Primary schools in Surbiton

[quitefrankly]

Hi. We are moving to Surbiton in a few weeks time. Having spent months lobbying my husband to move, I'm now panicking a bit about how hard it's going to be about getting in to state primary schools. Our daughter is three in May, so we have a little while, and we're renting with a view to buying, so we have a bit of flexibility, but there are a couple of older threads about oversubscribed schools and how bad Surbiton is. Primary school was a big reason we moved as the one nearest to us isn't great (and we wanted better quality of life, nearer to family etc).

Can anyone appease my panic? Thanks v much.

[Roseflower]

I just moved from that area at Christmas (but the Tolworth part of Surbtion-not my choice to live there though its a long story). We found out that due to being on the Surrey/ Kingston border we could apply to both LA's which is likely to the case for you (you might as well apply to both)

So we had six choices. We ended up getting a first choice place for both LA's (Surrey was Long Ditton Infants & Kingston was Grand Avenue). There were huge problems in the area the year before but they extended school sizes last summer by adding 30 extra places to the most popular schools. If your prepared to consider the whole area you will open your options up.

[andiem]

I live in Surbiton. It depends where you are moving too and if you want a faith school or not. What you will have to put up with is overcrowding. Our school currently has 2 bulge classes so an extra 60 in KS1 in a school that was originally designed to be one form only.
You also have to be careful that you don't end up in a no man's land area where you are too far away from all the local schools so get offered something that is in another part of the borough.
Renting is a good idea as you can get a feel for the area and school catchments before you commit to one location.

[quitefrankly]

Thank you both very much for your advice, will definitely check out the school catchments before we commit.