Only secondary school is bad - what lengths to avoid?

[Curlewwoohoo]

What would you do if the only secondary school your child will definitely get into, sucks? I'm talking disruptive kids, unhappy teachers, ineffective management. Maybe my title was a poor choice as avoiding may not be an option and there might be other ideas to mitigate.

What sort of kids do you have OP? And do you and/or DH have the luxury of time? If your kids are naturally organised and driven, I’d put them in the school local to you and rinse private tutoring and extra curricular activities if push goes comes to shove. It’s a lot cheaper than moving house or going private.

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<point already made!>

We went Private but we were lucky enough to have that as an option. DD also did the 11+ and was offered a Grammar place

I agree very much with @AeroChambre. If this is the most likely outcome for your DC, I would take a second look. Schools can acquire particular reputations quickly, and find it hard to lose them when things change. Even headline data can mask the full picture if not well contextualised. Ask about results - is there a tranche of kids, however small, that achieve highly? Your DC can be part of this group. There will be other parents with the same values as you doing the same.
Obviously if you can move or go private then you have other options, but this is not the reality for lots of people.

My DC go/went to a fully comprehensive school that gets very slightly below average GCSE results, which lots of MNers with access to high performing schools might deem not good enough. It certainly has its challenges - extra curricular is pretty much non existent, there are behaviour challenges in classes, some teachers are ineffective. But it's a diverse and welcoming environment, bullying is rare and pastoral care is good. We do buy in extra curricular outside of school but don't tutor. DC1 passed through the school with good friends and good qualifications, and DC2 is likely to do so as well.

Unfortunately we know for a fact about the poor behaviour and teacher feelings, and child will need extra support in some subjects rather than being academically high achieving.

OP I think @AeroChambre makes a very good point. People often say of a school "I would never send my DC there" but in fact it may have many positive points and if a DC is keen and hard working they can still do well. As already said, take advantage of any clubs, trips etc.

I am also a bit puzzled @Curlewwoohoo about where all the DC from the excellent primary go for secondary? Also you later said that "many failed the 111+" – does that mean you are in a grammar area? So this is the secondary modern?

Do you mean that a lot of bright DC despite being bright didn't pass the 11+ so will end up improving the year group at the poorer school? Is your DC in this year group? did they fail the 11+ and are about to be allocated the poor sec mod?

If so I suspect some suggestions here are moot (in terms of your issue) as there's not time to move and get into a better school.

What I personally would do – if I lived somewhere with no other options but one school and that was not good, I would visit the school and see what it was like; I would consider moving; I would consider tutoring if that might sort the issues; I would look at any other possible schools.

@clary yes a lot of what you said is correct. DC didn't do the 11+, dyslexic, needs maths support, and stubborn as heck 😆

The secondary has had a mixed reputation since forever but got taken over by a mat a few years back, had a good Ofsted, thought it was picking up. But we went for an extra look around in the day and saw really poor behaviour first hand, kids skipping class, intimidating behaviour, I got told to fuck off, etc. And now stuff has come into the public domain about kids pissing about and teachers having no faith in management. We put another school down as our 1st choice but chances of getting in are low due to distance. It usually fills up with closer kids.

Plenty exist.

We tied ourselves in knots for secondary and I have zero regrets. Our local comp is still not out of inadequate despite a good new head, and I’m not prepared to waste 2 or 3 years of secondary education for the school to get its act together such that it can actually find a stable cohort of good maths teachers.

No amount of pastoral care or nice extracurricular activities can make up for crappy teaching and a poor ethos around learning. I’ve seen too normal kids be completely turned off learning because the school environment was poor, and it was too hard to turn them around even when the school improved.

We've been in exactly this situation. In a town with a number of schools, but only 2 that we would get a place at due to tightly defined GPAs and demand. One has a really poor behavioural and academic performance (but is working hard to change under newish leadership) and the other is the next weakest in the area in terms of academic performance, but it is does have better behaviour and stronger leadership.

Our DD is in year 6 now and took entrance exams for 2 of the 3 schools she was eligible to go for in the county. These are our closest selective schools and are both 25+ miles away. She had about 18 months of Atom Prime to help her prepare for the required standards, as well as a pretty dull summer last year, with slightly more regular exam preparation work.

She is pretty bright, but applications these places has gone up by about 2 to 3x per place over the past couple of years. She was also in the secondary catchment area for both schools, so was effectively needing to be somewhere around the top 10 to 20% of applicants to have a chance at the remaining places once the main catchment area places were filled.

It was quite a bit of work for her and for us, as well as being a very stressful September and October until we got the results. Fortunately in our county we get told if they have done enough to be offered a place, are on the waiting list, or haven't hit the required standard. She passed both, so it gave her and us a choice out of the two.

I don't regret doing what we did and hopefully it gives her a much better school opportunity than one of the two local ones. I fully understand why some parents do whatever they can to get their child in to a better school. Had ours not had the potential to pass the exams, then I'm sure we might have planned ahead and looked at a house move instead. I felt a lot of pressure to do as much as I could to give her the best opportunity with her schooling and hopefully we've achieved that.

London is full of state schools that have a small percentage of selective places based on academic or music ability and a long list of other criteria based on catchment, siblings, looked after status, all complicated.
The competition for places at these schools is the stuff of nightmares. The grammar school near me is arguably less challenging but has no catchment area.
The same children sit the exams at around 6 of the schools nearest to their homes.
2 of mine went to DAO and 1 went to the grammar. The one that went to the grammar didn't get into DAO.
There is one small house opposite DAO that regularly changes hands for extortionate amounts of money. It is probably the only house that qualifies for catchment once all the other places are filled.

There is one small house opposite DAO that regularly changes hands for extortionate amounts of money. It is probably the only house that qualifies for catchment once all the other places are filled.

If it is actually opposite, it would qualify for the '22 nearest applicants' which is ahead of all selective criteria

It is literally opposite the gates of the school. I know families further along the same street that didn't qualify for catchment. No idea of the details. In my day, the "in catchment" was the lowest priority after siblings. The exam and music places plus the Islington places were top priority and nunbers were fixed. The sibling numbers changed each year and I suppose the catchment places varied because of that. I am going back over 15 years.

Posted too soon. It looks like the criteria have changed.

Yep. It's LAC in criteria 1 and "the twenty-two children whose permanent home address is closest to the School at the date of application." in criteria 2, then siblings, then the various aptitude places.

Realistically at this point, your options are moving house, going private, homeschooling or giving the school a try and seeing how your DS copes.
We both don't want to move house or homeschool, and DH is vehemently opposed to private schools, so if we end up in this position (which we might for DS2), we'll give the school a try and keep a close eye on DS2, while also remaining on the waiting lists for all the other local schools. We'd also be willing to supplement the school offer with extracurriculars and tutors if necessary.
For us personally, we also have several Studio schools nearly, which start at Year Nine, so that would be another option. Those are pretty rare though.
I'm assuming your DS wouldn't be eligible for an EHCP? Some dyslexic children are (my cousin's daughter is), but only at the more severe end.

I went to work in a non teacher role at a better school, they allow children of employees a school space.

If you temporarily rent somewhere you would have to give up your old property, you can’t keep your old property and rent a new one just to be able to put the new address down on applications, that would be admissions fraud.

I would move. In fact we are moving for secondary. Not because the local schools are bad but because DS has dyslexia and we want him in a dyslexia specialist school. I think moving for schools is completely fine and normal and not an extreme.

Well you really do have only three options.

1. Send the child to the poor school and support as much as you can
2. Pay for private
3. Move

Obviously some of these options are more feasible than others, depending where you are. We are in Scotland and have none of this "rank in order of preference" stuff when it comes to schools. And the nearest state selective school from me is in Penrith.

How far are you from a properly comprehensive area?

The difficulty of a selective system at 11+ - such as where you currently live - is that the minority of pupils ‘selected’ (who go the the grammar) leave the majority in a school which has a disproportionate number of SEN, FSM, LAC etc children, and those from backgrounds with little regard for education or consequences for poir behaviour. These schools are harder to teach in and do not offer A levels as a rule, and thus good teachers in shortage subjects (in an era of teacher shortages) will tend to choose elsewhere - and there may well be a higher degree of work related stress (or even physical injury) so teacher absence is likely to be higher.

You may need to move away from the edge of selective counties as well, as there are sometimes edge effects where the most able / ambitious/ focused on education will still commute into the selective area.

Balance the cost of moving vs the cost of private education in the nearest non-selective private with a good reputation for SEN and limited extra charges for SEN support. The latter type of school, especially if small, rural and relatively low fees, is particularly vulnerable to closure, however - check finances carefully.

So you've already applied and are just waiting to see what you are allocated?

That means a lot of the suggestions on this thread are irrelevant.

Your best option might be to go in with an open mind, particularly if DC is with a good crowd of friends from primary school, and look to go to drastic Option B in Year 8/9 if it is as bad as you fear.

The only school place offered to us was at a failing comprehensive that even Ofsted said wasn't safe. Having taken a closer look, ds applied for a scholarship at a small local independent, and when he won it, I mortgaged my soul.

As it happens, it has worked out, but a fairly high risk strategy 😓And I only have one dc.

Our LA specifies that the address used for applications is your main residence and that this is also the address used for GP/hospital and current school, plus other LA services such as the library.

Anything else is fraud.

Too late now for the ‘normal’ admissions round anyway. You would be a late application anywhere, and thus dealt with after all on-time state applications have been allocated.

So your possible actions are:

• see where you are allocated - you may be surprised
• stay on the waiting list for your higher choices
• see whether any other schools that you would prefer have spaces : if they have no waiting list, any place can be yours, wherever you live
• find any non-selective privates that have spaces, either now or post application day (when those holding places but getting their state school offer may drop out)
• start the moving process, including investigating where would have places for an in-year application. While appealing for and winning a place in a new area would need you to be fully moved, have disposed of your old house etc to make you credible amongst other applicants, taking an empty place, as long as you can take it up within a week or do, may not be as stringent
• try out this school fir a period of time, with the ‘escape routes’ planned and primed ready to go, or ready to go for eg Y8 or 9.