How would you choose from 3 undersubscribed schools? SW London: St John Bosco, Southfields Academy, Harris Battersea

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I am curious to hear thoughts on how you would go about choosing a state secondary school among 3 undersubscribed options.

We are in London. We get 6 options here.
We know what to put as our top 5, but, for a number of reasons, there is no guarantee that we'll get one of those 5.

So we need to put a "safe option" as 6th choice - basically we want to choose our 6th option, to be sure that, if we get none of the first 5, the council won't choose for us.

We have 3 possible safe options to choose from, all undersubscribed:

• Southfields Academy
• St John Bosco (near Battersea square)
• Harris Battersea

I don't know how to create a table here, but the numbers are:

			Y7 intake   /  total # pupils  / students in Y11 last year

Southfields: 180 / 1275 / 163
Bosco 150 / 844 / 136
Harris Battersea 180 / 924 /165

% on free school meals:
Southfields 48% / Bosco 53% / Harris 62% (whereas most schools in the borough range from 25 to 30%)

The impression when we visited was the same for all 3: diverse intake, results overall poor and worse than in nearby schools, but if you are in the top 7 they supposedly push you.

Results by prior attainment have disappeared now (covid years) from the gov website, but, from memory, the top group did reasonably well in all these 3 schools.

The only differences we can see are:

• Southfields: better facilities; sets from Y8
• Bosco: the kids must place their mobiles in pouches which only the school can unlock; sets from Y7; good choice of subjects

One of the main concerns is behaviour; should we go for Southfields because it has better facilities and in a larger school it's easier to find your crowd, or does Bosco's smaller size reduce the risk of bad behaviour? Or is it all much of a muchness?

We know (not well) a couple of families at these schools, and they all say that the teachers do their best but the kids can be a tough crowd.

Any thoughts? Thanks!

PS I should have mentioned:

we are not too bothered by the religious nature of Bosco.

Unfortunately we cannot use the 6th option for another school, there is no other school where we'd have greater chances than in the top 5.

Well.personally id rule out Harris. I'm not a Harris fan at all so maybe biased but you've listed reasons why the others work but not Harris. So it's between the other 2, surely?

And I know this sound nuts but have you tried putting your criteria into AI and asking? I did that just for fun and the top 3 schools it suggested we're our choices 1,2 & 3 so there must be something in it!
I mentioned things like child's personality- so in my case anxious, modest of transport, styles of discipline. Whatever is important to you. I'm not sure you can believe whatever it says but might give you food for thought

Ah, sorry, I had typed the text in an editor but not copied the paragraph on Harris.

I think the Harris vary a lot. There are Harris where I would never send my kid to, and others which I think are excellent schools.

The Harris is the only one rated outstanding and the one with the best results on average. I seem to remember that the results for the top group were similar but that section has gone from the govt website.

I have heard many very opinionated comments from local parents who consider it a school with a very tough crowd, but I have no way to know how different from the other two in this regard. The Harris has the highest % of kids on free school meals. Some parents associate it to a tougher crowd, some don't, I don't know what to think.

As for AI, no, I don't trust AI for these things!

I have found a few discussions on here and elsewhere on these schools, but not much.

Fair enough. I wasn't suggesting going with AI ideas. Just using as a starting point. I wouldn't trust it either. I do think it came up with a couple of pointers on schools that I hadn't thought about. I ended up switching options 3&4 around because of something AI found that I probably wouldn't have done myself. (Obviously I double checked it afterwards)

If it makes you feel better my DD is free school meals in the same area as yours - nearly went to john bosco but didn’t. Anyway she has never been in trouble in her life and certainly is not rough 🤷‍♂️

I think if behaviour is your biggest worry, sets from year 7 and phones in pouches would both go some way to mitigate that for your DC (reading between the lines you expect them to be in top sets).
Distance is something I'd also consider - which is closest?
And are any of your child's friends putting any of these schools as one of their choices? I know you can't guarantee anything, but a difficult school is easier if you have one friend to start with.

If you go to the Ofsted website you can search 'parent view' which gives you little graphs on how parents rate things like behaviour, bullying, SEN etc and whether they would recommend the school to another parent. It's not very mobile-friendly, but if you look on a computer you can search back for years when there was an Ofsted inspection (for some reason you can't do this on a phone).
Different children will have very different experiences at school - I've heard wildly different accounts of our local schools from various parents. It can be quite helpful to see a little graph of 'would you recommend this school y/n?'

@Nearlythere2021 May I ask which school your child goes to, how they find it, and what you know or think of St John Bosco? is there any specific reason why they didn't go there?

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that free school meals are necessarily associated with bad behaviour.

The problem is that in the area the best state schools tend to be partially selective, in that they allocate some places based on music tests, language tests, art tests, technology tests, or the Wandsworth test, which is a kind of 11+.

This contributes to a situation where you have a mix of hugely oversubscribed schools, and many undersubscribed ones. There are 6 undersubscribed state secondaries in Wandsworth, and maybe even more in neighbouring Lambeth, I forget exactly. But then a school like Graveney has a maximum admission distance of 600ish metres, which is less than many primaries.

So the partially selective schools attract a mix of wealthier families who tutor their kids heavily, and families who maybe can't afford much tutoring but still value education and will still try to support their kids as well as they can. This means that the kids whose families tend to value education less are disproportionately represented in the remaining undersubscribed schools. And this is what can create problems with behaviour.

@CheerfulMuddler Yes, sets + mobile pouches seem like good signals, for the reasons you mentioned.

Most of our child's friends will either go private, or go to other schools where they have priority as a sibling

Distance is much of a muchness, all 3 schools reachable in < 30 mins by public transport, which is not bad at all for London

My children have been/are at southfields. Older one now at sixth form and did really well in his gcses. He got into trouble during year 11 but the punishment made him try hard. My other child is there and has been happy. No friend issues. My only gripe with the school is that they don’t do big school trips. Also the teachers are brilliant. Very responsive. And their pastoral care, I have found, is brilliant.

@marilynmonroe Thanks! May I ask which other schools you considered, and what made you go for Southfields? Did you consider Bosco at all?

Do you know how they divide kids into groups or sets (for which subjects and when)?

I think they do sets for maths in Y8 (not Y7), but I'm not sure about the other subjects - do you know?

We are in a black spot when it comes to secondary school so knew that we wouldn’t get in to the popular schools. We went to visit it and got a really good feel for it and my child liked it the best.

not sure about sets but think they start in year 8.

it definitely doesn’t get a good reputation like other schools in the area and I think thats not justified.

you need to go abs visit to get a feel for each school abs for your child to get a feel for them.

I know people with kids at Southfields who seem broadly happy with it.

Tbf when it came to John bosco it was her primary school senco who warned me not to ( she has medical needs )

she is in an independent school now.

@Nearlythere2021 Oh wow, was it because Bosco would not have been able your child's specific needs, or do you think that negative feedback is valid also for children without those same needs?

My DC is very academic and no behavior issues - but physically disabled. The la had reached out to day they were talking to JB but the senco from primary school emailed the LA off their own back to as ther had a girl placed there from the previous year 6 class and it went wrong. I don’t know the specific details of the case though.

Harris Battersea is very frightening inside feels like a prison have you ever been in it

What are you first four choices op?

Yes. Southfields seemed the best of the 3 in terms of facilities. Bosco wasn't amazing but better than Harris Battersea.

@Nearlythere2021 thank you for clarifying

FWIW, according to Ofsted
My child is happy at this school
St John Bosco 84% strongly agree/agree
Southfields 96% strongly agree/agree
Harris Battersea 79% strongly agree/agree
I would recommend this school to another parent
St John Bosco 79% agree
Southfields 94% agree
Harris Battersea 71% agree
Harris Battersea only had 14 responses, so I'd take those with a pinch of salt. My equivalent 'would definitely get in but would rather not' school had 57% recommend, 43% wouldn't, which alarmed me somewhat! Southfields definitely seems the school parents are most happy with.