Any tips on choosing secondary schools

[Mumneedstea]

We live in South East and over the next few weeks and months, we'll be viewing multiple grammar schools, some Comps and also a few private schools. I'm already feeling very overwhelmed with having to compare and choose the best possible school for DC!

Any tips on what I should be looking for? I'm tempted to create a spreadsheet with pros and cons to help me decide... Or am I going crazy 🤣

TIA.

Listen to what other people say but don’t be persuaded by what they say What’s right for their child may not be right for yours.

in senior schools, it’s usual for kids to make a whole new circle of friends, so don’t worry if yours is one of the only kids going to the senior school from your junior school.

look at travel to and from the school - bus routes etc

I would narrow down your preference to state Vs private before you look. State schools are never going to compare to private so this needs to be decided before you start looking.
We decided private but my husband wanted to look at least 1 state school, after attending 2 x open mornings at privates the states didn't stand a chance. They can't compete on facilities, breadth of curriculum, extra curriculum stuff etc.
Private Vs grammar is less clear cut but we don't live in a grammar area so it didn't figure for us.
Decide what's important to you as parents and what's important to your child. What personality type is your child and which environment do they thrive in? Which subjects do they love?

For all schools in the state sector, read the applications criteria carefully and weigh your chances of getting a place. There's no point in applying for ones where you live well outside the greatest distance offered over the last few years (and no point in muddying the waters by viewing them)

Agree v strongly with advice above on what the school run will be like for your DC in the morning rush (when carrying both backpack and PE kit). Ease of journey might be more important than distance (though of course distance matters if it's the over-subscription tie-breaker). Also reliability of journey (notorious bottlenecks or services that don't turn up, and work-around if there are strikes)

Thanks both!

@twistyizzy I won't be looking to compare private and comps, as I agree that wouldn't be a fair comparison. We would really like DC to go to a grammar school as that would be a great fit for them. Having said that, the grammars around us are all super selective and while DC has been doing well in his 11 plus prep, you really can't predict what happens on the day.
Hence the comps and private would be back up for us.

Personality wise, they're outgoing, love maths, science and sports, very chatty and would do well in most schools. They do have a medical condition that makes them stand out and this has always been our biggest concern - in regards to bullying at school and during travel (if they have to go alone by train/bus). Most of my friends say that grammars and privates deal better with bullying, but I know they're generalising.

Thanks @meditrina .. all great points.
For comps, I'm not viewing any where we have 0 chance of getting in.

You've mentioned private but haven't said how old DC is/are. Most will have a registration list and some have DC names down for many years so you need to check this out with their admissions team first. You usually have to pay to get your child's name down on the list. If you are looking for Sept 2024 entry then you may have missed the boat anyway.
Not sure how grammars work as we aren't a grammar area but I would have thought you would have to apply 11+ well in advance.

@twistyizzy DC is 10 and we've registered them for the relevant 11 plus tests (taking 0alce from Sept 23 onwards).
The private schools that we're looking at also have an entrance exam, and only taking children that have passed the test and interview stages. So there isn't a waiting list we need to be on.

Fortunately, the private tests happen much later in the year and by that time we'll have the 11 plus results. If DC has gained enough marks for our top few grammar choices, then we don't need to take any private exams.

In a way, the 11 plus results will also be the deciding factor for us. It's just that all the school viewing is taking place much before the exams, and since we only have 1 chance to see the schools, I want to go prepared to look out for points that will help me decide later in the year.

For private schools, go through the exams and interview process can let you know more about the schools. It normally happens after grammar exam so not much overlapping in time.

You can decide laster when you get offers and weight in the state option (grammar or not) next March.

If you are in Southend and your child doesn't pass the 11+ then consider schools out of town. DD gets the train to school from Southend a few stops away and loves it. She is just coming up to the end of year 7.

I had a spreadsheet 😂and looked at a mix of state and private, day and boarding.

What I found helpful was identifying what my child needed from a school and having a check-list of questions built around those needs.

My primary focus was music provision, sen provision, how draconian the discipline was, how open to being flexible to outside commitments needing time off they were and so on.

On top of that I wanted a school that wasn't monocultural in anyway and that offered a huge range of academic and extracurricular options.

Final one was that I had to like the place when I looked round - and DD had to like it too. Obviously the private schools had amazing grounds and buildings and facilities, but there were a couple that we really didn't like in terms of ethos and atmosphere.

Think I saw about 12 schools in the end, and had a short list of 3. Top choice for all of us was state comprehensive - three years on it was definitely the right choice.

A fair number of schools made it very clear they wanted round pegs that would fit in round holes and didn't want children who were square pegs at all - and that was before you talk about SEN.

What's important to you ?:

strong academics for a more able child
pastoral
sport? music? arts?
quality of life - level of homework, travel time
feel of school: strict, pushy, relaxed, whole child, academic focus?
mixing with range of abilities in at least some lessons / only mixing with academic peers

We've just been through this albeit not in a GS area.

I had a whole list of things I thought were important but three things ended up being key:

• DD had a strong reaction to two schools. One she loved and an, on paper, good school she hated. No chance of getting her to have a positive attitude to the one she hated so it was dismissed. I surprised myself by the weight I placed on her gut reaction.

• The journey. Again, I thought I would put this quite far down the list as it's just a practicality but I ended up rejecting private option when the true grind of the journey became apparent. I still see those girls stood at the bus stop in all weathers when in leaving for the station really early. The school DD is going to is still a bus journey but it doesn't leave until 7.52 and the stop is very walkable from the house.

• Approach to streaming / mixed ability. I was really surprised at how different each school's approach was.

Narrow down what values are important to you and your children as a starting point.

Request a visit on a regular day and see what it's like. Note how much free access you are given. Go to the open day too of course, but they can be so misleading.

They do have a medical condition that makes them stand out and this has always been our biggest concern
Do they need extra time in exams? If so, have you got this sorted for the entrance tests.

@Mumneedstea

> Most of my friends say that grammars and privates deal better with bullying, but I know they're generalising.

Maybe some grammar and very selective private. But in most private kids are no differently wired up. Simply the schools have better brush and more efficiently are swiping it under the carpet.

With grammar and superselective are different problems. The competition is blood thirsty there. In particular in grammar the pastoral care, mental health support is very poor and very much in demand. Grammar schools are receiving approx 30-40 perc less per pupil than other state schools. And therefore, they are seriously underfunded.

You need to visit the schools you’re interested in when they have their open days/evenings and see what impresses you, or otherwise. See what interests your child at different schools. Look at pastoral care if you’re concerned that bullying might take place and look at the policies on that.

As has been said, it depends what’s important to you and your child. In the state system, there will be admission criteria, so you need to know what they are. You aren’t choosing a school, you’re expressing a preference in that circumstance.

I had the same task. I sent ds to a taster day at each school. I went along to all the open evenings.

I'd made a list of questions relevant to DS, like what languages did they teach right through, what were the science labs like, how long had the teachers been in post, how many supply teacher days a year etc. I had a look at the library in each and talked to each head teacher. I didn't take any notice of the Ofsted reports which were all out of date, but did look at the exam results, specifically for boys.

I built a spreadsheet of answers to each question, from all the schools, and pretty soon knew the schools that were definitely not acceptable. Then DS told me all about his taster days. By the end of the process we agreed on the school (by a country mile).