The School Saga Continues...

Last week I sat down with a local to talk about secondary schools. Two people told me that getting your child into secondary school is the hardest thing with schooling in England that you can do. I didn’t feel so bad when I heard this. Our situation is complicated by the fact that we will be looking to live in one of two counties with very different school systems and entry processes. It was recommended to me that I should look in Hertfordshire because the process of getting in is based more on living in a certain area than a county-wide test. However, I emailed a school that I had heard good things about in Hertfordshire to see if I could come and visit and the email I got back simply said, we are over-subscribed, which means there are too many kids wanting to get in the school than there are slots. So even if I moved into a house across the street from this school, A could be sent elsewhere because of the over-subscribed state. There are also the selective schools to consider. Just because it is what we would call a public school that doesn’t mean that the school doesn’t have an entrance exam. So what was recommended to me was that I decide the radius of the area I am considering living in and then start listing out all the schools that fit into that area, contacting them, and schools will fall off my list because of entrance exams, over-subscription, etc. This person told me that when they were looking for schools they basically lived in an area where all the schools were relatively good so that if the over-subscription issue came up at the school they wanted, the alternative placement would still be good. I never dreamed it would be so complicated.

We aren’t giving up on Buckinghamshire and the grammar school system though. I am now in the process of trying to get the educational authority to allow A to take the test from the States.