I really don't know what to do for the best, I'll try not to make this too long.
Ds has only ever really considered one secondary school, always had his heart set on it, the one right by his primary. It seems a nice decent local school and we were more than happy to send him there. Only now, despite being only a mile away, he hasn't got in. Any other year he would have easily got a place, we've been very unlucky, he's absolutely gutted and so are we.
He's way, way down the waiting list and there's never much movement with their list so no hope there.
His second choice (the one he was offered) is closer, ds liked it when he looked round, but doesn't really want to go there. It's a shiny new building, very close, but despite efforts over the years it's never been a very good school and right now they're in an awful mess. In special measures, no headteacher, can't keep staff. They went into special measures after we'd already put ds choices in, I had a feeling when I'd looked round that something was amiss there, but it was our back up school being so close.
There aren't really any other schools that are that close, there is another school not too far away that's a good school, we could go on their waiting list, but ds won't hear of it, he actually said he'd rather die than go there.
He won't hear of going on waiting lists for any other schools a bit further away.
I don't know whether to just accept he's going to crap local school, and hope things improve and that ds is happy there, or whether to try waiting lists for better, further away schools going completely against ds wishes.