I’ll put the TL;DR version of this right at the top! We’re a family of four – 8YO daughter, 10YO son – and we’re on the cusp of a decision that feels … big. Any input would be very, very welcome.
We’re looking at a move to Oxford, for a whole host of reasons – we left London when our daughter was born and moved to Bedford. It’s been a very happy eight years, but we now want more of the benefits of urban life.
We like the look of Headington, and it would make our lives soooo much simpler if we could happily send our kids to Cheney when the time comes. We don’t want to go private.
So … does anyone here currently have kids at the school? Do you have friends with children there? Do you – or anyone you know – teach there? Any scraps of (recent/current) colour about the school would be great.
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(Now, if anyone has the time, and fancies a bit more context, here’s the full-fat version of where we’re at …)
As alluded to above, we're looking for a good state secondary. But the word ‘good’ obviously means different things to different people. To us, it’s partly about academic achievement, but we’re only using performance stats as a proxy for something that’s more important to us, but is much harder to measure – we want to give our children the chance to build a wide circle of friends.
Friends who will broaden their horizons, introduce them to new ideas, who also enjoy learning, who are engaged, have their own causes, are sporty, artistic, funny … and so on, and so on.
If we can give them that, I’m confident they’ll be happy, will develop their own interests, skills and personalities and will do well academically.
So, the school we choose doesn’t need to be the ‘best’ school. We’d like it to be a diverse school. But we’d also like it to be a school where our kids are not cut off by invisible boundaries – linguistic, social, cultural – from large cohorts of their fellow students, and where more able kids are challenged.
From the outside, Headington or Marston look like great places to live, which means Cheney would be on the doorstep, and – on paper at least – it seems like the school might provide the right kind of environment. It does pretty well at GCSE level, and after A-levels about a third of its students go on to Russell Group universities.
But I’ve spent some time reading various Mumsnet threads in which the school was sometimes described as ‘bad’ – meaning, as far as I can tell, ‘rough’. Is that fair?
So, please help us out, Oxonians. Tell us whatever you can about Cheney (and Headington!). And if you don’t think this is a good call for us, which other schools should we be looking at?