School

One of the big things for us when thinking of moving to England, is doing what is right for the little one as far as schooling. She is in Kindergarten right now and doing really well. We don’t want to disrupt her little life any more than we have to. One of the perks that hubby’s new job provided for our relocation, was an Education Consultant. We will call him “school guy”. School guy and I had a pretty detailed and very long conversation about the school systems over there and how convoluted and confusing, I mean, different they are than the US school systems. Getting back to this school issue that we have in front of us: In the US, you move into a school district and you are guaranteed a spot in that school system. This seems pretty easy and apparently I have taken this for granted. Well, that is NOT AT ALL the way it is in England. You have three choices as an expat: American schools, State schools or Independent schools. One is ruled out for us –there are no American schools where we are moving, these are mostly found in the London area. So that leaves two choices. We would rather not pay the equivalent of college tuition for Kindergarten. (which, by the way, is called Reception in England). So we would prefer a State school. But here is the catch - you are NOT guaranteed a spot at the closest school, or even a somewhat close school at all. You can try for the school closest to you, and if they have an opening, great. If they don’t, you get put on a wait list. Now, the wait list is defined by who has been on it the longest, but also, proximity to the school. So if someone new comes on the wait list that is closer to the school, measured from your front gate to the schools front gate (seriously), that bumps you down on the wait list, even if you have been on it for a long time. And people have apparently been misleading schools about where they live to the extent that it is not uncommon for the school administrator to go to your address and ask your little one to show them around, to make sure they really live there. The school guy said it is a nightmare and can become quite a crazy process for good schools. How do they define a good school you ask? The schools have ratings, and these ratings are what parents look at when choosing a school. So if the school closest to you happens to have a good rating, then you most likely have a longer wait to get in. You can start at a farther away school, until you can get into your school of choice, but you can only move to a school that has a closer proximity, you cannot move to a school that is farther away, but has a better rating. And we cannot do anything until the little one is physically living in England, so we either choose an Independent school, to ensure a spot, or wait and take our chances when we get there that she will be able to go to a State school near where we live. Everyone got it? Very clear, right? Now after school guy completely confused me with all of this madness, we talked to one of the hubby’s coworkers, who lives in the area we will be moving. They are also expats, and they have two children who are going to the school we have chosen for the little one. They think it will not be a problem for us to get her into the school nearest us, and it also has a fairly good rating. I am thinking that we will go with that option and hope for the best. I am just going to try to have faith that this is one of those things that will work out.