Looking for area with good secondary schools with easy commute to London city

[Bshweta]

Hi,
My family has recently moved to England and we are looking at prospective places to live in. Our main criteria is good state secondary schools, max 1 hour door to door commute to the city, open spaces. We have shifted from the US and have no prior experience of living in the UK.
We were looking at Surrey as we liked the place but looks like the rents are quite high here. Any guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks

Thank you. We did not do anything specific, just stayed on the wait list of our preferred schools . In our case , there were no openings in any of the schools nearby and it was I think more than a month at the time that my child was out of school. FAP got kicked off as per the Kingston borough policy.

Good luck and welcome to the neighborhood.

Thank you! So near by or the Kingston Borough? Because vacancies will always be at the least popular school 😅

Very unlikely a school would agree to this.

Twickenham: 20 mins on the train into London Waterloo. Has three secondary schools amongst the top ten state schools in greater London (Waldergrave Girls, Orleans Park, and Grey Court). Lovely place, by the river and lots of green spclace. Expensive - as to be expected.

Ashford in Kent. Great grammar schools and fast train to London in 35 minutes.