhere where I felt she is likely to be held back. You could, like LIZ suggested, meet the head and discuss things like that with her.

As a single mum working full-time, you need a school where your dc is coping and achieving well without too much input from you at home - because honestly when are you going to do it? I live in Germany and don't work. My dd's school (mornings only) is supposed to be good, there are only 2 non-German kids in the class and they're all middle-class education-conscious families. They learn hardly anything at school, I have to teach her everything myself in the afternoons. I can teach her, I have time to teach her and I find it easy to do but I do wonder sometimes what the point is in sending her to school if I have to spend afternoons teaching her everything myself. No way could I do it if I worked full-time.

I was talking to my next door neighbour last weekend about schools. She like me plans to send his dc to the local school so they can walk there and go to the park on the way home. She like me went to the local school (not the same one, we grew up 16,000 apart) she is now a doctor, I have a ridiculous amount of tertiary education.

Is the voice of doom a professional herself, or like all the other voices of doom I have met had a string of crappy part time jobs and never really finished any exams.

I think it's easier to feel good about the system if you were one of it's successes.

Sandy - what do you mean you have to teach her everything in the afternoons? Do you mean there's stuff that she's supposed to be learning and she isn't because the teaching is so bad?

well she's only year 1 so early days yet (ie 6 and they start school at 6) but yes, I see from the books what they are supposed to doing and I have to teach her everything myself from scratch.

Eh! Have I missed something SandyS. The academic side is very important to you yet you are so disappointed in your child's school you end up spending the afternoon teaching her. I can't match those two statements up.

exrebel, just to let you know re. the word of mouth thing, I've heard far worse things about CD than about SF! I know two mums with kids at CD and they're not happy with it at all. I don't know anybody at SF but when I visited it (we were going to move to your area about 6 months ago but then moved closer to where we were already) I really liked it, especially the focus on arts. They had fabulous day trips out too if I remember. And the multi-cultural aspect will be great. Dd's school is very mixed culturally and I like that, she comes home with all kinds of information about different people and cultures. Although AS is quite high on the league tables, I didn't choose it for that but for the very friendly atmosphere and general cheerfulness of the pupils.

In your area I've heard CS is meant to be a very good school but it looks pretty huge. And F?

Another thought. Parental gossip is often years out of date too. Schools can have bad reputations for longer than they deserve. They can also trade on past glories for quite a while.

Sssandy - there is nothing, except the views of a mother whose child doesn't go to the school, to suggest that Exrebels choice of school WILL hold her dd back academically!

Exrebel - I am aware that I am probably sounding very laid back and laissex-faire about all this. believe me, in the school choosing and negotiating period, I was obsessed and frantic over every detail, potential or imagined detail....but now I see quite clearly that you would have to be a clairvoyant to guarantee the right school. There are so many variables. I know people who fought tooth and nal to get a child into a particular school - and then found it didn't actually suit them. I know of children who have been very very happy in a school for a couple of years, and then the child's personality or needs cahnge - or the school or class change, and it no longer works. I know of people who were distraught and miserable at the school they had been allocated and now would not change for love nor money. DS is in a school which was the favoureed option over the other one v nearby by many parents - and last year the 'second choice' (for many - not for many others, of course) did better in the league tables. Some children thrive in very structured, even competitive environments, some in a more relaxed informal style. And do much depends on the particular friends and intake. In many respects it is a lottery - and the best you can do is decide what is important to you and go with your instincts.
then keep an open mind and make any further decision in the future should you need to.

Good luck!