Hi!
I am looking for others' opinions on my plans. I would appreciate it if you could give me your view on this. I am trying to make a decision, but my partner doesn’t agree with me. We have a 15-year-old son who is doing well in school. We live on a very small island where he has a great group of friends.
Recently, he started playing football on the mainland, which involves a lot of traveling and catching the 8am ferry the next morning after training to get to school. That means he needs to be up at 6am I don’t really like living on the island anymore, and it would suit me if our son moved to a school where everything is nearby. We have a house on the mainland that we could use. My partner doesn’t think this is a good idea. He believes our son’s education will suffer. Our son isn’t in an amazing school; in the rankings, this school is somewhere at the bottom, but it's on the island where everyone knows everyone and there is a very small community.
My partner thinks that our son’s education will be neglected if he changes schools. He is worried that our son won’t have nice friends and may not be accepted. I don’t understand why because he would be going to a bigger community with surely more kids like him. Our son is very good at sports and is popular for that reason. I am not worried, as he has never had a problem fitting into different groups. Last year, he played football on a totally new team and never felt like an outsider, maybe because his teammates were nice and he was lucky.
Anyway, after summer, I plan to enroll my son in a new school for his final years of high school. These will be exam years, and my partner is worried that our son will not do well in his exams. I think he will do the same or maybe even better in the new school. This is where we don’t agree. I am not British and was brought up differently, so I even wonder if I’m thinking correctly. My partner’s family doesn’t agree with me either. I just wanted to see others' opinions to get a bigger picture.
Can you please give me your opinion on this? Do you think moving my son at the start of S4 would be a bad move? He said he would rather stay with his friends but is happy to move schools if it makes life easier. Our son has a strong character, is polite, and makes friends easily.
I don’t want to stay on the island, and I feel it would be the best move for me, but I want it to be the best move for our son as well. He would be able to go to games and training and have more time for studying at the same time. If he stays on the island, he will probably have to give up the good team he is playing on this season. But I don’t want to ruin his education because of football, even though he loves it and I love him playing! I take him to all his training now, and it would be easier for me if we moved. Do you think his eduction would suffer?
Thank you if you managed to read all of this. I appreciate your honest opinion.