Parent anxiety over choice

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Looking for any tips on approaching conversations with my OH over secondary school choices for our son. He's not ready to go yet, but there is one school locally that he could move to at Year 5 if we wanted to.
We both agree that our son should get the final choice, but I suspect I will want to give more info and a little steer on 'good' schools and OH won't.
OH had a fairly tumultuous education, moving schools a number of times and finding it hard to make friends etc. This experience understandably colours his view on what he wants for our son. My experience was very different. I moved to a school where I had no friends, but didn't find it hard to make some, and as OH pointed out, had an older sibling around too. Some of the options for schools might involve our son not going with his friends and having to start over. So far, he is a different character to OH and makes friends easily. He is also clever.
I don't want our choice to be influenced too much by OH's experience when I don't think it would be the same for our son, but I'm also aware that I have some fairly strong views on which schools I think are 'good' and would be good for our son, so may push too far with those things leading to e.g. long commutes to school etc.
Any advice on how we can continue to approach the conversation but move away from the slightly entrenched views we both have? It's all coming from past experience which I think makes it harder for us to look objectively, particularly when thinking about what is best for our son.

Firstly, do not give your son the final decision. He is not old enough to understand the importance of this. If you're asking him to choose between your favourite and OH's favourite, that's also not very fair.

Would it help for you and OH both to write a list of wants and "don't wants" for schools? And then to look at scoring the actual schools against them?

For example, if this was me I would say that going with friends was helpful, but not a deal breaker, but I would not impose a long commute on a child (and this would be a deal breaker and we would move if there wasn't a suitable school). Ethos of school and subjects available would be important.

I would not give final choice, unless your ds is capable of making these decisions and most dc are not. If you have two good options you can let him select his preference of the two. Many children want to go where their friends are going and this is not always the best choice. On the other hand, some dc know what they want. We allowed our dd to make the final decision, but we loved all the schools she got into. She selected the most academic one and my dh was worried, but it was absolutely the right choice for her and she is thriving. She went in as the only one from her Primary and made lots of new friends. I only gave her final choice because I was happy with any of the schools she had as options. If I was only happy with one, I would have explained my reasoning and steered her towards that one.

Agree with above. Hear your DS's views but I don't think they should choose at that point, I think you should.

Another one who doesn’t think your DS should make the final choice! I also wouldn’t be too worried about where his current school friends will go. DS went to secondary school with one of his very good friends from primary school and a few others; as it happens there was a massive reshuffling of friendship groups at the end of year 7/start of year 8 and by the end of year 11 none of his good friends had gone to the same primary school.

I’m not sure how to approach the conversation with your OH because DH and I were broadly in agreement on schools. But I’d go to all the open days and actually see what the schools are like. You may find that some, that on paper tick all the boxes, you don’t like, and vice versa.

Also I don’t know where you are but in England and assuming you’re talking about state schools, you don’t have a choice, you express a preference. I’d look closely at the entry criteria and whether the school has been oversubscribed to work out whether you’d get a place. There’s no point getting your heart set on a school you are very unlikely to secure a place at.