School advices for expat - All inputs on my thought appreciate.

*Hong Kong mind me

Expats from Hobg Kong worries about somewhere with too much diversity? Interesting.

You should probably cross the majority of London of your list and unless you and your family plan to only travel by car then when you commute you may encounter (shock horror!) a wide range of people from all over the world so I wonder if London is really for you?

That London mayor is bloody useless

God forbid labour get in

@Hkelaine , I'm not sure when you are coming to the UK & if you need a TV license to use iPlayer but if you are able to access the BBC iPlayer app there is a new daytime TV show on at the moment called "Escape to the perfect town" & this week they have featured Berkhamsted & Sevenoaks. It's a very easy to watch programme focusing on house searches in these towns.

Also I'm based near to Richmond & Twickenham & whilst familiar with the recent news stories it's a wonderful area to live in & all state education options in the Borough of Richmond upon Thames are worth considering.

I’m afraid I know nothing about berkhamsoead but Hitchin is possible and St Albans but St Albans has definitely better areas that you need to be in to get the best schools so make sure you check those catchments out carefully.
Do you have boys or girls are Herts has good single sex schooling but catchments vary massively

For example my village house is catchment for a good mixed school an outstanding girls and a good boys by ofsted.

If you move into the actual town nearby you loose catchment for the boys and catchment for girls is a lottery. Many end up with the required improvement school.

Catchments are very specific.

Poor kids in Richmond! That sound awful!

This article is a fairly common example of what kids in SW London are experiencing. Richmond is a very nice, expensive area to live.

www.pressreader.com/uk/the-sunday-telegraph/20190127/282132112664571

I am wondering if the OP completely understands the difference between Comprehensive schools in an area such as Oxfordshire, Grammar schools and Secondary Modern in an area such as Bucks and the highly selective like Kent

OP, I wonder how you’re going to survive your trip to England if you’re getting petrified! Anyway, best of luck!

Knife crime in SW London has gone completely crazy, it was nowhere near this bad three years ago when DS1 was out and about. It is out of control. Far too many of DD's friends have been mugged at knifepoint and most of the time in very nice areas on very expensive residential roads. Muggers travel to get the best pickings. One of her friends was mugged at knifepoint after being dropped slightly off target for a party by an uber in a road of £5m+ houses on Saturday night.

There are places where groups of teens are known to congregate in the evenings and a gang with knives will turn up and grab as much as possible before the police arrive. There was a very nasty incident on Palwell Common 2 weeks ago, a very expensive area in East Sheen, and they are a regular occurence at The Old Deer Park in Richmond and Bishops Park, Putney. A group of DD's friends were mugged in the summer holidays by a knife gang mid afternoon in the Bishops Park whilst playing tennis and all made to hand over their phones, money etc. The nastiness of the attacks has also increased, kids are getting beaten up now and one was not only badly beaten to concussion point but he and a friend were also stripped and left naked. Fortunately they were only 10m away from the friend's house they were visiting.

The police are doing shove all about any of this, the perpetrators of the worst incident are known and identifiable but it's he says she says on eye witness statements. And the police drone on about their terrible home circumstances etc as if that justifies their behaviour. I don't see how it's going to improve under the current mayor who seems to just shrug his shoulders and say I've done all I can when it obviously isn't enough.

Any parent with teenagers who are the primary targets of armed muggings can tell you how awful things are at the moment, it is a very big problem and according to the lovely mayor it will take a generation to improve.

And anyway, you can google St Albans stabbing, Sevenoaks stabbing, Winchester stabbing. Wherever. And you’ll get results.

I’m surprised you’ve had houses coming up in Twickenham/Strawberry Hill (hope they aren’t ex coucil). They are very nice places to live and you’d want Orleans Park for secondary there.

On the crime front, honestly, there’s a lot of scaremongering in here. I’ve lived in London for almost 20 years. I’ve never been a victim of crime and have never witness any. I don’t have any friends who have been attacked. Gangs in London do exist but they are not wide spread. The police does not recognise any gang activity in the boroughs of Richmond, Kingston and Sutton.
If you look at average crime rates in Hong Kong, then many London boroughs are below that level.
I can see that if someone had bad experience/lived in a dodgy area or sent their kids to an inner city school, they’ll have a very negative view. However, that’s totally not how most of London is.

If you’re going to look at St Albans or Hitchin, it’d be worth asking the council if they have any school places as it seems from the threads on here that it’s near impossible to get a decent school for an in year admission.

Don't bank on the Sutton grammar schools. You have to be extremely academic to get in, with 15 applicants per place (from latest exams just done). This is more so than "normal" grammars" in grammar counties like Essex because there are only a few grammar schools in the area and so people come from all over London and beyond to try and get their kids in. You dont know yet how academic your kids will be. They are also not very diverse if that matters to you.

Have a look at Caterham/Coulsdon/South Croydon in Surrey as they tick a lot of your boxes and still possible to go to Sutton grammars if your child gets in. Reasonable secondaries, a lot of choice of primaries, great independent schools if you go down that route. Great transport into central London (London Bridge which is better for the city).

Anywhere near London looks bad on crime stats but its not a hotbed of crime and children are perfectly safe to walk home from school etc.

My friend is from HK and lives in Caterham, child in local primary school. She says they are very happy with it, especially after spending this summer back in HK visiting family.

OP, this useful (government) site allows you to compare school performance - www.gov.uk/school-performance-tables

Cheaper houses in an otherwise expensive location are never without downsides - bad location, structural problems etc

If not fixed to London have you considered Leeds or Manchester?

And @JoJoSM2 I think that the lesson the OP can pick up from all this, make compromises for a greater good! Unless you’re rolling in it, something’s got to bend

Panda, where did you live? It sounds horrendous.

SJane48S, don’t worry lol We didn’t move to Sutton because we fell in love with the town centre (doubt anyone does)- it was more of an Excel spreadsheet operation and a few months of research.

Lived in London for about 15 years in about 5 or 6 areas, all of which had high crime. It is so much safer where we live now - moved out a year ago and nothing has happened here in that time. Where we were a few days ago a child was stabbed and is now fighting for their life 5.30pm at the station, same station my DD would have used had we been there. Same thing happened last year. Couple of weeks ago there was a shooting, a vigilante group dealt with it so not in statistics.

When my son was 9 a 9 year old boy in his class with SN had has Dad, who was a lovely man who did school pick-up everyday killed on his way to work as a postman. So not everyone has been as lucky as you and one little boy has no Daddy. I've still got head injuries from being attacked. People don't even bother reporting a lot of crime there , police are now 30 minutes drive away. Anyway I will hide the thread as it upsets me especially when I think about the little boy, he was the most vulnerable of all the children in that class and an only child.

@JoJoSM2 - I appreciate driving through somewhere you don’t always get to see the prettier bits so apologies! @steppemum I can only relate what I know to be fact from my DDs Primary (and those I know off going to Grammar from the neighbouring Primary), All without exception coached.

SJane48S, yes Sutton town centre isn't the prettiest and I wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a location with a lot of charm. But architecture is very varied and the South of Sutton isn't very built up, some homes sit on 1 acre + plots + you can walk to fields with sheep, lavender fields, woods, farms and farm shops etc.

whoops, sorry random extra half sentence at the end!

no child from my DDs Primary School who didn't have coaching (paid for or delivered by graduate level parents) has passed it in the last three years.

3 neices all now at the top grammar in Tonbridge area.
They were not coached or tutored through year 4 and 5. They were at a private primary that did a one week 11+ camp in August if year 5. (and oldest was only at the private school for 6 months prior to 11+)

I think that is