Secondary school? What's that?

From our Cotswolds columnist, Catherine Moore, who said goodbye to inner-city London and upped sticks for Gloucestershire, for the sake of family life and more space...

 
'I feel I've had to keep a bit of a low profile with my London friends over my son's move to secondary school. As they moved houses to get in better catchment areas, travelled miles to sit exams for selective schools against impossible odds or went cap in hand around the independents looking for scholarships, we just had a quick whizz round the local schools, decided they all seemed pretty much alright and that was that.

'One of the women in my book group is head of one of the comps, a chap on the Parish Council is Chair of Governors at another and a dad from our old babysitting circle teaches at the boys' grammar. That there would be familiar faces everywhere helped keep us from the further reaches of panic that some of our metropolitan friends had to endure.

'I felt terrible for some old friends in Wandsworth who had, I felt, planned better than most for their daughter's secondary education, moving into their chosen school's catchment area when she was just three. But the catchment area changed. They didn't give up hope immediately, as their academically bright girl stood a good chance of getting in on one of the 63 selective places on offer. Or so they thought. When her 93% score in the test left her among the also rans they did finally throw in the towel. Rather than send her to the massive, troubled comp on the other side of the borough she was allocated, they've remortgaged and sent her to an independent girls' school a couple of streets away.

'Some Gloucestershire parents through, don't quite get just how lucky they are and do get into the most terrific lather about which school their children should head off to. I sit and listen, but, when I think about a friend of mine in Islington, the Gloucestershire crew really do have nothing to worry about.

'My Islington mate found that she'd had enough of all the school hysteria and decided to send her 11 year old to their nearest school - for a fortnight. One boy was knocked unconscious in an English lesson. And on three separate occasions she went up to the school and there was an ambulance in the playground attending ‘incidents'. A bit of lairy behaviour in the corridors, or a little light smoking and swearing is about as much as us exiles can handle.

I can see why it might cause a stir if you fetch up to school in your Ku Klux Klan outfit, but other than that I can't quite make out what's banned'A month into his secondary school life, and my son Sean is loving it. He's gone to the school he wanted to - the boys' grammar. It hadn't particularly been my choice. It seems to me - a product of a progressive Seventies comprehensive - as though it has fallen out of the pages of an Evelyn Waugh novel but he was desperate to go there.

'I've already been told off by my brother for moaning about its strict uniform policy. (We're £370 lighter after buying all the stuff). He says its part of a zero tolerance approach which encourages good discipline. I obviously haven't got the hang of it all yet.

'And some of the uniform regulations are quite bizarre. The boys cannot wear coats with ‘logos associated with the drugs culture or other ‘cult' attire'. Now I can see why it might cause a stir if you fetch up to school in your Ku Klux Klan outfit, but other than that I can't quite make out what's banned. Sean thinks it means you can't wear coats with pictures of cannabis on. Maybe we should take a trip to the big flea market in Amsterdam to check out his theory - I've certainly never seen anything like that for sale in Gloucestershire.

'Despite the fact that Sean's on a - legal - high, the first month has still seen me in a state of high anxiety. Knowing he was at the right school for him, that he had friends to walk there with, trusting the school to keep him safe, somehow didn't cover it. If I could have hidden in his pocket, like a weird, middle-aged female Stuart Little, I would have done.

'Who are these new friends he's made? Who is this geography teacher who makes him laugh? Are the games teachers really watching carefully enough in rugby practice? I'd love to spend a day there with him. Do you think he'd mind?'