School admissions

The time has finally come to choose a secondary school for Jarom. I've been waiting and worrying about this for the last 11 years. When we first moved to Weston-super-mare I must admit the local secondary schools did not have a great reputation. They could hardly be any worse then the inner city Nottingham secondary school I attended, but of course you always want better for your children. I must also say that despite my secondary school not being the best academic achiever, I did love my time there - wonderful teachers & friends.

So the time has come to 'choose' with Jarom. I say 'choose', we have looked into this very carefully and Jarom may not have a choice at all even his catchment area school is highly over-subscribed. But to appease us and make us feel as though we might have a choice our local education authority allow us 3 school preferences. There are only 3 schools that we could choose due to transportation factors - one is our designated catchment school, one equal in distance and one a much further train ride away.

So over the last month we have visited each of the three schools several times, both for their open evenings and for guided tours. We have been very impressed with each of the schools we have visited. I feel so grateful to know that despite our choices or preferences Jarom will get a good education at any one of these schools. What a relief. We then had the difficult task of placing our choices in order of preference. These sheets really helped us organise our thoughts. Finally after thoughtfully considering each one, and praying about it we finally made our choice.

1. Priory Community school
2. Backwell School
3. Worle Community school

Priory seemed to out-shine the others on so many levels. It's learning environment appears to be superb, academic standards are constantly on the rise. They are a special status school for technology, Jarom could take GCSE's in engineering, he loves the thought of that. The school is close - a bike ride, walk, or even bus trip away.

So those are our choices, and this morning I submitted Jarom's application via the internet.

I am so glad it's done.