Really worrying about secondary places :(

[MrsSnape]

We live in one of the roughest areas in Hull and with that comes the worst secondary schools in Hull.

Our actual catchment school is one of the worst schools in the city, its the kind of school where anyone that actually cares about their child would rather emigrate than send them there. Down the road is another school which has only recently been dragged out of special measures and last year got one of the worst GCSE pass rates in the COUNTRY.

These are basically our choices.

In the city centre is a very good boys school which is impossible to get in (last year they had 356 boys apply and only 52 got in!) and just out of the catchment is a decent comp which is over-subscribed from people IN its catchment area so little chance of getting in there either.

My son is "quirky", suffers from dyspraxia and is quite "un-boysih" so is already a target for bullies, sending him to one of these rough schools is like sending a lamb to the slaughter.

What do I do? my friend said I should just put the out of catchment schools down and then keep him at home until he gets a place in one but that could take months, even years surely?

Would the dyspraxia help to get him into another school? Here they would give priority to a child with special needs where there was medical, etc advice that he needed to go to a particular school. Have you looked into that?

Could you:

a) move house
b) afford private
c) homeschool - maybe enrol at one of those online schools.

b or c could be 'temporary' until a place comes up at an out of catchment school, but as you say, that could take years.

Can't think of anything else, apart from lying over where you live - sorry .

I agree with snorkle, I'm afraid. With the added possibility of seeing whether the bad schools are really quite that bad - sometimes the local reputation is worse than the reality. I knew someone who turned down a place at a supposedly "good" school for a supposedly "bad" one because the first one wasn't going to take any account of her son's dyslexia and dyspraxia, and it all turned out well in the end.

I wouldn't entirely give up hope over the school your son wants - it seemed from the website as if you had as much chance as anyone, though as you say there's no certainty there.

Feel for you. We were faced with this years ago and moved (our catchment school had a whole 7% 5 GCSE pass rate, and has since closed down putting more pressure on other, also rotten, schools).

You could even rent for a while in the right area?