School Admissions etc
Discussion
Not sure what sub forum to put this in but feel free to move it if wrong place.
When I last moved house kids were not on the agenda so didn't look at schools in the area, role on 3.5 yrs and I'm now a single parent (dad) with a a son who will be starting school Sept 2020, I've now just started looking into it all. I got a few questions,
1. All the schools near to me all have a 'Good' or 'Needs Improving' Ofsted rating, is 'Good' good enough or should I be looking for outstanding ?
2. If I end up on getting a place at a 'Needs improving' school, would you consider sending your kid private at search an early age ? There is a private school a few miles away from me that is not stupid expensive, at a stretch and a lot of cut backs I could afford to send him private, I'm just not sure it worth it at such a young age.
cheers
When I last moved house kids were not on the agenda so didn't look at schools in the area, role on 3.5 yrs and I'm now a single parent (dad) with a a son who will be starting school Sept 2020, I've now just started looking into it all. I got a few questions,
1. All the schools near to me all have a 'Good' or 'Needs Improving' Ofsted rating, is 'Good' good enough or should I be looking for outstanding ?
2. If I end up on getting a place at a 'Needs improving' school, would you consider sending your kid private at search an early age ? There is a private school a few miles away from me that is not stupid expensive, at a stretch and a lot of cut backs I could afford to send him private, I'm just not sure it worth it at such a young age.
cheers
Bear in mind "needs improving" is what used to be "satisfactory". Ofsted deem "good" to be the standard now, and below that to need action to be bought up to good. Majority of schools in most areas are "good".
All the "outstanding" ones anywhere near us are faith schools with almost zero chance of getting a place in. We really like the "good" school they're at.
All the "outstanding" ones anywhere near us are faith schools with almost zero chance of getting a place in. We really like the "good" school they're at.
Amateurish said:
Ignore the Ofsted, just go and visit the schools with your child, speak to the teachers, observe the kids. Make your decision based on your observations. Personally, I would always favour the closest school - lots of classmates in the locality and less travelling.
This - and in my time as a parent, with the second child just starting secondary school, I've seen schools move around status quite dramatically. The head makes a lot of difference. For primary education I'd not worry too much (3 kids in primary now). But that's if you're prepared to put in effort with him outside of school to work on reading, writing etc...
Go them all and have a look around, main thing for us was the way we got on with the head and class numbers. Our closest school has 20 to a class, the one we went to has 12 in a big year. The kids get a lot more attention.
If your lad has any learning issues though then private all the way. Local private school has classes of 4 (for the boys).
Secondary is coming up for our eldest and we're looking into moving as the secondary options are average and worse...
Go them all and have a look around, main thing for us was the way we got on with the head and class numbers. Our closest school has 20 to a class, the one we went to has 12 in a big year. The kids get a lot more attention.
If your lad has any learning issues though then private all the way. Local private school has classes of 4 (for the boys).
Secondary is coming up for our eldest and we're looking into moving as the secondary options are average and worse...
Ofsted is a very flawed benchmark, you can’t use the ratings on their own.
Inner city schools in Bristol are a lot more likely to gain Outstanding as they tick a lot of boxes for SEN/minority groups.
There’s an Outstanding school where a significant proportion of the pupils have English as a second language for example. Undeniably they’re doing great work, but class sizes are large and TA’s are focused on those less abled. Having invested heavily on Early years for my two, this Outstanding school wouldn’t suit their needs.
Further afield you’ll find schools with overall Good, with Outstanding elements. They’ll find it almost impossible to tick every box for an Outstanding result but have smaller class sizes, more space, better KS2 results etc. Good can be better!
Requires improvements is a tricky one, you probably don’t want you kid to already be in a school that requires improvements, but the following year money will have been pumped in, systems changed and possibly a new HT.
As long as you don’t leave all their education in the hands of any school, they’ll be alright.
Inner city schools in Bristol are a lot more likely to gain Outstanding as they tick a lot of boxes for SEN/minority groups.
There’s an Outstanding school where a significant proportion of the pupils have English as a second language for example. Undeniably they’re doing great work, but class sizes are large and TA’s are focused on those less abled. Having invested heavily on Early years for my two, this Outstanding school wouldn’t suit their needs.
Further afield you’ll find schools with overall Good, with Outstanding elements. They’ll find it almost impossible to tick every box for an Outstanding result but have smaller class sizes, more space, better KS2 results etc. Good can be better!
Requires improvements is a tricky one, you probably don’t want you kid to already be in a school that requires improvements, but the following year money will have been pumped in, systems changed and possibly a new HT.
As long as you don’t leave all their education in the hands of any school, they’ll be alright.
Some general points based my my experiences and observations. It's a subject close to my heart as we recently moved house to get the kids into the best local state schools.
When you don’t have kids, you tend to buy the nicest/biggest house for your budget. This house will inevitably NOT be near a very good school. For your budget, why would you pick the 3 bed semi which costs the same as that beautiful new 4 bed detached with double garage? The difference can be that great depending on how good and poor the closest schools are.
Therefore, unless you have specifically factored the requirement for being near a nice school into your house hunt, you will not by chance be in the catchment of an “outstanding” school.
I also know a few friends (highly educated people) that bought their current house before having kids and now have to send their kids to the local poor/rough school. These people are the first to passionately claim that Ofsted scores are pointless and based on measures like special needs provisions, etc. They then go on to make comments on how rough the other kids are and how their kids get beaten up or the teachers keep leaving.
There will of course be exceptions where a "poor" school will be excellent in most regards.
Just my 2p.
When you don’t have kids, you tend to buy the nicest/biggest house for your budget. This house will inevitably NOT be near a very good school. For your budget, why would you pick the 3 bed semi which costs the same as that beautiful new 4 bed detached with double garage? The difference can be that great depending on how good and poor the closest schools are.
Therefore, unless you have specifically factored the requirement for being near a nice school into your house hunt, you will not by chance be in the catchment of an “outstanding” school.
I also know a few friends (highly educated people) that bought their current house before having kids and now have to send their kids to the local poor/rough school. These people are the first to passionately claim that Ofsted scores are pointless and based on measures like special needs provisions, etc. They then go on to make comments on how rough the other kids are and how their kids get beaten up or the teachers keep leaving.
There will of course be exceptions where a "poor" school will be excellent in most regards.
Just my 2p.
I’m always confused by the ‘move house & get a bigger mortgage’ to get into the best schools. It’s frequently cheaper to send the children to private schools than to move house to the catchment area for a ‘good’ school. We looked into it - our village school isn’t brilliant. We’ve gone with a private prep school, cost is about the same as moving to a similar house with ‘good’ schools - then factor in potentially having to move again for a better secondary school & private education started to look very cheap(!). The quality of the teaching in the private sector in our area also seems far ahead of the local state schools.
You need to go and look at the schools including the private one....as above teachers, headmaster and how the children behave etc are all important. The other thing you really need to consider is where they’re going to go to secondary school and which school offers the best route into that. Ultimately primary school is part of a journey.
Also it’s about your individual children and what makes them tick and what they enjoy...when we lived in London my son went to a state primary school which was excellent but was limited in terms of facilities and things like PE or Games were very,very limited. We ended up finding a PE type activity for my son to do on a Saturday morning as he just wasn’t getting much at school. Moved out of London and decided to send our kids to a private school as they were a) cheaper than London so more afordable and b) good state schools where we were moving to were full. My kids now do Games/PE every day. Clearly that’s not important in terms of “education” but the kids love being so active and really enjoy school. It’s now a problem as the good local grammar school play two sporting fixtures every half erm...so my son doesn’t want to go there! If your kids aren’t really into sport that’s less of an issue! There are lots of other positives too but a big disadvantage is that private education is a bubble and as your kids get older that’s an issue.
Also it’s about your individual children and what makes them tick and what they enjoy...when we lived in London my son went to a state primary school which was excellent but was limited in terms of facilities and things like PE or Games were very,very limited. We ended up finding a PE type activity for my son to do on a Saturday morning as he just wasn’t getting much at school. Moved out of London and decided to send our kids to a private school as they were a) cheaper than London so more afordable and b) good state schools where we were moving to were full. My kids now do Games/PE every day. Clearly that’s not important in terms of “education” but the kids love being so active and really enjoy school. It’s now a problem as the good local grammar school play two sporting fixtures every half erm...so my son doesn’t want to go there! If your kids aren’t really into sport that’s less of an issue! There are lots of other positives too but a big disadvantage is that private education is a bubble and as your kids get older that’s an issue.
Magnum 475 said:
I’m always confused by the ‘move house & get a bigger mortgage’ to get into the best schools. It’s frequently cheaper to send the children to private schools than to move house to the catchment area for a ‘good’ school.
But the house you move to that cost 50% more because it was in a good catchments area, will be worth 50% more when you sell, so infact you end up making money on it. Plus you might have 2 or more kids, and private then costs double. Offsted is a pretty good guide but certainly not the full story. I was a school governor at a West London Comp, that went from good to satisfactory following an inspection, because they found a hole in the exterior fence that bordered some woodland. This was a safeguarding failure which they treat (maybe rightly) as a serious issue. But of course it had no effect on the education the kids were receiving.
In the same situation as you OP.
We moved last year to get away from a poor local school. The school was a major factor in the search & the local one is now "good", But.........
We went to visit it in July & we didn't appreciate how big it was, with two classes in some cases and it's just got a new head
I'm an easy going person but the guy was an absolute bellend with us in the 3 minutes he could spare us.
The other school we went to see which is 5 miles away (but close to my work) was night and day better (also "good" rating). The head spent nearly 2 hours showing us around and even offered for our little one to go in the next week for an hour as a taster session. As we're out of catchment it's going to be a nervous wait after we apply.
Check out the rules on feeder schools for comprehensive as well, the primary we like is a feeder school for a good comprehensive & you get higher priority if out of catchment
A frigging headache is what it is!
We moved last year to get away from a poor local school. The school was a major factor in the search & the local one is now "good", But.........
We went to visit it in July & we didn't appreciate how big it was, with two classes in some cases and it's just got a new head
I'm an easy going person but the guy was an absolute bellend with us in the 3 minutes he could spare us.The other school we went to see which is 5 miles away (but close to my work) was night and day better (also "good" rating). The head spent nearly 2 hours showing us around and even offered for our little one to go in the next week for an hour as a taster session. As we're out of catchment it's going to be a nervous wait after we apply.
Check out the rules on feeder schools for comprehensive as well, the primary we like is a feeder school for a good comprehensive & you get higher priority if out of catchment
A frigging headache is what it is!
We had a similar issue a couple of years ago. Without divulging too much information there is another layer of data behind the publicly available offstead stuff that pertains to actual pupil attainment. You can ask the schools directly. Our nearest primary had a good ofstead and a good head but attainment was on the floor as its the school of choice for the travelling community. We had to leave our eldest in her old school a few miles away as the others were full. That school is now going through some issues. It's a nightmare!
Cheib said:
The other thing you really need to consider is where they’re going to go to secondary school and which school offers the best route into that. Ultimately primary school is part of a journey.
This.We moved to a 'nice' area prior to having kids, not particularly bothered about local schools. Both local primaries were ok but chose a school further afield, worked well bar the fact that the vast majority of school friends then lived miles away so you have to make a concerted effort to arrange after school stuff. Found that as they approach Y6 all the school was concerned with was trying to show progress and get the kids through their SATs - concentrating on those less likely to pass - other than this any learning seemed to disappear. In hindsight, we might have chosen the local option.
However, High school wise, although the nearest was 'outstanding' it was huge and we were aware of a few local issues that were obviously well hidden on inspection. Considered the option of private but, for us, deemed it an expensive option so chose to move house to be in catchment of another good school in a local village rated outstanding with high GCSE pass rates for the last 3 years, but half the size. Time will tell if it was a good move or not but first impressions are good.
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