We are looking into buying a house in Rochester and obviously, we would like good primaries for our boys (one is in Reception, another is 2) which would set a good standard for getting into Medway grammar later. We can consider Catholic or Anglican schools as well, I don?t know how oversubscribed they are?
Basically, I noticed that there are plenty of good schools in Rainham but I prefer Rochester long term and not sure if I can get in the best schools while living in Rochester? What are common catchments in these areas? I am currently in London, where catchments are less than 0.5m or very oversubscribed, so cannot really compared if Medway is the same.
P.S. Ideally we have to be close to train station or on a bus route, due to daily commute to London.
Any advise would be very much appreciated!
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Good primaries in Rochester, Medway and surrounding areas?
confusedperson · 27/10/2011 10:49
grrr I just deleted a huge response!
Rainham feels very safe with children and coming from S London, that is something that I crave!
I like the area that house is in. Near to The Math which is the most popular boys grammar school. I think that the Delce school is quite big so it depends how you feel about that. It is a flat road which is important in Medway so that you don't have steps up to the house or down to the garden. Depending on where you work in London, the coach is a good option which you can pick up from Bluebell Hill and it is straight into Canary Wharf. Much cheaper than the train.
We've been here 5 years now and there is no way that we would go back at all. Friendly neighbours that we know by name and they know everthing about us! So different to Croydon 
It's great how much you get for your money isn't it :)
The area in between Chatham maidstone road and City Way has nice houses off it too as well as the Rochester Maidstone Road (took me a while to realise that there were two different roads!). It is not far from Chatham station.
We live in a cheaper part of Chatham and we bought this house as it is basically next to a primary school that is very good. I think TBH I would have chosen Chatham again given the neighbours, the schools, walking distance to the town centre and the supermarket etc although Chatham town centre takes a bit of getting used to .
We also had to choose houses based on distance to the train station so couldn't live in quite a few of the other areas like Walderslade and Lordswood which are very nice too.
Rochester is lovely - we always take our relatives there and will be there on 3rd December for the Dickensian Christmas - you'd love it, processions of people in Dickensian costumes, snow etc.
It is the lack of "real" shops that bothers me in Rochester. You have to go to Strood or Chatham for shops.
It feels much much safer here than Croydon/London. You won't regret it. There are no yellow police incident signs, you don't see the gangs of youths, DH doesn't worry about me being out at night.
15 minutes 
You must drive a lot quicker than me . I work at BW and the quickest I have ever done it is 25 mins at 5am. The thing with the towns is it depends how close you are to the motorway as that can put 15 minutes on your journey easily.
I agree that it is not exactly shopping heaven in Chatham but sometimes you want to buy a bar of soap rather than organic lentil woven soap like you can buy in the shops in Roch high street :)
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