New to U.K. education system....advice needed on school choice

[Humboldthny]

We will likely be moving from the states to the area west of Manchester this summer. Our daughter will be entering Year 11 (our 10th grade) in Fall 2019. From the looks of things, every single school in the area is oversubscribed except for a couple of religious schools which we would prefer to avoid. Very few of the schools we are looking at do you apply directly to the school, the rest are through the council borough. Can anyone provide insight on what happens when all secondary schools are oversubscribed? How do they decide where to assign your child? My husband and I will be traveling to the area to get familiar with the area...I’ll be hopefully visiting schools. What questions might I not know to ask? Our daughter is a very good student in a pre-engineering/advanced mathematics program at a private school (i.e. we pay tuition) here, so I’m concerned about her getting dumped in a low performing school. Thanks for any insight you can provide!

Another thought occurs

Where do you see your daughter going to university? If you are here for 3-5 years you may qualify for home fees on the basis of residence but you should check that - overseas student fees are £££££

If you are looking to go back to US for university support fir SAT /ACT is minimal here in the UK without paying for specialist courses. Sixth form studies (16-18) are far more limited (3 subjects) than expected in the US and so depending on subjects chosen keeping up to speed for SAT may be tricky.

Given that private schools are likely to be the only ones who have any chance of accommodating your needs, you normally pay about a third as much as typical UK school fees anyway but would expect to do so until school leaving if you stayed in the states, I think you are being unreasonable to rule this out as unaffordable. you aren't poor, you just need to prioritise. Relocating across the Atlantic does cost a lot of money and your decision is going to have a serious impact on your child's long-term wellbeing if you set her on a path to being in the UK school system at age 16 with no GCSEs. If a school that offers the best option is expensive then get out a loan - its only for a year and you can already cover some of it from your normal fee budget and repay it at the rate you normally pay fees in the USA. in 2020 she can then attend a state sixth form college for free so you pay off the loan and are then ready to support her at uni if that is her path in 2022.

"overseas student fees are £££££"

plus, I think that the 'normal' student loans are not available. So yes, very important as pp says to check the UK university fees position (although remembering that rules can always change...)

I live in Manchester. Where exactly will you be living? There are many many school she could attend. The LA in the area will be obliged to find a place for your DD but it might not be a school you pull normally choose. However when's she is in Year 12, she could enrol at the local college to take her GCSEs or A Levels. It will be important for her to get into a school so that she can meet new friends. Home schooling in this circumstance will be very isolating for her.
If she doesn't get her exams this year, don't panic, it's not the end of the world!

"If she doesn't get her exams this year, don't panic, it's not the end of the world!"

No never the end of the world, though some state sixth forms (most?), and private sixth forms, do set GCSE requirements for entry.

So to take GCSEs and do badly (and starting in yr 11 it could be difficult to do well, at least in the content heavy ones) may limit sixth form choices, mean compulsory resits etc. (If you don't do gcses at all ie - if you're overseas in yr 11, or other reasons such as home ed - it may be different - there could be different entry criteria. So maybe another thing to check is the sixth form entry criteria at potential schools and colleges.)

CGP do revision guides covering most GCSE subjects. They would give an idea of what is covered in GCSE. They are used quite a lot by GCSE students in England.

I would agree that you need to be looking at private schools but even there you could face difficulties. They will have the ability to be more flexible but they are also typically likely to be working at a higher level which will make catching up even more difficult. School fees will typically be circa £15-20k per annum.

Just to stress, nobody is doubting that your dd might be very intellectually capable. That isn't the issue. The issue is the sheer amount of content she would need to get through in order to take and perform well in the exams. She will have missed more than half of the work required to take the exams. These are 2 year courses. Lots of schools cover the work over three years, particularly in the core subjects and by the time your DD starts they will have almost finished. My DSs go to a selective independent school and they start the GCSE content in year 9. By the second term of Year 11 they are finished and are revising and extending.

IMO you need to find a school asap and find out which exam syllabus they are working to. You can't tell from the location of the school. I'd then start her on the curriculum already. In fact I'd even consider taking her out of her current school and getting private tuition whilst you're still in the US on the UK syllabus content.

My DN has done this the other way around and DSis found that although he was bright, the syllabus in the US was just so completely different to the UK that it took an enormous amount of work to get him up to speed.

She will probably be required to take around 10 subjects

maths
english language
english literature (find out the syllabus immediately and get her to read the books)
chemistry
biology
physics
history or geography (or both and only two sciences - history would I suspect be a tricky option here since the content is unlikely to be stuff she is familiar with)
a modern foreign language (french, german or spanish - presumably she's done spanish?)
something else - typically something like art, DT, drama (none of which she would have time to cover now due to the coursework content) or computing, food technology etc (which might be doable). At a private school latin is likely to be an option in this category. Latin GCSE is part language and part analysis of literature.

If it was my child I'd look at staying in the US for another year as the first option. You are moving her at the worst possible time for the UK system. If you have to move then I'd look at a private school and push for her only to take 8 GSCEs so that she can use the free periods supervised in the library to cover the content she's missed (not as likely to be possible in a state school where they are unlikely to have a FT librarian). I'd also be getting her a tutor (circa £30-£40 an hour)

I’d say online schooling - Interhigh is the biggest school but there are several others - would be the best option. It’s only around a third of the price of a private school and she could start in year 10 and do the two year GCSE course, getting a full set of GCSEs.

She’d then be able to go to a state sixth form with no issues and just be a year older than her peers (which won’t be too noticeable).

Look at Further Education colleges. Generally aimed at 16-19 year olds but some will take from 14. Also see if there are any 14-18 schools (known as UTCs) in Manchester. As everyone starts there new at Year 10 they may accept her.

Or a Studio School which is like a UTC but smaller.

Yes, FE colleges by us take home educated students for years 10 and 11 to do a limited number of GCSEs on a part time timetable (4-5 max).

The problem with this is that the HE students often come in with some significant gaps, some have SEN and the colleges also take students who’ve been excluded from mainstream schools alongside them. This means there can be disruptive behaviour and also, I’m not sure the brighter students are stretched. The bright HE girl I know who did her GCSEs last year did surprisingly badly.

I’d say Interhigh was a better option. The only downside would be socialising but you’d have to find other outlets for that - youth groups, sport etc

The social side will be essentially two terms and two terms in which most of her peers will be busy studying so although home education would be isolating it probably isn't losing a lot. I think Interhigh students do socialise in real life too and I would have thought Manchester would be large enough to have some students to mix with. Sixth form (confusingly yr12) is a more natural time to join a school. I would look for activities that she can do outside of school for socialising. The good thing about distance learning is that she can start now and she should only be a term behind, which she should be able to catch up. If she is very academic and looking for a University education then I would aim for at least 8 GCSEs, those are the marks that the Universities will be looking for. Agree with pp to probably avoid History as it is content heavy and UK centric. Many places let you do A-level history without doing GCSE so it shouldn't affect her future options.

Agreed, she could start the GCSE courses now so it would only be a year of home ed. If using Interhigh though, it might make sense to go back into year 10 in Sept and do the full two years. It’s £3.300 a year for 8 GCSEs which would set her up for whatever she wanted to do at sixth form level. It would give that extra year to get used to the exam technique and different expectations too.

I think that’s what i’d do in your shoes. I’ve looked into online schooling quite thoroughly in the past as ds was home educated for upper primary and I wasn’t sure if he’d cope in secondary so it was my fall back. Their results are pretty solid and they offer all the academic subjects except no Latin.

You may have to consider moving to a more affluent area or boarding. The thing about state schools in Britain is that they are class filtered. The British don’t like to admit it but it’s true. Expensive postcodes and onerous admissions procedures enable middle class parents to send their children to middle class majority schools. Places in these schools are very hard to come by. The other schools tend to be a bit dire. You also need to consider cultural differences. If you intend for your dd to live in Britain then she will need to learn British manners, American manners will hold her back (did I mention how classist the British are?) private boarding schools are by far the best place to do that. Britain is very different to America.

Also the Tatler good schools guide can be a good place to start

If you’re paying private now could you have her transfer to a British school in the US with the aim of prepping her for 8 GCSE’s when you move to the UK?

Maybe 5 yrs ago, someone I knew in UK transferred son from (failing) private school to start yr11 in an English state school. He hadn't previously studied the same gCSE syllabuses offered by the state school. He came out with decent GCSE grades. I wouldn't rely on everything this thread says: I'd ring each of the schools up myself & ask them if it's possible to get her in & how would they manage her timetable. You'll get some schools with no idea but others with a sharp HeadTeacher's PA who will try hard to help you.

Come to think of it, there was a (refugee almost 16yo) girl started yr10 at DD's school. She was allowed to attend one year below (which is unusual here) & made good friends.

It's also possible you'll be referred to 6thFColleges where your daughter could take the intense 1 yr GCSE programme. She'll be in with kids mostly 1 yr older who aren't high achievers, but otherwise get the basics to then go to regular A-levels afterwards if you stay that long.

I will say what you’re trying to do is the equivalent to moving to the states in grade 12, having never studied any of the syllabus and expecting to be able to finish high school with AP everything and excellent SAT scores from a standing start. Except in the UK the isn’t a specific school that has to take her. It’s theoretically possible but you’re probably looking at downgrading from Yale to the local college at the next stage.

School wise I wouldn’t move my child between the systems at 15 unless our lives were in danger.

Much better to leave her in the states with family or friends to finish high school. Especially as you’ve said this is a short term move.

It will be difficult but it’s not all doom and gloom. It is likely that she will have covered similar in maths and science so that is potentially 4 subjects that are very doable. Some schools offer Latin or will facilitate the sitting of the exam even if they don’t provide the teaching. Does she have a MFL? Spanish? With Latin and a MFL she is up to 6 subjects that are not too bad. I wouldn’t recommend history because the workload is vast and it’s likely to be stuff she hasn’t covered. She must do English but the tricky thing is, there are different exam boards, and then each exam board has a choice of texts to study. In dds school different English groups are studying different texts. She could technically familiarise herself with all the texts between now and sept but it would be fairly crucial to find out exactly what her new school is teaching asap so she can actually study the texts. Geography is another possible, but again she needs to study the correct exam board and then she may be able to do one of the more creative/practical subjects so long as it’s not too coursework heavy. Is she any good at music or drama? She may be better going for 7 or 8 decent passes than stretching to too many subjects.
Ideally you would move before the end of the academic year so you can have a place organised and she can study the correct work over the summer holiday. Doing one year of private would have the advantage of being able to organise a place sooner rather than later so you would know what she needs to study. You can buy revision guides for all subjects (Amazon). Some, but not all, are exam board specific. There are smaller guides for English based on specific texts. You can also get past papers online but as the system has recently been overhauled then there isn’t an abundance. I would get her started right now on the maths and science curricula because you know she will be studying those regardless.

Rather than switch system for the final year of GCSEs why not leave her in the US system until the end of Year 11 / Grade 10 and then switch her for sixth form. It is possible that with her grade transcript that she would be able to persuade a UK sixth form to take her. Be warned though, the drop to just 3 subjects for A- Level is a huge change from the wider curriculum studied in the US. There are plenty of online US based education options available to you if you choose to home school for the year instead of paying for UK private school. This will come at a cost too, but probably closer to what you currently pay for US private school.

I have taught a student who transferred from the US to the UK systems at 16. She took and passed an IB Diploma - not with stellar grades - but considering she came in with no revision skills, having not taken a single formal exam, not bad! This was in a superselective state grammar, but one that was flexible about the occasional student joining at 16 with non standard qualifications.

I'd look at this the other way round - where would you send her for sixth form (year 12 and 13). What would you need to do to meet their entry requirements in a year's time?

Humbold do you want to send me a private message. My children are in a very small state school not far out of Manchester that would take in year 11 ( we have had two start) and is small enough to work intensively with them to help them catch up with the UK system as best as possible.

Have a look at Broadgreen International School. It's an IB school and it looks like they may admit international students without GCSEs. I don't know it all all, but my former IB school would let students take Latin or ab initio (beginner's) foreign language for the compulsory language element.

Abbey College in Manchester city centre does 1 year intensive GCSE courses and has a lot of international students. It's not cheap though. www.abbeymanchester.co.uk/abbey-college-manchester/courses/gcses/

I am somewhat familiar with the US curriculum at least in maths.
OP's curriculum/timetable indicates their DD will have done geometry and algebra 2 before arriving in UK. That is broadly equivalent to, or possibly slightly above, GCSE higher level. So she will arrive already broadly at GCSE higher level in maths. She could look at a recent GCSE past paper to compare standards.
Latin GCSE should also be very doable given the amount of latin on that curriculum.
Joining in year 11 is undoubtedly tricky but I think it would be soul-destroying to put an able student back into year 10. For starters, her maths would stagnate for 2 years and that won't pan out well.
It would be better to think ahead to A levels - what subject choices are of interest? where could she do them and what does she need to get in? Then work back.

A lesser number of GCSE's (5 or more, including the intended A level subjects, English and Maths) taken in one year would probably tick most boxes and clear her way to A level without having to drop down to year 10.
I would be looking at online options or intensive 1-year GCSE's as others have said.