Choosing a Private Senior School at 13+. Advice Please.

[MrPickles73]

DS1 is in yr 6 at a coed prep and will stay there til yr 8 and move to private senior school for yr 9.
I'm wondering how people go about preparing a short list of schools and how many you visited with / without child.
Ideally we want a day school but I'm not fixed on single sex / coed. More interested in the school itself. If we consider weekly / flexi boarding then there are more options..

We have 2 coed day schools near us which are the obvious choices but our prep school is encouraging us to throw the net wider.. so we can also consider single sex flexi boarding, another coed day, three more coed weekly boarding and another single sex weekly boarding...
So then I have 8 schools in total. All have pros and cons on paper, none seem ideal. Should we visit them all (feels like too many)? Do we need to visit this term? In terms of admissions there is no big rush as non use iseb and either use CE or own exam in yr 8.

LIZS oof... its a good question to ask at open days etc... thank you.

Round here (Somerset) I can't think of a school that doesn't field at least 2 (invariably 3) teams for Rugby/Hockey (Autumn), Hockey/Netball (Spring), Cricket/Tennis (Summer) for boys and girls at least until the children are 16. It is a bit different during cover-times but I reckon there are only 2 or 3 fixture-free weekends in a term.

After school tends to be training/squads unless a school is on a tour. I don't mind if fixtures a few miles away, but get really annoyed if they are 50 miles away.

On the plus side, it does make life a bit cheaper if we decide to go out to lunch!

Drama rehearsals often seem to be at weekends too - usually Sundays (presumably to avoid clashing with fixtures).

And all of this is why DD goes to a school she can walk to!