Royal Russell or St Bedes Redhill

[Cuba7]

Hi all, can anyone help?

Do you know either of these schools and if so, please do offer your experience and advice.

We have an offer from RR and St Bedes. Although we accepted RR early, when the state school replies come in we realised we unexpectedly received an offer from this outstanding school.

Pros; no more school fees, commutable, outstanding, similar results to RR,
Cons; large school 300 per year/ 10 form entry and classes, slightly lower results, child may get lost, possibly less opportunities, and more of a question than a con, but will child be pushed to achieve his best?

Love the idea of this state school, but know very little about it other than it is outstanding and on our visit it felt friendly and warm.

St bedes and RR parents please do reply...

St Bedes has a good reputation for drama and music but less so sport. Just got outstanding Ofsted and I've known pupils to get stellar results, so they must do something right! Tbh given your choice I wouldn't see much point in paying for RR.

Hi LIZS many thanks for responding... do you know much about how St Bedes manages the large intake abs what their pastoral care is like? Everything else seems to tick a number of boxes, but coming from a small private school not sure how son will cope with the large environment. Think RR only has 3 or 4 form entry...

Any other parents out there from either of these schools that can give their pros and cons (bests and worse)...

BUMP

I only know St Bedes. Yes it is a large school, but the pastoral system is designed so that children will be known by their tutor and I think they are timetabled in blocked groups across the year.
It would seem different to a small Prep, but even most independent secondaries are significantly bigger so there will be some kind of culture change.

For a Comp you really would struggle to get much better than St Bedes. It's results are very impressive both in terms of attainment and also value added. The Progress 8 figures put it in the top 5% of schools at the moment. That means the top 5% of schools in adding value to students based on their starting points through to GCSE.

I went to an Open evening and morning too. It looked mostly middle class parents and kids and the behaviour and focus around the school looked good.

People are queueing up to get in there,mso if you've been offered a place, unless you've got something else which is substantially better, I'd bite their hand off. If for some reason it doesn't work out, Royal Russell will always have places. Anecdotally, it's a less academic independent compared to many of the other Croydon schools. You won't always be able to move the other way.

Agree with the poster saying RR will have places in later years
Ask yourself what is the value add you are getting for the RR fees?

DD didn't attend RR so apologies to OP for posting in spite of instructions only to post from parent of school in question but DD did attend a RR equivalent. Also as there are a small number of replies another contribution may be helpful Dd attended Farringtons from pre-reception (3.5) until Y2. It was good for foundation. I met RR parents at sport fixtures. It was mentioned by those parents that they chose the school (RR) as their children were not academic but it did offer a nurturing and stable environment. It wasn't about the results otherwise they'd be chasing other schools. Those I met generally had a choice between RR and a dire school. I didn't meet a good school vs RR parent which may be just be a small sample but I would suppose could also be telling. The few I still know - they only stayed on for seniors as their options were limited. They had no good state catchment school and it felt for them RR was a good option for their non academic DC.

Thanks to all for replying... I know not many have engaged, but the advice given has been great!