Hi, @ndlesswaltz. Sorry for a late response. Yes, we ended up putting our twins in Addison Primary. They joined Y5 in January 2025, and are now finishing Y6. The school is quite small and cozy - it has one class for each year. The classes are 30+ pupils though.
For context, this is our children's first school in the UK - they went to schools in other countries before. So I can't really tell what is normal for a British state school, and what is exceptional. I'll just write my honest opinion.
For the good parts - the school staff are nice and helpful. The children have field trips sometimes - not very often, but regularly enough. They had a 4-day PGL trip to the Isle of Wight, which they were all very excited about. The school is not too strict about uniform - you are allowed to have a backpack of your choice, tiny earrings, and any dark trousers that you're comfortable in (not jeans).
The school has an after-school care option - Playcentre - but our children didn't like it there. Plus, our hope was that they would do their homework at Playcentre - that didn't work out. It's too distracting there, the TV is on all the time. So they came home tired and with zero homework done. We hired a nanny instead.
The teachers are really hardworking and, despite having so many children in the class, they still manage to take an individual approach to each pupil. For example, our child with ADHD gets some extra time for tasks, and the teacher helps her "return" to the lesson when she loses focus. I'm really grateful for this.
The school's exceptional SATs results are probably caused by intense preparation in Y6. I have mixed feelings about it, because the goal of these activities is to prepare specifically for SATs, rather than to give real knowledge. The children complain that most of the tasks are repetitive and boring, and there's no way to get real challenge if you've already learnt the topic well enough. So motivation is killed for those who perform better than average. But I guess this is the way it is in most state schools.
Also, the children complain about the terrible state of the school toilets. The toilets don't flush at all - there is no water in the pipes - so everything stays in, and my children prefer not to use the toilets at school at all unless it's an emergency. As far as I understood, the school hasn't been able to get the council to fix the water supply for months. So Y6 have some soap in their classroom and the children can wash their hands at least. Good that they have a working sink in the classroom. I think this will be fixed eventually, but this is the type of inconvenience that made the children start hating their school. Plus, they strongly dislike the school meals - but we're switching to packed lunch, so this will be fixed for us.
So, in the end, we are rather glad that this is our last year at Addison. We'll see what secondary school brings.