I applied for my middle child’s Junior School place back in December, since then I haven’t really given it a second thought, I didn’t know the date we’d find out until I got an e-mail reminder from the council. We find out on Monday. My son is already at the school we applied for, it’s out of catchment, but there’s nothing we can do about that and we’re happy. As an out of catchment sibling I will be very surprised if she doesn’t get a place at our first choice. However, I haven’t always been this calm about school places.
In years gone by, I have been counting down the days to finding out, hardly slept the night before and checked my e-mail constantly from 5am. There has been a lot of stress, tears and worry to get me to my current, almost zen-like state about school place results. I am lucky that we live in an area where all the schools are good. My eldest child got our third choice of school, I won’t pretend I was happy about that, but now looking back, I wouldn’t change our journey so far. Things definitely worked out for the best and all three of my children have been tremendously happy at their lovely infant school which was most definitely the best place for them and very much worth the extra travel ( we have to drive ), parking troubles and general extra stress a car journey to school involves. Six year ago I could not imagine feeling how I do now, and back when I had to drive my little 5 year old boy to school with a 3 and a 1 year old in tow, park, get a pushchair out and then walk, just getting to school felt like the hardest task in the world especially as our catchment school was a short walk away, BUT again, I wouldn’t change it now. I can’t tell you how glad I am that things worked out as they did. Some things things really do happen for a good reason.
If you don’t get the news you want next week, my advice would be to talk to parents currently at the school you get, find out what it’s really like before panicing, visit again, talk to the staff. If I had taken the time to do those things it would’ve saved me an awful lot of needless worrying.
I hope my happy ever after story helps out if you don’t get the news you’re hoping for.
Sometimes things happen for a reason. I can remember how stressful it was wait to hear about school places, fingers crossed for everyone waiting this year
I didn’t have any comprehension of how stressful it would be. I had the primary and senior school selections this year, so have been through it twice.
Thankfully we got our first choices for both but this is top advice for those that didn’t!
Such a stressful time. I remember countless sleepless nights waiting for the school place we wanted for my daughter. We got it, celebrated, and then moved to Copenhagen and didn’t ever take it up! You never know what’s around the corner! 😀