Amazing state secondary schools... Anywhere in the UK!

Stephen Hawking was the guest of honour at DS's Y11 prom....

Unless he made quite a habit of it, we may have had kids in the same year.

@RaRaRamen if you're focussed on grammar schools, there are quite a few dotted around the north. From the ones in Lancashire such as Lancaster, clitheroe, bacup and Rawtenstall, to the ones in Yorkshire such as Ripon, Ermysted's, Calderdale grammars.
Moving over to Manchester side, and there are more state grammars to look into.

With your budget, there might be a possibility of finding a house that ticks more boxes in the north.

You have to go to nearly 200 to find any schools near me on that list. Then there are the two very highly selective single sex grammars and a very expensive area one with an extensive drug problem.

I second @Tingalingle . My dc went to Comberton Village College, near Cambridge, and the school was amazing. One of my dc needed a lot of pastoral care and got it. I've got three friends who all pulled their dc from the private system and placed them in Comberton.

To be honest, most of the schools near Cambridge are great, and you also get loads of "added value" from the proximity to Cambridge City. My dc went to (free) events and lectures in Cambridge colleges, attended talks from Nobel Prize winners. Stephen Hawking was the guest of honour at DS's Y11 prom....

You could check out Comberton, Cambourne, Sawston, Melbourn, Linton and Impington Village Colleges. All are good. The only issue is that £400k won't get you very much house.

And King Edwards got inadequate because if one safeguarding issue. The parents were furious about it and protested.

It was a political thing to turn King Edwards which was the only non academy secondary school in Sheffield into an academy.

No that’s not true.

Tapton
High Storrs
Silverdale

are all excellent and don’t change. They are all in the top schools list every year. I used to teach at one of them and know how they perform.

South Lakes - Dallam or QES

Costwolds isn't cheap either!

This is probably the top end of what you will get in terms of space in York, in a good school catchment and within your budget.

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/133942889#/?channel=RES_BUY

This would get my vote but it isn't that cheap.

Newfield school in Sheffield used to be awful. It isn’t now but schools in Sheffield are not all great. Look at King Edward VII school - inadequate. Several of these schools are yo-yo schools. They are not consistently good over decades. Some schools elsewhere actually are!

Cotswolds.Chipping Campden and the Cotswold school both outstanding Ofsted at present.

I would look for schools that have attained some sort of LBGT diversity prize/charter/ranking - and avoid them like the plague.

A school can be amazing for one child but terrible for another. So much depends on the child. Also two identical children going through the same school at the same time can have very different experiences depending on the teachers they get, if they have to put up with a number of supply teachers for some subjects, if their preferred choice of subject is full so they don’t get allocated it or both in the same ‘column’, how their social network works out, etc. And a school can change considerable over surprisingly few years. So be very careful how much you put on one person’s experience of their children going through a school.

Oh lordy, no it won't. It'll only tell you about the schools that have paid to be in the Good Schools Guide. 🙄

I’d also consider how you feel about grammar schools and that will limit your options.
Areas without grammar schools are not competing for good teachers with grammar schools. I’m quite happy we don’t have them as it means both my dc can go to the same school (which is excellent).

That looks like a very half-arsed list. It says it shows schools with the "best GCSE and A level results" but there is no more detail. I expect they used Attainment rather than Progress scores, but they don't make it clear. High attainment is usually dependent on intake - it is usually higher at schools that are difficult to get into, with expensive catchment areas or strict religious criteria. Nor do they make it clear how they combine the GCSE and A level attainment to get an overall ranking. Some schools don't do A Levels, so they presumably won't appear in the list at all. Newer schools won't appear in the list either, because they won't yet be established long enough to attract the competive crowd. The three secondary schools in my area with by far the highest progress scores are all less than 10 years old and none of them are on the list (yet).

It is not that I ‘don’t tolerate’ it , it is that your reply isn’t what I commented on, so I don’t know why it is aimed at me.

@Relaxinghammock

I acknowledge the fact that you don't tolerate anything mentioned which you have not addressed.
But if you have noticed for a second time agreed with you that it is probably good if the school has as broad offer as possible EOT for me.

Again, none of which I commented on. I was merely pointing out the curriculum does differ between school and to say otherwise is incorrect.

London Borough of Sutton

@Relaxinghammock

Hence I responded that probably it is the best to pick the school with the broadest choices. But again between the time they move and the time the school selection time is happening that is at the end of y5 a lot can change with respect to that. I have observed that in a local school with the change of the head.

Personally, the pastoral care and bullying policy matters to me more than anything else. In any school my child will be able to succed in what he wants.

Subscribe to the Good Schools Guide for a month and that will give you loads of info on the best secondary schools in any area of the UK, covering everything from academic results to pastoral care.

I never commented on that. I posted about you stating “Here is the same Curriculum for every school. They pick up they preferences in Y9.” Which is not correct.

You don’t know if your DC will want to take triple science, but attending a school that doesn’t offer triple science means even if they do want to it won’t be possible via school. Your DC might prefer music, but if the school doesn’t offer GCSE music, as some don’t, DC won’t be able sit that via school. Another example of the curriculum not being the same everywhere. Same for languages.