Choices

Just as the NHS is now offering us Choices, it seems the Department for Children, Schools and Families is also offering us choices.

We have to make a choice as to where we want Kezia to go to infants' school in September 2008. And we are allowed a 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice.

So we are faced, for the first time, with Choice. And so I consider the criteria for our choice. Centre of Excellence, good neighbourhood etc etc ?

And what is our prime priority, for better or worse?

Location. We want Kezia to go to the local school. In the local community. Yes, we're lucky it also seems to be excellent (Jaime goes there, and Kezia is in nursery there) but, in our heads, the most important criterion is proximity.

Which is why closing local hospitals and supposedly offering us more choice is not working. The many campaigns, throughout the country against closures or reductions of local hospital services demonstrate what us local punters want - our first choice is local.

So why not just send Kezia to the local school without me having to ask the local school's head to advise me on my second and third choices - Nanda doesn' even understand why we have to put down "choices" when enrollment in the local school is automatic back home in Africa.