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!

My DCs State school has taken pupils into year 11 before. What then happens is they devise a special timetable and the pupil is trained to pass about 5 subjects at GCSE rather than the usual 10.
GCSE have a very specific syllabus, and your DD will need to be taught a very specific set of skills and a lot of exam technique.

Maths may be similar but your DD is likely to have "holes" as Maths is taught holistically rather than topic by topic.
English requires specific skills, and coaching in exactly what certain questions are looking for.

But it is a lot of effort for a school and they will be reluctant unless the LA forces them to take such a student. Year 12 is a much better starting point and you can spend 3 years in "sixth form", catching up on GCSEs and then doing A'levels, if necessary.

Yes, I wouldn’t recommend coming in sept and putting her back in year 10- it will be too easy for her in many areas. Either bring her now, go into year 10 and get almost 2 years for gcse; or leave her in the us/ find an American school/ online courses and then join a sixth form in year 12. I wouldn’t cram for a few GCSEs as then those grades might restrict where she can apply for a levels, I’d apply for a levels from an American transcript.

UPDATE:
I’ve contacted the Burrough council for the main area we are looking at and received the following reply....it seems to not be as dire a situation as many here have implied. I will be reaching out to all the secondaries on their list to see how many would consider taking her in Y10, and based on that will visit those schools when we travel in Feb. I’ll also be contacting two neighboring LA’s (those that include Widnes, Sale, Altrincham).

*** 1. If you are moving to a Warrington address and provide proof of the address, Warrington LA has a duty to offer a place at a school, even if all the schools are oversubscribed, however, the place offered may not be at one of your preferred schools. You can apply by completing our in year transfer application forms which are available to download from our website. Applications take 10 school days to process and any offer of a school place has to be taken up within 6 school weeks.

1. Regarding your older child, Warrington LA would offer a place to a Year 11 child. However, as the majority of pupils start their studies for GCSE's in year 10, with some schools starting in Year 9, your child may already be behind with her GCSE studies and whether she could start these studies in year 11 would depend on her current academic achievements. Some pupils of this age who have moved from overseas and therefore not followed the GSCE curriculum, have requested that their child be taught out of cohort. Being taught out of cohort means that, if your request is granted, your child would start the school in Year 10 instead of Year 11. You can apply for your child to be taught out of cohort by writing to the admission authority at your preferred school and request this option, you would need to state your reasons for the request.

1. You can submit an application within the timescales previously given but if you do not have a Warrington address we do not have a duty to offer a place at a school, if all your preferred schools are not in a position to offer a place. Proof of address can be either a copy of the exchange of contract (Proof of purchase) or a signed copy of the tenancy agreement.

1. I would advise that whilst in England you arrange to visit one of your preferred schools as they are in a better position to give you more information about their school and the GCSE curriculum. You will also be able to discuss the option of your child being taught out of cohort. You can of course contact us contact whilst in this country on the telephone number below if you require any further clarification.

I appreciate your difficult circumstances and hope the information above clarifies the situation, if not, please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Our backup plan currently is Interhigh School for Y10/Y11 then applying for Sixth Form at a brick and mortar school. Interhigh costs roughly what we are paying for private here in the states and has live courses where teachers and students can interact with each other.

As far as activities go, our daughter is a highly ranked recurve archer here in the states so we plan on continuing with that and possibly having her get back into figure skating (she was a competitive skater for 10 years before an ankle injury and her coach retiring). She’s also mentioned joining roller derby or a gardening club (I reminded that this might not be the best environment to meet kids her age 😀) or finding youth volunteer opportunities....so.....we’ll figure it all out somehow as we have no flexibility as to when we move.

Thanks for everyone’s responses here....some of you I will be reaching out to in the future via private message. If anyone has anything further to add, please feel free!

I will say that I’m not particularly concerned about an overlap in curriculum if she enters Y10, I think the greatest area for that would be Math and maybe some science, but feel she’ll have enough to deal with when it comes to History and English. Also, the testing (I think you call it revision) schedule at her school is quite rigorous with every subject having alternating quizzes and exams every 5 days, end of term exams that are 2-3 hours long, and she’s also taken a variety of college entrance exams (PSAT, ACT, etc.) through an enrichment program.

That sounds like a good plan. I’d agree that it would probably be a good thing if Maths was easy as she’ll have a lot of other adjustments to make.

That sounds positive. Yes, she might find herself redoing familiar material in subjects like Mathematics, so she could focus her time and efforts in subjects where she has covered less of the curriculum.

If you do decide on home education, the local education authority should have a home education officer who can also help you find social groups to suit your dd.

It is worth speaking to individual schools. A friend moved her 4 boys to UK from Australia and one of them was able to drop back a year in order to help his education

My dd is yr9 and they have started maths and science GCSE curriculum but not the others so sounds as if your dd would be well placed to go in at yr10. There might be a few gaps but not too many. Definitely better than going into yr11. The only disadvantage is that she might not have such a free choice of options because other students will have made choices around now and so she will have to fit in with pre-existing option blocks. One thing you might want to check is which languages they offer as two years might not be long enough if she has no MFL experience. Standard ones tend to be French, German or Spanish but not all schools offer all three. Many students find Spanish easiest and with the Latin background she might easily catch up, but once you know which schools she is likely to go to then maybe consider a tutor for that language.

InterHigh is a good option as they can sort out practical classes and coursework, and sort out an actual place to sit the exams.

Hopefully some school will take her with her dropping down a year (and her reason will seem obvious to most English youngsters).

I’m going to approach schools about the possibility of letting her continue with Latin by doing an independent study with Interhigh or Wolsey Hall and sitting the exam through them. Wolsey Hall lists Latin as an option, but I haven’t contacted Interhigh.

Wow...I can't believe you would compromise you high achieving DD's future in this way. She would be arriving at a critical time in her education and she will be behind in the UK schooling system such that, unless she is truly exceptional, she will not catch up in time to get the GCSE results she might otherwise get. A weak set of GCSE results will truly impact on your daughter's future education and employment prospects.

I appreciate that life is unpredictable and the timing of your move is probably outside your control but surely your daughter's education and future is worth making a sacrifice for? Could your DH not come alone until your DD completes her education or could you find a way for her to stay behind with family for example?

I came onto say consider www.abbeymanchester.co.uk/abbey-college-manchester/courses/gcses/ but it has been mentined by a previous poster.

It will be hard work, but colleges like this are geared up for students making the transition from one educational system to another. And the US system is very different.

We knew someone who did this in London, tranisitoning from both a different system and a different language. He then went to a good sixthform and is now reading for a PhD at Cambridge.

I don’t think the OP’s dd is bound to underachieve just because she’s been educated elsewhere up to now. I know a boy who arrived from Europe in year 10 and did perfectly well. I’ve also heard of plenty of home educated children who were either unschooled or who did very different material than would have been covered in school and they’ve done well at GCSE.

If she’s going into year 10 the key thing is to make sure she’s in a decent school. They will teach her how to pass GCSEs to death - two years is plenty of time to pick that stuff up!

Again....truly appreciate those of you who have constructive comments to offer. For those of you who just want to tell me I’m a horrible mother destroying my child’s life, well....I suppose you’re entitled to your uninformed opinion as you don’t know our circumstances or my daughter’s academic capabilities, or the curriculum she’s been taught for the past 8 years.

There’s also that little thing called “life experience”....We’ve never been given this opportunity before and it’s unlikely it will present itself again. Why wouldn’t I want to expose my child to a new culture and have travel opportunities otherwise not available to us? Some things can’t be taught in classroom, or by making a “safe” choice.

I’m a teacher at a secondary school. We do have students arriving in Y11. But it is very unusual. And they can only really continue studies if the exam boards from their previous school and my school are compatible.

None of them ever achieve anything of worth as it is impossible to cram 3 years of different learning into the last 3 months.

OP you sound a lovely mum and obviously trying to do your best for your daughter . Sadly the English education system at the moment is not the best in terms if ‘ life Experience’ and I do think you need to think very hard about this.

Year 10 and 11 in England is hugely formulaic largely based on regurgitating facts and very stressful for high achievers and strugglers both . It’s not really about whether your daughter is bright , she sounds like she is very capable, it’s just about the logistics of cramming a huge amount of information in a short time . This is not helped by the fact that this system is new and has only been fully in place in the last year . I would ignore experiences of people cramming them in less than two years unless they have done this with the new syllabus .

My academically able ds sat 10 subjects last summer plus Free standing maths qualification ( rather like an AP class I imagine) This meant that he sat 29 exams over 6 weeks , yes 29 really , and is don’t think that included aural for MFL.

Revision is not what we call testing as you assumed earlier. Revision comprises of learning and relearning the syllabus and practicing exam technique ad infinitum whilst the teachers attempt to keep the pupils calm and focused. They work hard , very hard . My ds worked everyday of the Xmas and Easter holidays except Christmas Day . He did an expedition at Easter but took his set books on audio to listen to as he walked. He also remained cheerful and did lots of extra curriculars but it is a very hard year and by the end he was exhausted.

I have nieces and nephews in the US , I envy them . I would wait a few months and come in the June following your daughters 16th birthday . Your daughter could start sixth form in the September and do A levels or IB if you can find an IB college/ school and avoid the whole miserable nightmare of GCSEs

I think that as long as you don't rock up at the beginning of yr11 expecting a school place in an excellent school and for her to ace all her subjects in nine months you will be fine. If you can get her into yr 10 then other than the MFL and maybe Religious Studies (which is sometimes compulsory) she will be fine. Is there any possibility that you could be resident here by the beginning of July even if you need to moce ahead of your dh? The schools shut for much of the summer holiday so it might be harder to confirm a place as they can't offer until you live here. Also some families will plan to move at end of yr9 so will hand in notice in July. She may though need to start school for a few weeks once offered a place.

Ideally our plan is to move in mid-June once her school year here finishes. However we’ve also discussed having my husband “move” and arrive in early May to set up a rental with rented furniture so we can move in right away when we get there. He’d return for a week or two in June to help us close up things here. Can we apply for in-year transfer place as soon as we have an address?

Unfortunately, I’m not sure we could skip her right to 6th form? That hadn’t really occurred to me. She won’t turn 16 until the beginning of Nov. and without knowing exactly where she is in Math and Science in the UK I would have to research that a lot more. She wants to go into mechanical engineering so I wouldn’t want her to come up short content-wise.

I meant wait until she is 16 so come anyear later. What a difficult position . I would read some of the secondary school threads on here to get a feel if what year 10 and 11!is like . And there is a GCSE 3019 thread where you can get some idea of what the pupils are doing. It is a bit over invested but will give you a flavour.

Sorry 2019 ! Thread . The other thing is that she won't Get a transcript and grades here because that is not the system .So if you are planing on college in the US you need to think about the fact that she won’t have those . In the UK to get into a good University for engineering she will need an 8 or 9 in maths and physics and possibly further maths at A level . I think what you need to understand is that raw ability is not what’s in question here it’s the formulaic nature of our exam system . It’s very much based on ‘ the mark scheme’ . If you look up some of the GCSE threads in here you will get a flavour .

RE shouldn't be a problem, although my youngest did sit the exam in year 10. Although she may need preparing for the culture shock of studying religion in schools. For the exam you study 2 religions in detail, except at some Catholic schools which may tend to be mainly based on Catholicism. ( Usually Christianity and one of: Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, or Islam).

Pp below makes a good point that doing GCSEs in a year (eg at a private college) may now be a different ie harder proposition with the new syllabuses - though if the private colleges do IGCSEs that might not be relevant? (Sorry op, more complications! - we also have an alternative to GCSEs called IGCSEs - some private schools do these, not sure if any state schools do.)

I think what pp have in mind is that even for an academically very able dc, it would be very hard to get really good gcses in some subjects if you start in yr 11 - there is just so much content that they wouldn't have been taught and would have to catch up with (history content, set books in English etc). And if your dd is planning to go to university in the UK, GCSE results do 'matter' to some extent eg particularly for competitive courses/universities. I don't know what the position is re US universities, obviously.

For engineering they will almost certainly look at the GCSE grades so they need to be tiptop. It's a very tricky situation. The new GCSEs are very hard. If she could stay in the US or do an alternative course of study until 6th form it really would be much better for her. It might be different if she didn't have high ambitions. Having said that, engineering is one area where there are degree apprenticeships (look it up), which might be an option, and a very good one in my opinion. But for a regular degree she is going to need a string of 7s/8s/9s at GCSE. Perfectly possible if she starts year 10, I guess, but non of it is ideal!

I should have added that it will also be quite dependent on what school she is allocated. They vary enormously. Look at Ofsted reports & league tables and visiting is a must. When you look at league tables look at the Progress 8 figures, but also how well their top cohort of children do. In other words, do pupils make better than/worse than expected progress from years 7-11 (progress 8), and do the brightest achieve what they should be capable of. Of course you may have no choice