Year 9, moving to surrey - help!

[meagle]

After giving up on selling our house last year, have suddenly had 3 offers in last week! Now in a panic about sorting out a good school for averagely bright, mild ASD son. Need somewhere with good pastoral care (and a decent SEN dept). We are looking around Reigate, Dorking, Guildford. Could afford private if necessary - most important is getting the right place for DS, who is already worried about moving. Any feedback gratefully received!

I went to Rodborough, but that was a long time ago! it has had a good rep for a while. It has no sixth form but feed into the well thought of Godalming Sixth form college

I also worked at The Priory and know the SENCO personally. It is a lovely little school, smaller than the others, if you prefer that (Ashcombe and George Abbott are vast!!) and would certainly recommend a look round.

To be honest, any of these schools are good school and I would be happy to send my kids to any of them. Its nice to live in an area with such a lot of choice!

Thanks for the reassurance MC. Priory definitely sounds a closer look. I must admit the size of the others is a little off-putting. In the end, I'm not sure we'll have much choice - it'll be wherever there's a space. .

Yes, I think it comes down to size.

A smaller school does give that family feel (I always felt that at the Priory, kids I'd never taught would say hi to me in the corridor because they felt they knew me)

However, a bigger school will have a wider ranger of option choices at GCSE and especially A level. This is because there are more teacher specialisms there and more kids to make running a class viable.

Really, there is not much between these schools in terms of how good they are! its down to what particularly suits you

Hope it goes well

My DS (ASD) goes to More House in Farnham and it has been wonderful for him. It's only nominally catholic and they do have contact with local girls schools.

Thank you Dizzy but I phoned there and they won't take a year 9 child. We visited Moon Hall last weekend and really liked it but doubtful whether they have a place. Just ruled out Dorking now we have seen how poor the train service is! So pinning hopes on Godalming / Guildford, with Reigate as back up.