Wavering about allocated first choice secondary school place - NI

[tiedtoabrush]

Hi there

Please can someone talk some sense into me?

We were lucky enough to get our first choice of high school place allocated to our child at school A. School A is a grammar school, fairly small, but out of our rural area. New friends will therefore be further away from home and probably out of our area too. There are only a few from current class going to this school. Not too worried about any issues with those as my child isn't particularly close to them. Child will get the bus there but I will have to drive there if there are any issues (forgotten PE kit etc). My child really liked the school and is excited to make new friends there. I'm worried that child only liked it as we spoke so positively about the school in the car journey home after the open night. But child was delighted to get a place there. School has good GCSE and A Level grades

School B was our second choice. It is an oversubscribed secondary school with a good rep and facilities. We put it as our second choice as we weren't sure our child's AQE score would be enough to get into a grammar school and wanted to make sure he at least got into a good secondary school.

School C was our third choice and where I would have really liked my child to go. It's a really good over subscribed grammar school with slightly better GCSE and A Level grades than School A. Almost all of current best friends are going there and around half school class will be going there. Child was a member of a local junior sports team and around half of them will be going there too. Some of those kids aren't particularly my child's friends (no bullying or anything, they just already knew each other from families/ schools etc). Kids who attend this school would have got better AQE scores than my child. Honestly, our AQE score was a bit borderline but still enough to get a grammar school. School C has a really good settling in programme for Yr 8s. New friends (not even thinking of old friends) would be from our rural area and nearby towns and villages. There would also be loads of familiar faces even if they aren't particular friends.

Have I made a mistake in sending him to School A?

Does your child have any preference? IME they tend to settle better when it's somewhere they want to go themselves. Although if you have good reason to want them to go somewhere else then it's not unreasonable to influence their decision

School A was child's first choice

I guess I'm worried that I didn't try to sell school C hard enough to child. My husband seemed determined to not like school C. It's OK for him to say school A is better he's not the one who will have to cope with any issues.

Your child will be fine, everyone will be staring a new school together.
Most grammer schools are similar to each other with regards to education.

Why are you so keen on the 3rd choice?

Can I ask which schools you put down?

Umm so in 6 years of high school so far with two children, one more still to go I could count on one hand the times I’ve had to take something or ho to school unexpectedly, if this is a big worry for you then I would try and stop that influencing your decision it really isn’t an issue.

It’s my old school. One reason we went for school A was that I remembered those kids who fell behind or ‘sank’ at school C. I suppose I think the smaller classes at School A might be better for someone who borderline squeaked into Grammar education.

I guess we have made the right decision. It’s just hard to give up on the school I would have loved for him. I suppose we could change school for 4th year. Is that hard to do?