How do you pick a secondary school?

[user88899]

What are your criteria for picking a secondary school? How and where do you research? Growing up there was only one choice, you just went to the nearest school. We are in a new area with 6+ schools we could consider. Our nearest school is OFSTED outstanding but is a selective school (not based on high achieving, it's to get an even spread) and irritatingly they take 50% of children from a neighbouring town, so it's highly unlikely we will get that school despite being just 0.2 miles down the road.

So I'm trying to work out my second and third choices, I'm looking at attendance data, ofsted, school size, and I've tried asking locally but don't get many clear cut opinions! Just wondering how everyone else narrows down their choices?!

@user88899 wow 6 schools is a lot to choose from! We have 2 in our town and both with fairly equal results/scores. I took time to discuss things with my sons before we went to the open evenings and basically advised him to imagine fronds we going to the school we were viewing and to go by how the school made him feel from the moment we walked in to the moment we left. He actually chose the school that his friends were not going to as it felt right for him and he thought he would be happy there. Even now he says he chose the correct school (he is 17)

I suppose what I'm saying is that exam grades are only part of it, how they deal with pastoral care (including bullying) plus how your child feels are up there on criteria too.

Absolutely, I really hope open days return this autumn so we can probe into things like that
more. One of the schools we like the look of only has 500 pupils, that seems so small for a secondary I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing!

First look at the entrance criteria for each school. Work out the likelihood of getting into each one.

Look at the data for all of them

Look at other things that interest you/your child, such as extra curricular, subjects etc
Go to open days in summer/autumn, or online if it's still that way

Balance up which are your top 3 (or however many it is in your area), trying to include one that you are almost guaranteed a place at. List on form favourite to least favourite. Remember to submit before deadline.

This is presuming English state system.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves yes English though our county doesn't do catchment bizarrely, I have to admit one of my concerns is putting our most guaranteed one 3rd when I'd prefer our first or second but worried they'll think, oh well this person is happy for this big school third so we will put them there, does it make it less likely we would get the 2 more desired but harder to get places than if we left the third blank if that makes sense?! (Won't be leaving it blank though!)

No, it's equal preference by law. Its like three separate applications, then if you qualify for more than one school you just get your highest preference.
I think most areas in England don't have catchments now. (We are just moving to one with catchment areas, it makes a lot of sense as there's villages surrounding the town, so the village children have a decent chance of getting a local school not just the town children having several to choose from. Area we are moving from we are too far from the nearest schools to get in.)

This year's allocation profiles should be out, so have a look and see which of the 6 schools you would have got into this year. Putting your most guaranteed school in last place is a good idea and will not affect your chances of getting higher choices - whether you get them will be entirely due to how many children meet the admission criteria above your child. If you don't put a last choice, this won't give you any more priority and might mean you end up with a school you haven't listed that you definitely don't want!

I'd consider things like how your child will get to school and where their friends will live. Their lives will be much nicer if getting to school is easy and friends live close by (although these factors, don't, of course, outweight other concerns).

Look at what subjects are offered - how many MFL? Is triple science offered, or only combined? Are there any restrictions around GCSE choices (a school near us gets brilliant triple science results, but if you dig a bit deeper it's because only the top 10% of the year is allowed to take it).

What is the school ethos (this is a hard one to define, but made our secondary school choice for us. The headteacher at School A spend the whole headteacher's talk going on about statistics and levels of progression, and how they track your child (this was in a talk aimed at Year 6 children as well as parents!) whereas the School B talk started by saying that every child is an individual with their own talents and abilities and we will aim to find and nurture these)?

My county does work on catchment.

However there are stats available from your LA that shows who was admitted and at what distance.

Selective is different. It’s all about pass mark and DC who meet it. Even out grammars have catchments though! Catchment gets priority or it means nothing. They wouldn’t take a child 15 miles away if there were more children meeting the 11 plus mark nearer to the school. So look at historic admittance data too.

Plus everything mentioned above. The government web site allows you to compare schools. You can look at value added, high, medium and low achievers, exam results, Sen etc. If you get good exam results and excellent progress, you are probably looking at a good school. But you must establish the ones with a realistic chance of entry.

There's some great advice here! I particularly agree with UserAgain's ideas for how to make your choices.

Just wanted to add - I'm a year 6 teacher and every year at least one child in my class receives a school place for a school not on their list and they are understandably upset. I think some parents don't realise that filling the list with schools that you don't have a good chance of getting into means you will be offered a place at any school with a space - sometimes quite a distance from home. Put one sure thing on your list even if it's not your favourite

Thanks everyone that has been hugely useful particularly the reassurance that each choice is reviewed independently, I will definitely make sure the 3rd choice is one I'm confident in getting a place.

Where do I find this year's allocation profiles? I remember years ago looking at stats for primaries to see how many got first choice etc but not sure I've noticed it on the government school comparison checker unless I'm looking in the wrong area?

Is there a way for gauging what behaviour is like at a school? My biggest fear is them falling in with "the wrong crowd" I've been using attendance figures as a bit of a gauge on that.

Where do I find this year's allocation profiles?
Ours are on our LEA website. If you google " secondary admissions" you will hopefully find them.

Is there a way for gauging what behaviour is like at a school?

Hanging around outside is meant to be an option :) But probably not such a good plan at the moment, and of course schools will be operating in a non-standard way at least until Easter.
Unfortunately it's not just "behaviour" per se which is the issue - but which children yours interact with and which friends they meet. My DC are aware of bad behaviour at their school, but by and large they are able to ignore it, and they both have lovely friendship groups - but I'm aware this is mostly luck.
It's hard to ask other parents as well, because you tend to get the very polarised views only - however if your DC has any friends with older siblings, this is worth a try.

@UserAgain thank you, all the schools I like are oversubscribed as because they are academies there is no further information on the LEA site argh.

That’s a great pity. All secondary schools in my LA are academies but they use a central LA admissions system, mostly. So much easier for parents. But even if they don’t, they give admissions data to the LA and they publish it. I think admissions data must be published but I might be wrong.

@PresentingPercy it's very frustrating, I will have a look at their websites and see if they've published more data there.

This is the government data site.

Thank you, that's what I've been using for ofsted, a sense etc but can't find anything on admissions. Can only find admission policies not data on their actual websites.

I believe each local authority collates offer info and must submit it to the government. So each LA does have the data for all schools. Ring them if you cannot find it. A quick trawl of the web finds lots of them!

What LA are you?

The gov data page doesn’t give admissions but it gives high, medium, low achievement, value added, Sen, comparisons to other schools, etc. Ofsted is a separate site.

Northants, I've found a document from last year with info on all the schools saying how oversubscribed etc they are but all the ones we are interested in say no further information as academies (some of the academy trusts give info but not ours!)

For me, logistics was a big issue. DH and I work outside the home and have to be in by 8 so can't drop-off or pick up so we had to go to something accessible for an 11 year old by walking or public transport (we are in a village with fairly limited options). We could probably have got into a good faith school in our area but didn't put it down in the end as it was too challenging to sort out the journey so our DD is going not a fairly middling school that she can walk too. I liked it and the head very much at the open evening (which luckily we attended a year before when DC was in Year 5) and her friends are going so we are all pretty happy.

We're both teachers and don't set too much store by the Ofsted report, although we looked at results of course.

OP thinking about the "oversubscribed" tag - remember that people get three or even six spaces for preferences, so all those will register as someone applying for a place.

There is a very highly rated school near me which a lot of people out of catchment apply to - it is massively oversubscribed as in receives hundreds of applications for 250 places in year 7. But I never heard of anyone in catchment for it not getting in. The oversubscribers are people from elsewhere in the town having a hopeful punt. And in fact some of them get in - we are not in the catchment for this school but I see a number people in its uniform in the streets nearby.

Equally people may put school x first choice and be sure of getting in - but will fill out the form with school y and school z - so these will be "applications" to those schools.

Anyway, to answer your original question, both DH and I went to secondary schools with big catchments; we had long daily bus journeys and our friends lived many miles away. So it was important to us that our DC could walk to school and that their classmates lived locally. Our local school does not have a great Ofsted and behaviour is not perfect, but for us it was a much better option than a "better" school elsewhere in the town, two bus journeys away.

@clary thanks I think the problem with ours is location (whole town unfortunately not even nearest streets) is 6th down the list and as they offer 50% of places to the neighbouring town after vulnerable and sibling places there aren't very many left! Plus it's selective. A downside to academies I guess, they can set their own criteria it irritates me because given the environmental impact at least you'd think they'd prioritise children in their local area.

But thank you that's very true about the oversubscription, the other 2 possibles aren't as selective as our first choice. And I agree location is important to us too, our primary is currently the other side of town (in year placement) and I feel detached from that community, would much prefer they went locally. Plus our school buses for schools just 2 miles away are £600 for the year!!

Assuming I have only 3 choices, if we don't get any of those 3 and we get something I don't like and don't manage to appeal, can I request a different school that wasn't on our list?(appreciate there might be spaces of course). It's ridiculous off the top of my head there are 7 schools within a reasonable distance, only one would be an outright no so I'm just worrying what if I got the one we really didn't want which would be my luck! (Also appreciate DS needs a say, I'm not stressing him about it yet!)

You can only appeal for a school you have been rejected a place at. You might be able to go on the waiting list though.

I'm guessing with your local school, it's the nearest school for the village? I've seen that in a few areas (we move a lot!)

Gosh it's going to be so stressful trying to get this right. Yes the school we really want that is the best performing is also our nearest and unfortunately selective. The second choice school is the same academy trust, 2 miles away and also selective, so I know we need to be really careful with our third choice. Do I take a punt and put the school I would actually be happy with in 3rd place, or try to be more careful and realistic and go for one that isn't in my top 3 but more likely to get to avoid our worst choice. I'm probably insane for worrying about this in March!