Secondary Admission 2024

[mumoftwogirls2017]

Hi all.

Just looking for some advice from others who have been there and done it. All new to me.
My daughter will be heading to secondary September 2024.

When deciding which school to apply for, what do you look for?

She has had a taster at one school this week and has a taster at another Tuesday. The open days aren’t until September but kinda want to start thinking about it now as it’s such a short window when applying.

Its all a bit overwhelming

Find the schools you like but then look carefully at the school's admission criteria. Each year they will publish the furtherest distance that they admitted which will give you an indication on catchment but could be skewed if they have have accepted a child on another criteria. Eg they have a sibling already at the school but the family then moved further afield. Subscribing to a locrating for a month, I found really helpful.

Do you want/have access to a single sex school?
Is she into drama? PE?
How easy is it to get to the schools? A long commute is a pain if it's not for a really special reason.
Look at things like the progress 8 score. Just gcse grades are meaningless because some schools have a more intelligent or more privileged intake.

@GeorgeSpeaks

The GCSE results matter. It is better to learn with driven children that have parents that care for their kids education than in the enviroment where kids do not care about GCSE much.

Also, one year GCSE is not enough data. One has to look at the several past year. And if GCSE results are improving year by year then it means that the school does something right.

IMO Progress is more interesting that raw GCSE results (of which there won't be currently be more than 1 recent year due to 2 years of missing results due to Covid) .

Take school 1 - it takes in an able intake who are likely to get As. 50% get As and the rest get Bs.

Or school 2 - it takes in an intake that are likely to get Cs. 50% get As and Bs and the rest get Cs.

Which would you consider to be the better school? Not a trick question - a lot of people would argue that it is school 1 because they want the better peer group and think their child will be in the 50% that get their expected results. Even though it looks like School 2 might have better teaching. But thinking about this question will demonstrate what's important to you.

[Disclaimer - clearly simplistic example. And I am aware GCSEs are not A,B,C grades any more ...]

What's important to you?
Amount of homework
Ethos of school - results driven, whole child
Pastoral care
Behaviour policy
Extra curricular sports, music etc
Do they stream by ability from the start, or only set in certain subjects
Travel distance
Sen or high achieving support
Results for pupils of same ability as your child
Ofsted

Maybe second school has better teaching but unless they split kids in capability groups ( and they do that only for math) a lot of time would be wasted for brighter kids who will have to work at a pace of less bright kids.

That is why always we should look for schools that are best for a particular kid and their needs. Not all children are aspiring for 7+ GCSE score but for example are keen musicians or great at sports and so on

Progress 8 also has limited use in selective schools as those kids start high at KS2 level.Having said that I must admit that sometimes it is useful in assesment of grammar schools.

We have here twin super super selective grammars. To my surprise the girls grammar has a very high Progress 8 score of nearly 1. The boys school had 0.46 which is not entirely bad but one could expect it to be better at grammar school. Few months later that school was downgraded by OFSTED from Outstanding to Good.

@TheShorestAnswerIsDoing haha, I think you are my neighbour!

@mumoftwogirls2017 Most of all, don't think about schools so much as thinking about your child. What does she need? And then think about it all over again when your second child is in the same year! What works for one won't work for the other.

>haha, I think you are my neighbour!
and what is interesting, @GeorgeSpeaks , I heard that the Open day was even more popular than ever in that boys' school. Thousands were there. I think parents are sometimes thoughtlessly following what others do without reflecting what's in it for their child.