"YOU should have checked out the school before you moved house."

If there was ever a time when I've wanted to punch someone, it was then. I had been telling a former neighbour how I disliked a secondary school I had looked around, and which my daughter will be attending.

She responded by insinuating that we had moved house solely for the school - and it served me right for not having a look at it before we upped sticks.

I suppose I can understand her way of thinking. Parents go to extraordinary lengths to get their children into the 'right' school.

Headline-making stories in the national press have featured parents who have given false addresses, developed a religious commitment, offered the head teacher money - even faked a divorce to pretend that the child lives with one parent - to secure a place at a preferred school.

I recall a case where a child was put up for adoption by her parents to ensure she went to the school of their choice.

I'm not denying it is a nerve-wracking affair. My eldest daughter doesn't start secondary school for a couple of years, yet already we are being sent letters urging us to look around.

And, let's face it, to the parents of young children, most upper schools appear a terrifying prospect. As you drive past the gates, with the statutory gangs of unruly-looking pupils hanging about smoking, they look about as welcoming as a Turkish prison.

The school I checked out - the only one we can get to, really - has a good reputation and I have no doubt it will be great for my daughter. What I didn't like was the look of it: the dark, poky corridors painted in colours that would depress the most optimistic person and, as my daughter pointed out, a "sweaty sock smell." But, say friends who visited other state schools in the district, "they all look like that".

The school also performs well in the dreaded league tables - better than the one we left behind when we moved. That, I believe, is why we've been branded a family of catchment relocaters.

I have been shocked by the feelings that this annual scramble for school places - which will get worse if the Government opens up all schools to all comers - stirs up. True, I wouldn't want to enrol my children in a school that was constantly the subject of Channel 4 documentaries and had a stream of so-called super-heads drafted in to turn things around. But, at the same time, I wouldn't deliberately go looking for an institution that churned out swotty kids who took their A-levels at 12.

As anyone who has ever moved house knows, dozens of factors influence your decision.

For us, the emergence of a student hall of residence next door was a big one. Having an off-street place to park away from the threat of vandalism was another, and acquiring a garden a third. School catchment? Of course, we considered it, but it lagged well behind other considerations.

But people are always going to make assumptions about others. What I'm inclined to do is order some brochures from Roedean College and pop down to school with them. That would get tongues wagging.

Updated: 08:53 Tuesday, December 06, 2005