State or private for secondary?

[CandyCrush77]

I am sure this has been done to death but am having a bit of a dilemma as to what to do for secondary for DSs who are currently 8 and 6. The local state secondary is not good and so we are looking at either moving house into the catchment area of a good secondary (there are two excellent secondaries about 10-15 minutes away) or going private. We are in London and, thanks to stamp duty, it will cost around 100k to move and buy an equivalent or slightly smaller house in catchment. I had therefore decided we may as well go private but not really keen on the whole ethos of private school and, while we should be able to manage (just) it will be a stretch financially. I think I would go for private if they would definitely be getting a better education but I am not sure the private schools they will get into will be much better than the excellent state options. Interested in hearing from others who have been through this and what they decided.

Is moving out of London altogether an option? To commuter-land (assuming you work in London), carefully selected for great schools & lower than London house prices?

Coffeeismycupoftea: I'm afraid at a number of schools in London you do have to pay your deposit before national offers day. A friend of mine was in this situation because she didn't want to pay a deposit until she heard from Tiffin, but the preferred private school's deadline was about four or five days earlier. She paid because she couldn't risk losing the place, and in the end it didn't matter because she didn't get a Tiffin offer anyway!

I think it depends on the school and how many they have on the waiting list. The super selectives offer places to the top X% but they know they won't get all of those taken up and they'll still be interested in the ones just below that so will want to offer those children places as fast as possible.

I've always heard that Hertfordshire has very good secondary schools.

Cleo, I was talking about two of the schools the OP specifically mentioned, City and UCS. Highgate until last year would honour the state offer day, but then decided that although that would be the date by which you had to accept an offer, if you waited that long you might find there weren't any places left. Most of the North London boys' schools (I think Habs, Merchant Taylor etc as far as I know) do respect the fact that parents need to have all the information before laying out huge amounts of money.

80k, just found out that we are in fact in the catchment for an excellent comp in Hertfordshire, despite being in Islington. I also read the Ofsteds for the 2 other state comps and decided that neither are worth moving for! Think we will take our chances with private and applying to Central Boys (also looks fab but we are definitely out of catchment) and this other school in Herts. Hopefully something will come up!

DAO is insanely difficult to get into - I don't know of any child that's got into there and not walked into the privates (and plenty the other way round). It's also a loooooong commute for a 11-year-old. It's very lovely though and very green.

DAO does look tough, I googled it and there are pages and pages of admission criteria. They are nothing if not transparent! Here is what they say about places for Islington children:

16. I understand that 20 places are allocated to Islington children. How are these places allocated?

A minimum of 20 Islington places are allocated in accordance with our oversubscription criteria in number order. Therefore the number of academic ability places that can be offered to Islington children will vary depending on the number of places being offered under our statement, looked after children, sibling, music or staff criteria. The Governors maintain 2 exam result lists in rank order, one for Islington, and the second for all Local Priority Areas. This ensures that a minimum of 20 places overall are allocated to Islington children each year.

www.damealiceowens.herts.sch.uk/admissions/admissions_faqs.html#priorityareas

My impression is that your son would have to be in the top 15 scorers on the 11+ exam for DAO coming from Islington. If he did that, his younger siblings would basically be guaranteed places.

Not quite. A minimum of 20 places go to Islington kids but there's not a maximum number. If the top 65 academic places were all Islington kids then they'd all go, plus the kids in care, plus the siblings. (Though of course it's not in fact the top 65, it's the top 100 and something because they don't all choose to go).
If however the Islington siblings, the kids in care and the Islington academic/musical kids added up to less than 20, then an Islington kid could get in with a lower mark than a non Islington one.
As far as I understand it... It's one of those v tricky put off the uncommitted parent admissions docs.
Either way, it's v hard to get into. However the exam is in sept so you know if there's a reasonable chance of a place well before the caf has to be in and well before the private school exams.

Oh and all siblings, Islington or otherwise, are guaranteed a place.

Looks very tough and I certainly wouldn't count on a place. The problem is, if we don't move, it would be logical to assume that DSs will not get into any decent state selective schools. They are bright but the chances of getting into Latymer or DAO are teeny. We are out of catchment for any decent comprehensives. Had resigned myself to not moving and going private but just had a conversation with another parent with kids the same age in the same area who said they will definitely be renting to get their kids into one of the decent state secondaries, and that he knows of three other families who plan to do the same. Starting to think there is something in the adage, "if we can't beat em, join em."

@CandyCrush77 ZOMBIE thread but I'm curious what you've decided?

We had the same decision and went for vg state, and I'm so glad we did.

I took my son to a rugby match at the weekend vs a top private school (SW London) and at the end I saw a family walk to the car park with their son (from the private school) and the father said 'Do you want to go home in the Aston with me or in the Disco with Mummy?', then looked at me to see if I was blown away with lust.

I have never ever been so glad to have sent our children state! His boy goes to a school we looked at and my god, I'd hate him to have friends from families like that.

I know that's a one-off, and probably not representative, blah blah, but I know of so many other stories (one private school girl going to another's house and asking the mother what the square footage was, for example) that it does make me happy we took our decision.

You need to have a good state alternative though. I'd suffer the awfulness described above if I had to vs a rough state secondary, for example. But I am very very glad.

Oh god just seen this was a zombie thread, sorry