Anyone else finding choosing a primary school for their 4 year old overwhelming?

[Namechange13101]

Just had a tour around our 4th primary school (and last of our options) for DD4 who is off to reception in September 2023 and I feel so overwhelmed at having to make a decision on somewhere that she will be likely attending for 7 years.

I'm spoilt for choice really as have 4 good and 1 outstanding primary that she is highly likely to get into but i just feel so overwhelmed and anxious about the whole decision. My husband and I were hoping that there would be a clear front runner in terms of feel and facilities but I'm just so confused and don't know which to go for, options are as follows:

School one: Small village school with good ofsted, literally next door to our house, intake of 15 ( but currently only 8 in reception, and mixed classed of 2 years after reception) limited facilities and extra opportunities, although they are expanding these. Got a nice feel for it and very tailored towards individual children due to size.

School 2: Large Village school (5 minute drive, but on way to DS's nursery) good ofsted, intake of 30 and single year classes. Better facilities e.g. science lab, music room and more extra clubs and opportunities such as learning instrument etc. Lovely feel to it, with children confident to answer our questions and explain what they were doing in the classroom.

School 3: Large village school (8 minute drive, also on route to nursery) good ofsted, intake of 23, Reception is with pre-school and then single year groups after this, reasonable facilities, but executive head seemed very corporate and just didn't get a nice vibe, although friends whose kids are there like the school but not the executive head.

School 4: Small village school with outstanding ofsted (but not a recent one) 6 minute drive in opposite direction to nursery but on the way to work. Single year groups but limited facilities, however some additional extracurricular clubs and activities.

Leaning towards 2, 1 and then 4 but not sure whether i should be putting more weight to the facilities and opportunities available to my DD or the general feel and vibe that i got!

Anyone else in a similar position or anyone got any advice on what they would do or how they chose a school for reception?? Just feel that so much is riding on this and its making me feel so anxious and unable to see the wood for the trees so to speak!

Where I am schools rank the applicants against their admissions criteria, then the council somehow figures it out so everyone only gets one offer, which will be your highest preference that has a place so could be first, 6th or if very unlucky none of your choices in which case they'll allocate somewhere that still has spaces.

Definitely put 2 in the first slot. You are completely right to ignore an old Ofsted - my dd went to an outstanding school, the Ofsted is now 11 years old. Her school was certainly NOT outstanding and it is really shocking they still fly the banner outside now i know what goes on inside!

My ds will go to a school 8 mins walk away. It is a 2 form entry with fantastic facilities, loads of class trips, a lovely HT who was previously deputy head who has arrived in her role buzzing with ideas.

Good signs are:

• a thriving PTA
• HT who you feel you will have confidence in, and isnt afraid of change
• an experienced senior leadership team
• finding money for TAs and some to spare, ideally, for 1:1 for struggling kids (this benefits the WHOLE class as the slower learners get the support they need to keep up)
• look online for % of budget spent on substitute teachers. Ask the school how much they rely on subs just to avoid the core staff from having a nervous breakdown. My dd had SO many subs and lots of classes had teachers quitting mid-year.

If there isnt much extracurricular opportunity in your village then a huge YES to this being important in school. It doenst have to be fancy - cross country round the school field and recorder lessons are just as good as a swimming pool and a Lego builders club. But there should be lots of choice.

It is very hard to get a real feel unless you know plenty of parents at the school. One kid can thrive when another can sink in the same class so just asking one or two parents is no help.

School 2 sounds great the way you're describing it.

I'm also stressed about this!

We like three oversubscribed schools on the edge of the nearby city who market themselves on academic standards and extracurricular offers. We will probably get offered a place at one of the undersubscribed village schools where the head mainly talked about how everyone was related to everyone else and didn't mention phonics.

One of our possible options is to choose a school "for now" and plan to transfer at the end of Y2, as the undersubscribed schools seem either to have good ks1 facilities or good ks2 but not both.

Assuming you are in England, then all state primary admissions work in the same way. You will get one offer on offer day, which will be the school highest up your preference list that can offer you a place.

The order of your preferences is only taken into consideration if more than one school on your list could offer you a place when they first rank all applicants. Then you get the highest ranked offer.

If none of your preferences can offer you a place, your LEA will make you an offer from another school that has spaces once it has offered to all who wanted it.

If you are unhappy with your offer, you can go on waiting lists. It is always advisable to accept the offer though, as the LEA don't have to offer anything else, so you could find yourself schoolless if waiting lists don't come up with anything.

This is also something to bear in mind as the govt are unlikely to keep funding all these schools if they remain undersubscribed so bear in mind the possibility of smaller ones closing or having classes closed/more mixed year groups. Two of our local schools shut classes this past year due to falling numbers, even though they are generally very well regarded and popular schools.

As Greentrees says, if you genuinely have 4 undersubscribed schools close by, that's really not sustainable. School 1, for example, cannot be financially viable, especially with energy cost increases as well as the unfunded teacher pay increases. 4 may not be much better depending on class size.

Schools are essentially funded on the assumption of around 30 children to one full time teacher. It is more complicated than that, with top ups and local variations, but a school running with classes of 15 or less per teacher just isn't going to make ends meet.

This is why these small schools end up closing. Parents don't want their child to join a small cohort, so it gets even smaller and ends up a slippery slope.
It's such a shame, because often the small village schools are the better schools.

@TMarieClara I should remember this because it was literally less than a year ago since we last applied for reception - but it’s a bit fuzzy in my head 😄 I’m quite sure it was just one offer, which will hopefully be your first preference. Ours was. You then have a certain amount of days to accept - but it is really more of a formality, you can appeal if you really think it’s not going to work for you, but you need a very good reason or they won’t budge on it. Someone I knew was offered a school on the other side of quite a big town they lived in, with traffic notoriously bad and they would then have had to drive the opposite way again to get to work (and not on time!), so really not feasible - it wasn’t even any of their preferences! But I think this is a very rare thing to happen though, most people get their first or second preference.

I’m sure now it wasn’t an acceptance from all three schools - it’s doesn’t really make sense to do it that way as the numbers won’t work out, there just aren’t enough places to try and give out multiple offers. But the system can vary depending on where you live.

I’d go for 2 as well. And then 1 as second choice as it’s convenient for you while you sit on the waiting list for school 2.

The system doesn't vary on where you live if you are in England (and I think Wales too but prepared to be corrected on that)- it is the same across the country. You get one offer as you said, based on an equal preference system in which the schools don't know where you listed them on the form and this doesn't have an impact on whether they can accept you- the only time the order you list the schools matters is if more than one school is able to offer you a place, in which case you will be offered the one you listed highest. This is why you should always list schools in your genuine order of preference, including somewhere at least one school you can be fairly sure of gaining a place at (if that exists!). It is still a common misconception that schools prioritise people who put them first but this isn't true, and hasn't been the case for at least 15 years.

As you said, infant appeals are very difficult to win as most classes are at 30, which is the infant class size limit. It becomes slightly more flexible at junior level and beyond, but I don't think traffic/transport issues would have much of an impact at any level (though prepared for the appeals experts to correct me on this!).