dilemma

[itellyouwhat]

We have outgrown our current home and have no option but to move but love the area we are in and will be very sad about leaving it. We just don’t have the extra £200k needed to buy the next step up. We want to move the minimal distance so we can keep our dc in the same primary school. There are two areas close by which are cheaper that we are considering moving to despite not being over-enamoured by either. One of the areas is still within our current catchment for secondary schools (my DS1 will be applying for secondary school later this year) There are two secondary schools within our catchment so there is no guarantee anyway that my DS will go to the same school as his closest friends or get his first choice, but whichever school he did go to he would have some friends and lots of familiar faces from his year. His expectation is that he will go to one of these schools. The other area is in a different catchment for a different secondary school. I think we slightly prefer this area and the houses are bigger with bigger gardens so we would get more for our money. There isn’t an awful lot on the market in our price range at the moment to compare, but a house has just come up in this area which looks ideal and within our price range with money left over to do some work to it0. But my dilemma is that my DS would have to go to the secondary school without any of his friends and without knowing a single sole! Performance wise it’s on a par with one of the schools in our current catchment and I have heard good things about it but won’t get to have a look at it until later this year when we would have hoped to have moved anyway. Which area would you go for?

if your ds is confident enough he will be fine. friendships can change in secondary anyway. if you are friends with his friends parents you can keep in touch with best friends... but if he has anxiety issues or other reasons to worry then that might be different. but even then, you cant guarantee friends for life from primary.

We moved deliberately for a secondary school. My son's friends all went to a different secondary that the primary school fed into. He left behind his best mate since reception, known to me and the other boy's Mum as The Velcro Twins. My son is introverted and has made a lot of new friends since starting year 7 in September.

Don't wait for the open evening, book to see it now. You get a better feel walking round during the day when the pupils and teachers aren't expecting it. We talked to the head of year 7 and he dealt with transition from primary to secondary.

They had a school trip in October for year 7's to ensure everyone is mixed up so that they have the opportunity to make new friends.

Find out what clubs they have at lunch and after school for year 7's, again, another way to make friends.

Oh, forgot to say, staff from the secondary met my son at his primary school, most secondary schools also have a day in July where every child from year 6 spends the day at their secondary (they all happen on the same day here) in their new classroom, with their new teacher. Plus our school did an open evening. Half the new class, so 15 pupils and they did a series of "lessons" so all the kids working together. It was a relief to see ds1 join in and have a laugh with complete strangers. The Minecraft t-shirt the other boys were wearing meant that he knew he had at least one thing in common with them.

I am making a similar move, 2 miles away from my current location. DS will have to go to a secondary where none of his friends will go. I thought long and hard about this, but believe in our case it is positive as DS has behavioural issues and is perceived as naughtly in his current school. I hope it will do him a favour to move away. He will continue his scouts so this will be his connection to his current peers.