Secondary school standards - I am sick of friends asking me about it, and I really can't say

[roisin]

DS1 is in yr6 and I work at our local catchment secondary. IMO the statistics - CVA and 5GCSEs (or lack of them) speak for themselves, as does the latest Ofsted (satisfactory - but only just).

DS1 will not be going there - will probably go to the local independent school. (4 of the other 8 local schools are now in special measures!)

Friends keep asking me what our school is really like, and why I'm not sending ds1 there.

I feel there is very little I can tell them whilst a paid member of staff, and that it would be unprofessional of me to do so. But I find these situations very awkward.

How can I get people to stop asking?

I am in a similar situationas my dd will be leaving the state sector soon. I have a role that brings me into contact with parents and they mostly know I have a dd although I have been lucky that no body has asked me where my dd will be going to school.

When the children I teach ask me where dd will be going I say to them that we are a catholic family so dd will be going to a church school and leave it at that. If a parent were to ask me I think my line is that I don;t think that local schools provide what I want for my dd and I am fortunate to be able to opt out of the state system. This has enabled me to send dd to a school with very high standards of academic and pastoral care and my aim is to provide those same high standards for your child.

It is not an answer I am happy with and is one of the reasons why going down the private route was not an easy option for me.

Our CVA is very good which enables me to say with the intake that we have we do very well. I doubt to be honest that the school my dd is going to could deal with the type of child we teach in the volume that we teach them in.

if you have poor cva that makes it very difficult.

Twinset - could I CAT you?

My email is out of action as I have fluffed up the passwords and have not had chance to phone virgin media to sort it. One moment and I will open a hotmail account and give you the address.

I would direct the to the Ofsted report and say you find it hard to judge and know what to say when you work there.
That's fair enough and not untrue.

twin@[email protected]

sorry that should be [email protected]

have changed my cat address to the hotmail address given above.

Aww thanks. I have emailed you - it's a relatively straightforward request, but a longwinded justification!

Cheers,
R

Roisin I have this all the time as we sent the DD's out of our village(primary but still the same principle) to one 8 miles away that we thought was more suited to them & what we wanted.

Now(7 years later) our local primary has a much better head-teacher she's turned the school around ....and yet I don't know whether it would be right for us as I don't particularly "click" with her & her philosophy,lovely though she is!

I tell any parent who asks my opinion that "you have to choose the school that's right for your DC & your family"

I still believe that's right, the STATs results etc are a guide but you have to walk through the door of any school primary OR secondary & think "yes my child would do well here ...."

and you're the only one who can judge that!!

Sorry meant to add - I run the local nursery so get asked ALL the time for opinions!

emailed you back with the name of the school and a bit of info, am too tired to remember figures sorry.

roisin - they won't stop asking, sadly. They see you as a person on the "inside" who has important information which will be useful to them. I know that's not how you see it, but people get desperate for any little nugget.

It's perhaps similar for people who work for an estate agent or a hospital.

I am in agreement that some schools suit certain children, many of the children we get do as well as they can with us because of the support we give them. If they were to go to one of our middle class pushy neighbour schools they would not last. Am not saying this is a good thing as we are becoming a school full of nightmare kids who other schools wouldn't touch.

If my dd came to the school I teach one of three things would happen;

1. She would stand out so much because of her abilities and home support that she would get lots of individual tuition which would make up for the classroom disrutpion and she would do very well.

1. She would not get that individual attention because teachers are stressed and knackered by the demands of the pupils we teach and so the continual low level disruption would mean that my dd would not do as well as she would else where or she would fail.

1. DD who is quite a charactar would work out quite quickly that she is quite a lot brighter than many of the kids at our school and could be far naughtier with far more success. She would run rings around everyone and become uncontrollable.

tbh Roisin if I was a parent with no insider info I would be asking you.

Although one should add that a lot of people know full well that the nasty school on their doorstep is "unsuitable" for their little darling and yet they don't have any other sodding option.

yes unquietdad, although we get very few kids who come to our school who don;t want to be there. At my school there were only 3 of a year group of about 120 that appealed and they did manage to get a place elsewhere.

While my school is not known for its great academic results we do have a good name for pastoral care and helping children who come from families in crisis, they make up a significant number of our intake and they are happy to be there.

We also get quite a few who don't care where there kids end up so they come to us.

I teach in a town that has falling intakes so schools are scrabbling for kids to balance the budget, most end up where they want to go.

I'd have thought saying something like you feel at secondary level kids can do without having their own parents in school might be a reasonable answer. It's probably true on some levels even if you don't really mind too much and it sidesteps talking about what the school's actually like.

Interesting situation, twinset. I imagine you have pretty mixed catchments in that case. I live in a city where many of the schools on one side are crammed to overflowing and over-subscribed, while many on the other side are full of echoing, half-empty classrooms.

I have thought about using that one as well snorkle although in my case it is not true, although of course by the time dd reaches secondary she may not want to be in the same building as me I just don;t like lying or telling half truths.

yes fair enough. You can usually find a way of phrasing it that you are comfortable with though? Even, as you said, "by the time dd reaches secondary she may not want to be in the same building as me" but it is dissembling I admit - you would never make a politician btw!

Is there a way of turning the question around, so that rather than being forced to point out the apparent negatives to the school that you teach in, you are instead praising the positives of the school which you have chosen. Eg for ds I felt that smaller class sizes were vital so we opted for X, or we felt that dd would thrive in a strong catholic school so we chose Y. Regardless of the actual reason why the school that you teach at wouldn't make the list, there must still have been certainpositive attributes that you sought out. That way you can extol at length those attributes which you do find to be important wihtout having to be unprofessional about your own school.

It isn't just inside knowledge that other parents are after. There are simply some many aspects to choosing a school, and so much information, that it is comforting to talk to someone in the sector about what they see as being important.

I am actually considering a political career in later life, I will need to polish up my answering diplomatically while giving nothing away skills!

Ladymuck that is exactly what I try and do, i say I am looking for this for dd from a school while my school offers this. I do think there are things that my dd current and future school could learn from the school in which i teach and vice versa.