What did your child's primary school of choice have that others didn't?

[Salome61]

Hello, my daughter has a choice of 5 primary schools within reasonable distance of where she lives. All of them got a 'Good' Ofsted report. The nearest is a Catholic school.

How did you choose your child's primary school please? Do you do a comparison of the facilities?

We're only in catchment for 1 school and I didn't even visit it due to its terrible and deserved reputation.

We do however live near about 20 primary schools we could have chosen. We visited the 4 we liked the look of the most, nothing to do with location. I don't care about the distance if it's the best school for us.

The school we actually chose is the furthest one we looked at, a 17 minute drive away. It has such a friendly, warm, welcoming atmosphere. It's a one form intake, rural village school, strong emphasis on sport and a great curriculum. Fantastic pastoral and wraparound care too. It has such a good reputation, it is now getting children leaving other schools to go there. My husband works in primary education and has been told that teachers in the area all want to work there!

So quite a list of reasons but the main one is I felt it suited our son the best and he would be happiest there. Great outdoor areas and a huge green space, playing field, playground and countryside all around that they explore.

I love the car journey, we get to chat, he has a snack and relaxes on the way home and we start our evening chilled out and happy.

Small school. Single class intake. Closest to walk to. Dedicated mental health provision. Mindfulness and mental health teachers. Huge focus on well-being

My younger daughter was not remotely academic. She was supposed to be transferring to a pretty old fashioned, small CoE junior school but I moved her to another junior school nearby which had its own swimming pool. It also had a lot of pastoral support and clubs.

Lots of outside space, a friendly feel and a 5 minute walk from home.

An ethos about the whole child, they place lots of effort on confidence and resilience building. Rather than occasional "forest school" sessions they get waterproofs on and get lessons outside whenever they want. They're happiest when the kids are muddy and up trees. We turned down private school for this reason.

Not religious.

Good results and glowing ofsteds without sitting on their laurels or feeling like a hot house.

We’re half way between two, he went to the small one, but had no friends, he had some out of school at the big one and so we moved him at the end of year 1 and he’s thrived. It also has a visionary head, who surprisingly didn’t say much at the open day, had In seen him I may well have gone for that first time.

It is a 2 minute walk away

It had really good facilities and good reports. I was happy with the education mine got. There was a smaller school that I think might have suited my dd1 more as it seemed more caring. I'd have had to drive instead of walk though and parking would have been a nightmare as there were 4 different schools on the same site.

We were equidistant between 3. One I ruled out as being religious (we're not) and really struggled to chose between the other two as one was all through (I liked this) and one was separate infants (which I loved) and juniors (ok, but didn't like as much as the others). As it was actually a mid-year transfer due to a house move I put both on the form and went with the one that came up first, which was the all through. It turns out they are great for SEN (which was something I didn't know I needed at the time) and I've been very happy.