Secondary School Admissions

Becles

I've been reading up on secondary school admissions as my son is entering Year 6 this year, so we will need to think about his next school soon.

From what I understand, you get a form and put your first 3 choices on the form, then a place is allocated. If there are no places in your 3 chosen schools, you get a place in the nearest school.

My son has been in the Catholic primary school since he joined the nursery aged 3. In his first week, he made friends with 2 boys, and they have been good friends ever since. Both friends are Catholic, so they wil get into the Catholic school. We are Christians rather than Catholic, so my son goes in to the lottery for places once all the Catholics have been admitted, which is fair enough.

Son has begged to get christened into the Catholic Church, but I know his motives are not because he wants to be in the Church, it's because he wants to stay with his friends. Therefore I feel uncomfortable about him making the decision to be christened now. If he later decides he wants to join the Catholic Church for the right reasons then I would support this.

My views on the 4 schools he has an option to go to, including the percentage of children who leave with 5 A-C GCSE's or more.

1) Catholic school:
Specialists in science and technology which are his strongest subjects and areas he has talked about studying at GCSE and beyond. He can stay on at 6th form here if he wishes. It's a lovely school with high moral standards, and good education. 77% leave with 5 A-C GCSE's or more. Son has enjoyed joining in the Catholic celebrations in school, such as masses and Holy Communion preparation, so he would get more teaching in that should he later decide he wants to be in the Church. Son would be happiest here, as it's the same environment as his primary school, and he would be with his friends.
Downsides: this school would cost the most in specialist uniform, and bus fares as it's 12 miles away and we wouldn't be entitled to a free bus pass as we're not Catholic.

2) Local Secondary School A
Specialists in Languages. Another nice school and children seem well behaved. Current students get high grades like the Catholic school (76%). Would be cheaper to travel here by direct bus, or I would have time to drop him off and be back for youngest going to local primary. It's oversubscribed, so we'd be in a lottery again for a place once the children in the catchment area and feeder schools have been given places.

3) Local Secondary School B
Specialists in Technology. Website really unfriendly so I haven't been able to find out much about this school or it's admissions procedures but I know we are not in the catchment area. It seems ok though and the grades are slightly higher (79%). Son has done a football course here, and looks a nice school from peering through windows! Again it's driveable in a morning, or he could get the bus.

4) Local Secondary School C
This is the one in our catchement area and he could travel here for free. This one specialises in Sports. However it has a terrible reputation and a poor standard of teaching. Only 40% leave with 5 A-C GCSE's. My other concern is that is has a bad reputation for bullying. My son is incredibly soft and sensitive, and won't stick up for himself. I have reservations that he would be a target for bullies due to his nature. I really want to keep him out of this school.

So based on all of that, if you were in my shoes, which school should I apply to as our first choice?

All opinions welcome, as it's going round and round in my head and I just want to do what is best for my son.

Becles

PS - please don't turn this into a debate on religion. Please can we keep it focused on the schools themselves.

I've posted it here rather than discussion time to try and keep it off yet another religion debate.

tru

When we chose schools for our two, we completely ignored the rumours, reputations and exam results.

The nearest school to us looked bad (well not bad, just not as good as others) on paper but actually had an excellent special needs department so instead of children with these needs being spread around a lot of schools, the parents all seemed to send them there (does that make sense?). Figures and percentages don't show this so the results looked a lot worse than they were.

We spoke to parents whose children had actually gone to the school, a lot of people who ran the school down didn't actually have kids there, they just jumped on the gossip bandwagon :rolleyes:

Master tru left school last year, miss tru has just left and they said that the years don't mix so it's unlikely that any bullying will happen from older kids - I know that's not what you asked lol, but I thought I'd throw that in incase you were worried about some big year 11 picking on the smallest year 7.

bluep

I would definately go along to any open evenings/have a look at the schools before making decisions and ask around parents with older children at the schools if you can. As Tru has said, reputations can be misleading. Personally I would put stock in results as I would want my child to have the best academic atmosphere for achievement however this needs to be balanced with your knowledge of their educational abilities and how happy you think they'd be in the different environments

At first look, it seems that the Catholic school would be the first choice as your son's friends would be going there and it sounds educationally good. However, then there is a financial decision for you as to the cost and travel. 2nd hand uniforms can always be found though!!

Have you looked at the ofsted reports for each school? These give a lot more details about the individual areas that schools are assessed upon and can be quite revealing about areas that they excel at and where they lag behind.

We're going to have similar issues when my daughter gets older as my husband and his family are catholic, I'm CofE and we attend CofE church with our daughter (she is free to chose when she is older). The local catholic school is excellent but my husband teaches at the high school in our town (which has a lovely reputation but isn't as highly achieving as I'd like (55% a-cs). Luckily we've got 9 years to discuss it all!

tru

bluep wrote: »

Personally I would put stock in results as I would want my child to have the best academic atmosphere for achievement however this needs to be balanced with your knowledge of their educational abilities and how happy you think they'd be in the different environments

Oh yes, me too - sorry, I should have explained myself a bit more

What I meant was, we didn't take the results at face value. When we were looking for a junior school (we chose that first then sent them to the feeder infant school ), the SATs results didn't look good for a school we had in mind, but the kids that we knew there seemed happy and the teachers friendly. So we did a bit of digging, turned out there was a mix of at least 4 different nationalities and out of these, for most of them English was their second language. Some of them didn't start to learn English til they went to school. Suddenly, the way we looked at the results was totally different

If results SEEM bad, try and find out why. If some children left school with GCSE A-C, the teaching must be OK otherwise they'd all fail :think:

inkie

My DD starts secondary on Tues - she is going to the RC/CE school - I am a minister in neither of those denomiations, but we were category 4 and got a place. I wanted a christian school for my child (and thats what she wanted). It just so happened that its the best performing school in the LEA. Ther is only her going from her school - the others are going to the local comp. We will have transport to fund, and the uniform is more expensive that the local comp's - but a lot cheaper than what we would have to pay if she had gone private (which she was offered a place at a top selective school). If I were you go for the faith school, ours is a specialist science college as well - she is interested in all things to do with science and thinking about astronomy or archaeology as a career.
We put 3 faith schools down as our choice, as they certainly are more pastoral - didn't even consider a non-faith school. Go and have a look at them all, you will know which is 'right' for you and yours. As I had no preference of the 3, I let DD decide the rank order and we got our first choice.

Savvy_Sue

I agree that you must go and look at the schools and not listen to the rumours and gossip. If you can go to the daytime open days, do that, you'll get a far better idea than the open evenings. And look at the reasons for poor results.

The really difficult thing is knowing which school to put first, and knowing what happens if you don't get into that first choice: I think you need to speak to the schools themselves about how many children get in if it is NOT down as their first choice. And if you find that if you are likely to end up in School 4 even if that's not on your list if you don't get into your first choice, then you need to be very sure that whatever you DO put as first choice will 'work'.

So, to do that you need to be sure what the lottery you describe for school 1 entails: if it really is a lottery for non-catholic places then you are a bit stuffed. However, if there is a clear order of priority - practising catholics, non-practising catholics, practising others, non-practising others, the great unwashed - then how far up that order are you? Sadly distance is likely to be taken into account too, and 12 miles sounds a long way to me.

The other thing you might find is that even if your son IS baptised as a catholic, it won't be enough to push him up the order of priority if neither of his parents is a practising catholic. If he still wants to go through with it if he knows it won't get him into the school he wants to go to with his friends, then personally I think I would make an appointment for me and him with the parish priest to discuss it. And I'm a very non-catholic Christian so it wouldn't be easy for me to do this!

It is hard, but if you decide NOT to put the catholic school down then you will have to 'sell' your choices to your son. If you're VERY lucky he'll fall in love with one of the others, but that can't be relied on. DS3 didn't want to go the school he's at because he knew he'd be the only boy from his school going: he wanted to go with his best friend. I told him that if he was really miserable at 'my' choice then we would have a better chance of moving him to his friend's school after a year than the other way round. I think he understood this to mean that he'd be able to change schools after a year, but when he brought the subject up I pointed out that he wasn't really miserable, he had loads of new friends, and was still seeing his old friends.

Another question for any oversubscribed school is how many appeals they get and how many are successful? Round here there's a tendency for parents to be offered state places, but not take them up.

good luck - I'm coming out the other end of it now, but it's a bit of a minefield!

Becles

I used to live close to school 4, so I know exactly why it has a bad reputation.

I didn't live there very long, and made a loss of £10K just to get out due to a number of bad things that happened while living there. That's a whole new "house from hell" story though and a harsh lesson in research the area before you buy!

Thanks for the comments. It's given us stuff to think about.

On the Catholic school, it doesn't matter if you are practising or not, or what your parents are. It just depends on if you were christened into the Church. Some of the children in Cat 2 have been christened as babies, and never been to Church again, so just getting him christened would put him in this category.

Cat 1 is for Catholic children under Local Authority Care.
Cat 2 is for Catholic children who have been in a feeder school (his friends are in this category).

Cat 7 is non-Catholics who went to a feeder school but you need a letter of support from a faith leader or suitable equivilant. We don't go to church, but I'm wondering if his current head teacher would do a letter? We have a good relationship with the head as do my sons - he's a nice, friendly bloke who takes a genuine interest in the pupils as individuals.

If we can't get a letter of support, son would be in Cat 13 which is classed as "other children".

It just feels very wrong getting him christened just to get into the secondary school he wants to go to. I know other people do it, but it doesn't make it feel right to me.

TheWaltons_3

Becles, I will be getting my little ones Christened to go into Catholic Primary school which is the best in my local area, thankfully across from where we live if walking through Woods... but I won't be... so only a short drive.

I don't feel bad about getting my children Christened for this sole purpose. I am RC and not particularly religious and my Hubby is CofE.

If I were you, I would go for it. Keep the boy with his friends.

Savvy_Sue

I can't see why the head teacher wouldn't be a suitable person to write the letter, so ask if he will do so. And while I agree that baptism feels wrong - it would feel wrong to me too - at 10 / 11 your son is old enough to make some choices himself, even ones you don't agree with ... IMO anyway! That's why going to see the priest would be a good idea - you never know he might not agree to it either! At least not soon enough for it to count for schools admissions - I would hope there was a period of instruction beforehand! Because it's a serious thing: in the eyes of the church he'd be a catholic for life, expected to marry a catholic, raise his children as catholic etc.

Of course the other thing to say is that schools change: reputations change more slowly. School 4 may have deserved its reputation when you lived nearby, it may no longer do so, but it will be YEARS before it loses it. Equally a school with a good reputation may not deserve it. Please go and look at all the possibilities - you may not change your mind, it may reinforce your opinion, but I sent my boys to primary schools with VERY poor reputations and never regretted it at all. And it was more luck than judgement that they got into the secondary school they're now at!

inkie

In my opinion, I don't think that they would accept a letter from the head - it needs to be someone who can provide supporting evidence of the families wish for a Christian education, that they spiritually will suport the ethos of the school - that's why it states minister/church leader/priest etc. I would go along and have a word with you local minister and explain the situation with him. Be up front about it, honest in your reasons - I have had people coming to talk to me about such issues.