So let's jump back a few years, if you don't mind. Before we moved, our son attended the daycare attached to my work, which we enrolled him in without much thought. When we arrived in London, he was now 2.5 years old, and we had only a month to find a place to live. We were frantically searching across the numerous neighborhoods in London- balancing commuting times with amenities, and not really thinking about schools at all. We quickly settled on our neighborhood because it's near a huge park and not too far from downtown, and then quickly just picked the daycare (nursery school) that was close by and had space available. Which is to say, not a lot of thought went into any of the schooling choices we had made by that point.
We were still in the fuzzy zone of having just arrived and getting settled, when I got pregnant again and was focused on that. Slowly, I became aware that we were supposed to be doing something about schools. In England, kids start school at age 4 in something called "Reception", which looks a lot like US Kindergarten, even though it's a year earlier. In fact, at our kiddo's third birthday, all the parents were abuzz about schools - who had the best test results, which ones they were checking out, and who had hired tutors for the upcoming entrance exams. I assumed they were talking about older siblings or something - and I guess blissfully ignored the hints. We were already behind.
The State School System
First thing's first: public schools are called "state schools" here. While every child is guaranteed a spot in a state school, there are no school zones like we have in the US. Instead, you apply for whichever schools you want, and will be accepted according to their priority rank system. For example, first priority might go to kids in foster care, 2nd to siblings of kids already enrolled, and 3rd to kids of staff, and then 4th would go to the general public. So, if the average class has 30 kids, maybe 1 is allocated to a kid in foster care, then 3 to siblings, and 1 to the kid of a staff- the remaining 25 spots are available to the general public. If way more than 25 kids applied for those spots, then they allocate them based on the distance from the school to the kid's house. Therefore, for really desirable schools, there are lots of kids applying for the available spots, and they are allocated only a really short distance from the school, known as the catchment area. In the best schools, the catchment area is literally only a block or two radius around the school, while the crummy schools have massive catchment areas maybe 1 mile radius. I first became aware of this problem when one our friends from nursery school mentioned they were moving so that they'd be closer to the school they wanted- and had literally measured the distance from the school to their door, and knew it was just a few hundred feet away. This still didn't ensure they would get in - so houses right next door to desirable schools are super expensive.
Private Schools
I don't have a lot to say about private schools because they were never even an option for us. Both my husband and I attended public schools as kids, so we just assumed that would be our kids' options too- at least for the first few years. We have slews of private schools around us - they tend to be small and all over the place. Most of the parents from our nursery school were sending their kids to private schools, so I wanted to at least look into it. It turns out, you have to get your kid on the waiting list with a hefty deposit ridiculously early- like when they're born- so we didn't even have a chance. With some tuitions around $30k per year, it just didn't seem realistic anyway. I will say it's really common here to go "State through 8" - switching to private schools before high school years.
School Visits & Ofsted Results
So- knowing that you don't have a guaranteed school that you are zoned to attend, means that absolutely everyone has to apply for a spot at a school, choosing between hundreds of schools to select their choices. To do this- there are two tools to get to know the different schools and figure out which ones are good. First, Ofsted is the government body that regulates schools. They use test results and other factors to rate the schools as being "Outstanding", "Good", or "Needs Improvement". There are very few "Outstandings" and the "Needs Improvements" are often forced to shutdown- so almost all schools are "Good". Turns out they also only update the ratings every 10 years or so- so not super helpful.
So the next option is to visit the school for one of the public viewing days. Some of our fellow parents were visiting 15-20 schools - including ones they knew they didn't have a chance to get into because they were so far out of the catchment area. I ended up attending 2 visits - one at the school directly across the street from us, and one at an "outstanding" school we didn't have a chance to get into, just for comparison. At this point I was 9 months pregnant, so definitely loved the extended walking tours up and down all the stairs and around to every single classroom. "Oh look it's a desk. That's great." What sealed the deal for me was that there was a natural playground on the school grounds with chicken, and our tour guide, who was maybe 8 years old, walked right up and picked one up, told us her name, and held her while he showed us around the forest area. When he put her down, she just continued on her way. Any school with relaxed chickens just seems pretty cool to me. So, we were decided- we would apply for the state school located literally across the street from us, where we were pretty confident we'd be able to get in.
Application Process
So just after the 2nd kid was born, we needed to get our application in. This turned out to be pretty difficult- as we needed a huge number of documents, like our lease, utility bills, letter from our nursery school, copy of our visas, and more - but at such a small data size that I was afraid nothing would be legible. And if any documents were missing or illegible, we would just be rejected from the system, with no schooling options. So I got all the documents, filled in our priorities, and then we just waited on pins and needles for months to hear if we'd gotten in. Thankfully, by April, we finally heard back and had gotten into our first choice. Also thankfully, one other boy from his nursery school had also gotten into our new school, so he would have a buddy.
Starting School
After one site visit to show him the room and meet his teacher, it was time for the first day of school. I think I hadn't really registered that this would be a big change - it seemed like he was already attending nursery school for full days in which they did a lot of learning in between playing - and school would be more of the same. In fact, his classroom was an entirely separate building on the campus of the bigger school with their own playground - it seemed a lot like more nursery school. But I was totally wrong - this was a huge change.
Firstly, the class size was much bigger so there was a lot less time for the teacher to spend one-on-one with him or me, for that matter. Instead of 12 kids with 2 teachers, we were now 60 kids with 3 teachers. So at the old nursery, his teacher would sit with him over lunch to encourage him to eat all his vegetables. On the first day of the new school, our teacher called me over and said "he takes too long to eat, you need to fix that". Clearly no hand holding or extended parent-teacher discussions about how to work together to address an issue.
Secondly, a lot of kids were way behind. English schools do not expect children to come in knowing anything at all - other than maybe their names - and the expectation is that everything will be taught. But our nursery school had been downright draconian- forcing him to copy words over and over and even sending him home with homework (at 3 years old), so we was way ahead. Because there are just so many kids - the ability to customize the curriculum is pretty limited. We understood that he was in the top reading groups and math groups, but other than that - had no idea what he was working on and whether or not he was being challenged.
Nursery School
At the same time our big kid was starting primary school, we decided it was time for our little guy to start nursery school. He had been home with me for 9 months, and I needed a break. We found a great nursery school that was nearby (not the super strict one our older kid had attended), and I loved it. The only problem was that they only had availability 3 days a week - so 2 days a week he was still home with me and the other 3 he was at school full time. He refused to nap there - so those three days he would come home absolutely exhausted and just yell at us through dinner until we put him to bed. On the days he was home with me, inevitably his afternoon nap would fall just at the time I needed to leave to pick up our eldest - so I'd have to wake him up and bring a sobbing baby to school with me- and then get yelled at until bed time. Not surprisingly, the combination of lack of sleep and being exposed to new kids meant he was just sick every other week. If he spiked a fever over 100, he then had to stay home for the next 2 days. So he was constantly home with me, and whenever her wasn't - I was afraid of getting the call to come pick him up. I remember one day I was going for a walk in the park and then had a panic attack because I thought I'd left the baby at home alone- I ran home frantically before I realized it was a daycare day and he was fine.
Failing to Adjust
Both of the boys settled into their new schools pretty quickly and were happy to be there. I, on the other hand, had a ridiculously hard time. He was usually in a uniform, but there seemed to be a million different reasons to not wear the uniform. Every Friday he needed PE clothes. There were a lot of dress up days for school fundraising- wear mismatched socks for bullying, or "funny sports" clothes for cancer somehow?. Then there were the class dress up days, like a pirate for the class theme, the Christmas play- often things we would find out the night before. Ever the environmentalist - I hated the idea of buying cheap polyester clothes from China to be worn once and then thrown out - so I would try to make his costumes out of things we had around the house - but that was pretty tricky when he had so few nonuniform clothes to work with. Eventually I learned to just tape things onto his pajamas.
This got even worse in the winter when he was able to start after school clubs 3 days a week. So those three days I had to remember to pick him up an hour later. Meanwhile, we were also signed up for ballet one day a week, so I had to pick him up on time, and get them both to class and changed on time. Add to this the stress of having to juggle the baby being home with me a few days each week, and I was frazzled. One day I had managed to get all of us to ballet, with the clothes and the snacks, with all our coats and jackets - and I was feeling pretty good. Slowly, I realized I'd left my keys and the door had locked behind me, so I had no other option than to very embarrassedly call my husband at work and ask him to come home and let us in the house. I felt so awful. This all seemed like it should be easy- everyone else was doing it- but I just couldn't figure it out. In my defense, the baby still wasn't sleeping through the night, so I was trying to juggle this all with 9 months of built-up exhaustion.
Parents Run this School
So I joined our parent teacher association and was shocked to realize how much work is done by the parents. Our school, like most apparently, is financially underwater and can barely pay staff salaries, so everything else - from school improvements to safety equipment and field trips has to be covered by the PTA fundraising. I volunteered to host the first social event - Bingo- without having ever actually played the game. We were completely on our own - having no idea how to pull off the event because everyone in the previous PTA had quit - (not a good sign). But managed to pull it together and raised like $800!
The more time I spent at the school the more I noticed things in disrepair and realized there were no school resources to do anything. It became clear that I could do any project I wanted to make the school better, as long as I was willing to do it and pay for it myself. So I started working in the gardens just outside his classroom - weeding while I waited to pick him up each day.
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