Junior/senior schools in SE London

[SarfEasticated]

We currently live in SE4 and our DD is due to start school in 2 years time. We are on an average income (both £35k salary) and would consider moving to get into a good schools catchment area, or would possibly pay to go private if necessary.
DD is very interested in books, not particularly intrepid physically and is quite quiet and sensitive. I would love her to go to a friendly little school where she is encouraged in her love of learning, rather than a massive boisterous school where she might get overlooked.

Questions:

1. good areas in SE London which affordable housing and good schools (but we will both need to commute into London to work so good train line)
2. Is there a nice private school in SE London that is for parents in a moderate pay bracket rather than catering for the wealthy? Thanks in advance ? I know I am asking a lot

My son is currently in the park with a kid who goes to St Dunstans and seems very nice. So I do care to the extent that I wouldn't want his friend to go to a shit school. But if it was shit she could always move to one of the many perfectly adequate state schools.;) I'm sure your daughter will have a ball at school, sarf. She may be quite a different animal in a couple of years time, though. I used to think my son had a love of learning when he was 2. No sign of it now!

One of my teenage babysitters (male) goes to St Dunstan's. He appears as charming and capable as the babysitters (one male and two female) who attend our local comprehensives.

By 'bookish' I don't mean to imply that she is in anyway intellectually superior to any of her peers, just that she spends all of her time at nursery 'reading' on her own while the rest of her peers are careering around outside having a ball.
We are due to go for an open day at our local junior school John Stainer, where I hope she will go, but I wanted a fall back choice if it didn't work out.
We will have to move at some point too, so all of these recommendations for other areas are really handy.

John Stainer is an excellent school. They will be well able to cope with a bookworm. Definitely don't go private if your local school is John Stainer.:)

good point autodictat she could be completely different by then, I will keep the faith and stop panicking.

thanks autodictat

Wow, amazed at nooka saying Bromley secondary schools are terrible. I don't think Langley Park, Hayes, Darrick Wood, Bullers Wood or Hayes could be described as terrible.

So long as you avoid Kelsey Park you are on pretty solid ground in that borough.

Re the reference to Coulsdon - there are no grammar schools in Croydon but they are in Sutton and Bromley.

I have a friend who lives in Sydenham and it has to be said that Lewisham schools have come on amazingly since I lived that direction. Apparently Eliot Bank is very popular now.

Yes, I'm slightly taken aback at the Bromley statement - I'm thinking seriously of Cator Park.

Really motherinferior?

A neighbour a few doors away lived that direction previously and had a daughter at Cator Park. After moving here they kept her at the school - they were (obviously!) very happy with it.

Er, I think I didn't put that clearly - I mean I'm thinking seriously of sending my daughters there! So I think we're in agreement

Yes we are!!!

I think that now that Haberdashers has taken over a primary school on the other side of New Cross that might be a cheaper way of getting into there, much cheaper over here (but also not half as nice...)!

(on the note of income, I learned this week that a household earning more than £63k is in the top 10% nationally, so not so average after all!)

Sydenham has some really nice houses although the high street is a bit bleugh. Forest Hill is okay with some very nice Victorian properties and those lovely Christmas houses.

Re Bromley I still think the only poor school is Kelsey Park - the others all have pretty good reputations. No idea which ones are close to Penge, though!!

Kelsey and Cator Park would have been our options. Both were in special measures fairly recently (dh applied to work at both of them). Cator has a particularly poor reputation (or did two years ago when we were thinking about options, and I agree a lot can change in a few years). The Langley schools have very good reputations, but you have to live in the immediate (expensive) vicinity.

In any case we really didn't want our children at single sex schools, so the only possible state option would have been Hayes, which is I think a good school, although with it's arts specialisation would not have suited ds (nor would I have been very happy for him to have gone to a 'sports college') and it would have been very risky to expect to get in. All the local children I knew going off to secondary got places in Cator/Kelsey except for the Catholics who went off to the new school (also not an option for us - I was brought up Catholic, and there is no way I'd send my two to a religious school). Hence we were looking at Alleyns, but ended up moving (to Canada!)

so weird - I went to Prendergast! many moons ago when it was in Rushey Green (before it burned down and moved to Hilly Fields). It was a very good school - I was very academic - but it was good for other pupils too. All the Bromley schools (Langley Park etc) we played at hockey (a hangover from when Prendergast was still a grammar school) - none of them had academic records as good as Prendergast's.
Sorry - nostalgia trip for me.

Moving to Canada was a bit drastic!!! [hgrin].

A new Catholic school? Where was that? Agree re Kelsey but Cator Park actually has quite a reasonable rep now - top sets do Latin and early GCSEs if such is your thing!

The Langley schools are the comps to go for in Bromley - people are happy to pay silly money to live in little boxes next door! Their academic record is pretty amazing, though. The catchment area for the girls' school is bigger than the boys' school for some reason.

pmls at 'something quite nice in Catford' - I can assure you that the Inferiority Complex is really quite habitable

We have electricity and everything.

What's the name of those really nice houses in Catford? Was it something beginning with "C"? When I lived that way the estate agents always used to refer to them by the name - that's going to annoy me now!!

Agree with you, sprogger!

No idea. Mine is a House in a Not Very Salubrious Road, at the posher but admittedly not very posh end of it. About three minutes from St Dunstan's.

Corbett? Something like that? Victorian houses with large bay windows and fancy plasterwork.

I'm sure your house is perfectly nice, MI!!!