Choosing school is causing so much stress

[EagerGreenShaker]

The time has come to register my son for primary school and choosing between 2 is causing me so much stress.

My son is currently in preschool in the next village which is 5 minutes drive away and has a primary school attached to it. My son spends time in the school every week and everyone seems lovely. Always get good vibes from it and it has very good report from the commission report. This will also be the school where all the other kids in my son’s preschool go to.

In our own village, we have a primary school that is couple of minutes walk from the house but not only will he not know anyone going into school but the school also doesn’t get as good a report.

I’m totally torn with what to do. I want to send him to the further away better school with his friends but then I also worry about him making friends in our village. There’s also things like him never getting to walk to school with friends and even if he makes friends with kids in our village then they’ll be hanging around and chatting about stuff going on in school and getting excited about things that he will not be part of.

If going to school in the other village then he would already have some school friends but visiting their house or to want to go out play with them would involve arranged times and drop offs. He can’t just pop to their house or then come to ours.

I wish I had a crystal ball to see how it would work out in 5 years time.

I'd go for the more local school unless there's a big difference. Knowing people already is only an issue for the first week or two. DD was in the same class as her best friend from pre-school but within a few weeks they had both made new friends.
When they get older, having friends in the village is much easier, and those are probably the kids they'll be getting the bus with to secondary in the future - year 7 is often a harder transition.

Be careful how you read the reports/data, and go and look for yourself, and talk to parents of children already there. In particular, sometimes one school gets worse results than another primarily because they have a more deprived intake, and any individual child would do just as well in either school.

Other things to look at that are easily forgotten:

• Secondary school admissions - it may make no difference if they both feed to the same secondary, but just occasionally which primary they were at matters in the admissions criteria, so do check.
• Before/after school care - even if you don't need it now, it may be useful later if your work changes (however be aware that sometimes after-school clubs close, so what you see now is not a guarantee).
• Is either school shrinking fast? Nationally, pupil numbers are dropping, so many reception classes are not full. That seems lovely when they're in a reception class of 15-20, but might not be so good when the school has to cut back on staffing and they're in a mixed year 3/4 class of 35. It doesn't necessarily mean that a bigger school is safer, but if one school is still filling its spaces at the expense of another, it's likely to be the more stable one. (Mixed year classes are not always a bad thing, by the way. Some schools run them extremely successfully.)