I am not based in the UK so the system is a little different but basically I need to choose between two options.
For background I am in Switzerland and usually you are not able to choose which Kindergarten your child attends. The school day has a two hour break for lunch where the children either go home or to a school run canteen/wrap around care. In Kindergarten children also only attend half days and can then go to wrap around care after lunch. Not all kindergartens have attached canteens or wrap around care and often children will need to walk from kindergarten to the canteen and back to kindergarten and then to wrap around in the afternoon. This will be unsupervised (as children walking to and from school alone is standard here) but any children attending walk as a group.
In our town there is also one whole day school where all children stay for lunch if there are afternoon classes and kindergarten children also have to attend a minimum of three days wrap around care.
I can choose to apply for the whole day school or to be randomly allocated. The whole day school is a fifteen minute walk away and our closest kindergartens (which we would probably but not definitely be allocated) are only five minutes walk. I will need to use four days of wrap around care including lunch (guaranteed to get whichever school I choose).
I am not sure which to go for. On the one hand I like the idea of my son attending the closest school and having very local friends. I would also be more comfortable with him walking independently sooner. I do not like the idea of walking independently between kindergarten and lunch and it is also not clear how many children will attend this. He would also be attending with all of the older primary kids.
On the other hand I like the idea of him being with largely the same group for school, lunch and after school care. He might not live as close to some of his friends but maybe this would be balanced by seeing them more during wrap around/lunch. It is obviously less convenient being a fifteen minute walk away, although I head in roughly the same direction to get my train.
Apologies for the length of this, I wanted to make sure I had explained the system fully. Any thoughts would be very appreciated!