Choosing a Secondary School -Janie

I never realized how hard it could be finding a suitable school for my daughter who has a statement of special educational needs. My son was so easy, he is a sociable boy and there was no difficultly moving him from our village primary school to our catchment secondary school. It helped that everyone in his class was going there too and it had a very good reputation. A no-brainer really.
With K it is a totally different kettle of fish.

I shouldn't really complain, we are lucky that there is so much choice and no really bad schools. I know in some places there is no choice at all and only mediocre education. Too much choice can be a terrible thing though!

I should start by explaining that my daughter is handicapped by her anxiety which is why she is statemented to begin with. She has great social skills, always behaves at school and is a bright spark although very behind academically in some areas because she has missed so much school over the years. Unfortunately though, her level of anxiety is over the top and she worries about the slightest thing, often things that seem stupid to most people.

To begin with we had at least four possible schools but it was fairly easy to strike two off the list. My husband teaches at one and felt that it would be difficult for both of them if she was at the same school. The second school we struck off the list was our catchment school. This was because K's peer group in our village started at the school in September but K has gone back a year at primary to help her catch up a bit on what she has missed. When she becomes a year 7 all the children that she started primary school with will be year 8. She doesn't like the idea of this and thinks she would be teased by the other kids about it.

I decided the best thing was to visit the two remaining schools by myself first. School A looks wonderful and the students giving the guided tour were lovely. Every class seemed to be working quietly and there was an atmosphere of calm. Sounds great, but... I didn't click with the learning support staff. They didn't sound very optimistic about her chances of settling well and even suggested that we look at a specialist independent school in Cambridge, The Red Balloon Learner Centre.
Without an attempt at a mainstream secondary school first, I don't think we have a cat-in-hells chance of the local authority paying for a place at an independent school.

School B is very run down looking and on the up rather than at the top of its game. It is a victim of not being so good in the past so many parents are choosing alternative, better performing schools. This unfortunately means most kids in K's school will not go to school B despite it being the catchment school. What worries us as parents is that only the families who can't be bothered to look around will be sending their kids there. As my husband is a teacher he is very familiar with the 'Don't care about education' families- they are the parents who never come to Parents Evening but are the ones the teachers most need to see. School B is not as impressive as School A and offers a lot less choice in the curriculum and  extra-curricular activities, but.... the learning support team seemed so much more nurturing and familiar with children with similar difficulties to K.

So my husband and I spent hours trying our best to predict the future- which school should we choose? In the end it was fairly straightforward, we chose the school we thought it would be easier to get K into in the mornings. She came with me to look at both. She said she liked School A but the following morning told me she didn't like 'the ladies' of the learning support team. When we visited School B she came away smiling and immediately said that was where she wanted to go, she felt safer there. It is usually best to trust your intuition especially when your child agrees with it!Will it be the best choice? I don't know yet, but nothing is forever, if it doesn't work out there will be other options. What I do know is that K has made enormous progress in the last 10 months and who knows how different things might be in another10 months. Janie x