how many secondary schools did you look at?

[hatwoman]

wondering if i'm being unreasonable in only looking at one...I very much doubt looking at the others would change my mind. (The other options would all mean taking dd away from her friends which we did already - with some difficulty - by moving 18 months ago; one of them is a church school and way too far away with no public transport; one of them is private when I'm a leftie at heart; one of them is too far away]. The school we've looked at is good, and is exactly the kind of school I've always said - in theory - that I'd want dds to go to - but part of me feels it's not quite right to make a decision without more research. I think I'm just a bit taken back by the enormity of my pfb growing up...

Hat we just looked at one and we had actually already applied to it!

We live in a middle class lovely area of town and the school is 5 mins round the corner. It is the one the vast majority of kids from DS1's junior school go to, along with DC from at least 2 other local schools where he knows/knew a lot of people (thru cricket, Scouts etc etc).

It gets good results (not surprsing given the catchment) and is one of the higher-achieving schools in the city FWIW.

I honestly couldn't see the point of looking at other schools when they would mean a bus ride/long cycle; there would be no-one there he knew; the results etc are generally poorer; who knows what the teaching is like after all?

Yes I suppose some may have nicer buildings (our BSF has been cancelled ) but it just seemed like a no-brainer. Some DC from DS1's school went to a comp in the next village which is Outstanding and one of the sought-after schools in the area. We are not in catchment but I'm guessing may well have got a place. But tbh the last thing I want for him is a 15 min bus journey each day to an academic school where I suspect he would quickly sink.

DH and I both had mega journeys to secondary (esp DH) and all our pals lived miles away so we never saw them. DS1 can walk round to a friend's house from school; that has a lot to recommend it IMO.

Funnily enough cecily we are in an urban area (sort of - small city) tho there aren't really many walkable options.

I really hate open evenings - so busy and so crowded. So mostly sent dh
He visited 2 in yr4 and 2 in yr5 and we all went to the open day of the local inde school in yr5.

We visited our favourite two during the school day in yr5 (just me and dh, not ds1).

Then we took ds1 in yr6 to the open evenings of those two schools before applying.

[Roisin waves to Clary! - quick hijack]
Is your ds just in yr7? Hope he's settled well.
ds2 was nervous about starting as none of his mates got in, but he's astonishingly happy and confident there already. It feels as though he's been there 3 years not 3 weeks.

Hi Roisin

Yes he's just in yr 7. Been a bit of a nightmare tbh. He really struggles to note down his homework and gets really uptight when I ask him to do it

I asked the school to check he had noted down homework (eg he came home with just 8 of the 10 spellings he needed ) and today found a teacher had clearly made all the notes in his RE lesson! Like, two pages!! Not sure why DS couldn't do some of it .

His writing and reading comp have always been a problem, he had a good year 6 but we all knew he would find yr 7 hard

Still he says he likes the lessons, esp science

I don't think any of this is the school's fault; it's all abotu DS and his inability to concentrate/laziness/avoidance of work. We have an apt with the medics in half term.

I've sent you a PM Clary.

If we had a decent state secondary on our doorstep I doubt we'd have bothered looking elsewhere. As it is, we seem to have spent this September and last September looking around schools, and we're not done yet. Can't wait for it all to be over with.

Just been to our first open evening. Quite interesting as it is the school our dd has already been at and we know they are very good, so thought it would be interesting to see how they present at an open evening. And they did present well. What we saw is pretty much what dd has been telling us: pleasant staff, good pupil-teacher relations, stimulating atmosphere. So tonight we are off to a school we know nothing about to see how that compares.

But LEA admissions officer was very reassuring and said we would almost certainly get a place for ds on the sibling rule alone, let alone his disability (same as dd's). Which is just as well, don't think I could go through the appeals process again.

DS1 is as I've been told repeatedly "very bright" so we've gone through the 11+ process and looked at two super selective grammars. Also looked at our local catchment comp which is ok but just average and one other specialist comp which I really liked.

Glad I have looked at the options and feel reassured about the choices (we only have 4).

We are lucky enough to be reasonably ok even if he gets his last choice.

The only thing is that after seeing the specialist comp I would in a way now rather he went there as DS2 would also be able to go - hence the stillconfused...

Just done another one and that was most revealing! On the phone they assured us that they had full disabled access and that several disabled children were being educated successfully at the school; also that the children do not have to walk long distances (all relevant to ds' condition). The SENCO stared at us in disbelief when we mentioned this! Apparently they walk long distances, and there is only a lift in one building, there have been disabled children, but they have had to be taught separately in the main building for part of the school day.

Friends have said that the school has a lovely ethos but all that was mentioned in the talks was how much money had been spent on their new gym and their IT suites, the corridors were full of enormous posters about How Do I get an A* (no sign that you are valued if you don't), the classrooms were full the college's own students hogging the equipment and ignoring the visitors, the teachers made no attempt to initiate conversation or inform about their subject, and the SENCO seemed really negative. He asked ds about his grades which I was not happy about either(got a distinct feeling that if he had learning difficulties- which he doesn't- they would have tried to make us feel unwelcome and hoped we chose somewhere else.

This is the Ofsted Outstanding secondary- it won't be on our application.