Can't decide on which school and am I getting overly pissed off with the details?

[newlifenewname]

I have to decide on which school to send dd to in Sept. She is moving up to Juniors. Since she started her current school in January we have moved house and now have a school that is closer. The school that is near us is the same school at which ds2 attends nursery.

Ds1 is in Year 1 and would either have to change schools at an unnatural point, unlike his sister so that they are all at the same school or I'd have to do the impossible getting 3 children to 2 schools 20 mins apart.

I'm not sure I have a major preference or either school. The nearest one is a tiny village school which caters from nursery through to age 11. It has less resources, is friendlier, but has some cross year teaching.

School further away means ds2 and dd get to stay with friends, has good resources, excellent music facilities...

The things that grate are the over emphasis on stats and SATs, how many freaking whiteboards/laptops they have and how shiny the new lino is.

'Citizenship' seemed to involve, purely, choosing a charity and having the ability to raise lots of money for said charity.

In fact, money and spending seems quite a preoccupation for the head.

School uniform: fine, but INSISTENCE on logo-ed items. Unnecessary imo.

I think I know I'm not that keen on this school but the opportunity to let the children remain settled with their friends is a big factor.

Does the secondary school in your area depend on catchment or feeder schools? If it's feeder school based, it might be worth checking out the secondary schools those primary schools feed into. I know it's a long way off for your kids, but you are likely to still be living there then. Might help you make your decision.

I'm not a big fan of small village schools because I worry that the jump to a large secondary school might be too vast. DS is moving up to middle school (we're in a 3-tier area) & he went to a large 1st school, but the middle school is very large. He has a friend who went to a small village school & he's going to be at the same middle school. He's in the same class as his little brother, who's in Yr3, since they have cross year teaching. At the open day, he was overwhelmed but not DS. Having chatted to his mum in the past, he's used to getting along with everyone in his class since it's so small. He might be a bit surprised at the group dynamics of a much bigger class.

You've got the advantage of knowing what the teaching, etc. are like in 1 of the schools. Do you think they're getting a good education there? If DS1 is like my DS, he'll fall in & out with friends anyway, so he'll probably have a different group of friends by Yr4 than he has now.

Thanks for your post Sammy3, it has helped me to summarise the issues.

Broadly, I think it comes down to friends, cross year group teaching, and village school smallness against sticking with what we know which isn't necessarily better.

Like you say, friends change which then leaves me with the large school/small school issues along with unfamiliarity with the new school.