Good secondary schools...

[SecondaryQuandary1]

To start off, I'm not from the UK.

We're in London with primary-aged DS. Tons of schools around us, all great options. He got into a lovely school that he's thriving in.

I checked secondary schools and wasn't expecting it to be so different. Nothing good near us, and not much at all in general. All the best options seemed to be girls' schools.

How do people get into good state secondary schools here? I'm sorry, I know this is a basic question, but I feel at a loss with this. Private isn't an option and I looked up all the grammar schools and they are miles from us - do they work on a catchment basis or is it strictly a question of 11+ results?

Anyway, thanks for reading, and please feel free to direct me to relevant resources rather than answering directly.

A lot of people move as closely as they can to their preferred school.

Where in London are you, north/south?? It might help others give more specific advice.

You need to look round the secondary schools and talk to the children who go there/ their parents. Ofsted reports and results don't tell you all that much.

If there are still none you think will be good, the only option is to move or look for state schools with sports/music/art scholarships.

We're in NW1

NW1 is tricky (sorry) from a grammar school point of view, because you can’t apply to Dame Alice Owen’s from that postcode and it’s not an Inner Area postcode for Latymer Grammar either.

In addition to the local state schools you might want to look at Marylebone Boys (Westminster borough), which is typically undersubscribed and therefore takes from all over London.

How are you defining ‘good’?

Experience at our local primary, near you, was that an exodus of boys started tin Y5, mostly towards the Muswell Hill area, and that those remaining are either not too fussed about destinations, are from international families who won’t be in London long-term, or are sitting independent schools’ 11+ entry tests this autumn.

Another option to look at is Central Foundation Boys’ (in Islington borough) though it’s very popular and you’d need to look at whether your son would be likely to get in.

Some of the independent schools have a scholarship scheme for children who wouldn't normally be able to afford them otherwise so you could look into that:

www.lfac.org.uk/

Otherwise, if you can't/don't want to move then you should start out by seeing where you'd likely get in and taking it from there. Also, as someone else has said, don't base "good" on OFSTED. They're all being inspected again and a lot of the outstanding ones from 10+ years ago will be "downgraded" anyway, and the criteria has also changed.

Thank you so much everyone! Your posts have been so helpful.

It's slightly complicated because we have two younger girls as well, and neither of us drive due to medical reasons, so we would only want to move somewhere accessible to good schools for all three. Nightmare!

Thanks a lot also for the LFAC link.

You're lucky to have a choice.

Whilst technically, everyone has a choice, schools are so far apart in most of the country people send their children to the nearest school and that's it.

We're not exactly in the sticks but our local school is a 10 min walk and any other schools are at least a 20 min drive in the opposite direction from where DH and I work and not on easy bus routes.

@KnickerlessParsons that's really interesting.

Where I grew up - not in a particularly big city - there were local high schools (I think where we lived I had a choice of three), plus charter schools which were like state schools with private school amenities, plus two specialised schools for science and performing arts, respectively. And that's before talking about private schools.

So I just assumed it would be similar over here!

It really depends where you are located, London does very well for state schools (I know you've said that you're struggling though) but in comparison to the rest of the country then it still has a lot and most get better results than elsewhere (particularly when you look at value added results within England and Wales.) .. Northern Ireland and Scotland are different anyway due to the qualifications and/or grammar system. There aren't any "specialist" state schools the exact same way as there in other European countries, for example, but there are schools which technically have a "specialism" like tech, science, languages etc but I don't feel that they are much more acclaimed than if they didn't have that "status" whereas again I know it's different in other countries.

Both of us grew up in the north where yes, you had a choice of schools but no one went to another school aside from their "local" one because the majority of their extended family also went there and they didn't really think about it any further, aside from the odd family or two who drove their kids into the local cities everyday to go to the private schools.

Another option for your DS would be to sit the Governors’ test for the partially-selective St Mary Magdalene Academy in Islington. If he did well enough in the selection test then he could get a place regardless of home address. It’s likely to be easily accessible from where you are, is an excellent state school, and has a sibling policy so that younger siblings would not need to sit a test.

Which school year is your DS in now?