Need to know more about these schools in Hampshire

[greenandorange]

Hello! I wonder whether someone can help me. I have been looking at some primaries for our children and wonder what others would say about them. I looked at their performance during the last few years and all looks great. Strange one school which I like, Compton All Saints' last Ofsted report is good but league tables show it is more than good, it is outstanding. All these reports are so confusing. Some schools performed outstandingly in 2012 but did rather poor in previous years.
So I am looking at these schools to consider in the future: Scantabout and Knightwood Primaries, Compton All Saints, Hook-with- Warsash, Brokenhurst.
Another question is how easy would be to find a house to rent in those catchment areas?
Thank you so much.

Hi.

I may be completely wrong here, but I have heard, maybe from 'unreliable sources', that Compton somehow 'selects'. It's a small school, I think yet gets oddly stellar results. I'd imagine there's certainly house-price selection going on there, for sure!

My DCs completed primary at Knightwood, one going into Y6, the other into Y4. We moved locally for the secondary which really is 'stellar' (Thornden).

I'd call KW a good, solid, workmanlike school; maybe not a thrilling learning environment but very good results, very good teachers, by and large (you'll always get the odd duff fit between a DC and a teacher in a school career, won't you?) and with very 'school-ready' DC, largely white but with a good proportion of other ethnicities, plus very few social problems. You could certainly rent in the catchment- we did originally, and a 3 storey 3 b/r town house cost us £850 pcm. You'd get cheaper though all of this neck of the woods is quite expensive.

Scantabout's area is a bit cheaper, and, I must say, from what I'd heard, it's a perfectly good school but I'd choose KW or Hiltingbury (or St Francis though in a different secondary's catchment) over Scantabout myself.

You seem to be looking at a large area- do you plan on moving into the desired catchment? Are you local to Hants?

Erebus, thank you so much for reading my posts and for your very informative answers. I really like Knightwood primary but it looks as it is oversubscribed. www3.hants.gov.uk/schooldetails?dfes=2009#admissions
I understand it leads to Thorden which is one of the best secondary schools in Hampshire. Could not find equally good in the South.
If I wanted to apply to Knightwood then there should be one extra place for my older child. Looking at the admissions number I can see that it is already fully packed and I guess with a long waiting list. Even if I move into the area I doubt the school will take one extra pupil. The whole picture does not look promising for my older DC. May I ask you what do you mean by "not thrilling environment"? Is it boring? Lack of equipment?
And one more question re the stellar school. How is it selective?
I guess these two schools are pretty similar in terms of teaching, just different in size?
St. Francis looks as another very good school but their website is very poor. It does not show how it looks like. I live too far from the area and not able to visit the schools.
Thank you again.

I would like to find out more about Hiltingbury infant and junior schools. It looks as Knightwood and St. Francis are better in terms of performance than Hiltinbury junior. St. Francis website scares me. Can anyone tell me something more about this school please :) Why this school is so popular? Many kids are driven by the way the school looks inside and outside and not by the education. The performance is mostly important to parents.

Hiltingbury schools are good and they do feed into Thornden although any school in Chandlers Ford would be fine.
Beware of OFSTED reports though - my DSs' primary (in the big bad city) is still advertising itself as outstanding even though their last OFSTED was nearly 6 years ago.
The best thing you can do is to spend a couple of days in the area you want to move to and visit the schools - you can feel much more for them than any website or OFSTED report can tell you

If you want to see a rubbish website, look at Thornden's

I don't think there is that much difference between the Chandler's Ford primary schools: all have good results, mostly because of their demographics. I agree with the other poster's summary of Knightwood. The school was built quite recently and is in beautiful setting. I do not think there are issues with lack of equipment or resources.

Hiltingbury has been criticised for coasting and for pupils not achieving highly enough in writing but the school will be working on improving this, given the tightened Ofsted regime. St Francis slightly outperforms Knightwood but St Francis recently changed its head and will not necessarily retain this position. As others have written most children going to St Francis do not go on to Thornden as they live just outside the catchment. (A few going to St Francis do live in Thornden catchment.)

Most Chandler's Ford schools are indeed full so you need to call around to ask about spaces in the year group you need. I know that last year Knightwood and St Francis had the odd space in year 3/4 groups. Remember that waiting lists are ordered in part by proximity to the school so you would jump over the heads of those on the list if you live very close.

I agree with previous posters that you need to come and look at schools and not rely on websites. A school as outstanding as Thornden doesn't need to bother with making a good website. (Thornden is non-selective, btw, but its catchment is very small and its pupils are from very high socio-economic-educational backgrounds.)

Thanks Tommy, Erebus and Lapucelle. I think you have helped me to get a clearer picture about the schools in CF. I also wanted to ask about Scantabout. No-one really talks about it. I see that it is not in the Thorden catchment area but we could probably move late in.
To me Thorden website looks all right. They have a new website. St. Francis on the other hand looks like all they do is pray:)
I would not have liked my children to go to a school where they do too much religious brainwashing. Something moderate would be fine.
Compton school looks like it is located in a tiny village. I guess there is not much going on there.

about thornden's website - tee hee

OP
The thing to be aware with CF primaries is that some feed to Toynbee ....
then again at the Choir competition, Toynbee kids were MUCH better singers than Thornden.

I have friends with kids at Scantabout : its all splitting hairs really. CF is a whacking great MC blob between Southampton and Winchester. Residents are spoilt for choice!

A thing I liked about St Francis was the enrichment program they do with their post SATS Y6s. KW did more or less nothing, as in 'job done'. I don't think you'd get vast amounts of religion at St Francis as it's quite MC, iyswim. Parents like there to be a certain type of ethos, maybe, though I note, anecdotally that a good proportion of kids from the north, KW school end of the estate walking south to St F I see tend to appear to come from can I say immigrant families, Indian, Chinese etc, so maybe people who'd've, if not being Christian themselves, want their DC to have a religious based education rather than more secular KW. But the people I know who have DC there seem happy with it. We chose KW because we wanted DS1 to spend a year in a school where 98% of the DC were going to Thornden.

As lapucelle says, in many ways, you're splitting hairs between most of the primaries. None are 'rubbish'!

Must check out Thornden's new website. Is it driven by steam?! - the school isn't very techie, tbh. DC use handouts and text books as well as the WWW and h/w can be hand written or done on a laptop.

Toynbee do pretty well in sport against Thornden, too, tbh!