Advice on Schools & areas commutable to London

[79Rainbow]

Looking for advice or areas and schools! Any recommendations for a creative, non competitive state primary school commuting distance an hour to London?! We’re moving from overseas and looking for a family area, semi rural and commutable to London but with a bit of a social scene. Our budget is around £1m. We have no connection to the UK so don’t know where to start!

Which part of London is the commute to? That will narrow it down a bit..

Look at Stamford, direct trainline from Peterborough takes 48-50 minutes. If you can stretch to indie primary then Copthill in Uffington is a wonderful school

Creative, non-competitive state primaries are a bit of a unicorn in the UK. Schools are closely monitored, all results and progress scores published etc so it’s generally quite result driven. They’re currently also squeezed financially so there’s little money on creative stuff. You’ll have better luck in fee paying schools.

For quite a cool, upmarket little town in the commuter belt, you could check out Reigate. I suppose Aberdour (fee paying) is quite an interesting school that places value on STEAM (Science, technology, engineering, art and Maths) and incorporates creativity throughout the school.

You could also look at Beedales (all through fee-paying creative school) and see if there somewhere commutable to the school and London (lovely coutryside that way).