Marylebone area primary schools

[LoveImmigrantYankee]

Advice please on primary schools in Marylebone, central London

DH, DD (3.25) and I live in East London (almost Essex) in an area with good schools. DD has a place at the nursery of excellent local primary, which is RC. (They stress this means no guarantee of place in Reception)

However we want to move to Marylebone, near my only family in London, to escape suburbia and (hopefully) find like-minded types.

Question is, what to do about schools?? In the prospective area are three good schools, Hampden Gurney, St Vincent, and St Mary's Bryanston, all faith (we are practising 'mixed' family RC / CofE).

Does anyone know anything about these schools beyond the v good Ofsted reports?

Are they so over-subscribed it's not worth even thinking about?
What are the social profiles of the schools? Ofsted says many kids start off not speaking English. Does that mean professional ex-pats or refugees???
Are there even an private schools in the area?

Any insight appreciated.

[Gidleigh]

I have visited 2 of the 3 schools you mention in your post and all three are good school although I would say Hampden Gurney is especially good. If I remember correctly tall three schools take 25 pupils with slightly different intake criterias. If you call or visit the schools they will have a leaflet on the specific criteria. All 3 as you correctly mention are faith schools so the priority is given to regular church goers although there is a very specific for even church goers.

I live in Marlyebone but did not apply to any of the schools mention because as a non church goer we would not have a chance in hell of getting in. I believe all 3 are very oversubscribed but it really depends on each school criteria.

So if you attend church regularly and the vicar can give you a letter confirming this I think you would have a good chance for St Marys and Vincents, but not sure about HG as they rank the church ( in terms of location) you attend in its criteria as well.

[LoveImmigrantYankee]

Thanks very much for your reply, Gidleigh!

If you live in Marylebone are there any other schools to go to that aren't faith school??
I couldn't find any on the net and the estate agents must deal only with single people or childless couple because they had no clue.

[Gidleigh]

As far as I am aware there are no state primary schools which are non faith inside the Marylebone area. The closest appears to be in either NW8 and W2 but you can check the list on this link www3.westminster.gov.uk/schools/school_list.cfm?value=primary

I don't know any parents who send their kids to any of the non faith state schools. From what I have heard though from parents sending children to HG and St Mary's the reports were not great for those schools.

Also, there are no private preps directly within Marylebone. The closest is in NW1, NW8, and W2.

[LoveImmigrantYankee]

Sorry, I'm a bit thick, the reports for HG & SM aren't good or the other non-faith schools?
Geeez, we'll need faith to work out this school situation!

The RE report for both HG & SM says only 1/3 of the student population is Christian, so i guess that means they went down the criteria list and started accepting the non-church goers.
Are you still applying or are your children in school already?

[Gidleigh]

The reports I saw a year ago for HG was outstanding in all categories and SM was very good in all categories. When I visited HG they infomred all parents at the open school evening that they have been oversubscribed by practicing Christians (they have 6 categories of them if I recall)for the last 5 years! We live about 5 blocks away from the school but this is would not help us as we are not practicing Christians. In fact the school indicated that it would be highly unlikely they would be able to accomodate us given previous years. SM indicated we may have a small chance as we live 1 block from the school and they given local families a slightly higher priority than HG but nontheless they could not guarantee or give us a high degree of confidence of a space given the non-practicing bit. We would have applied to HG but given the dire/no chance we have decided to move house and send DCs private. As a non UK person I find it strange that government sponsored school can discriminate based on religion. Hope it works for you.

[LoveImmigrantYankee]

Thanks, Gidleigh, for all your advice/info.

I hope all goes well with you & DCs.