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

[TheGoldRobin]

Hi,
My family is moving to London from India in March and we are looking at prospective places to live in.

Main criterion

1. Good and excellent state secondary and primary schools ( kids aged 12 and 9 years)
2. Max 1 hr commute to fetter yard (Central London)
3. Budget for rental for 2bhk is 2200-2500
4. Mix of Indian and British population
5. Open spaces

Hounslow.

Redbridge

Redbridge-the Woodford area. Sorry posted too soon! Primaries are good but secondaries not so great although there is grammar Woodford County High. Also good private options.

Wanstead

Any more suggestions mums...I really need your help

Any initial thoughts on Watford ?

Hanwell in Ealing - great primary’s and secondary’s and a lovely place to live. Close to Southall so very Asian friendly

Chelmsford. Great Schools including grammars. 30ish min train into Liverpool Street or Stratford. Can get a 4 bed family home for £2000-£2500pm rental.

Watford is really nice in places and not so in others. Cassiobury park and the canal is really lovely. You should be able to get somewhere nice for your budget. Great schools. Good shops and lively town centre. Some parts smarter than others.

One thing to be realistic about is schools. You'll be applying for places as an "in year" place and therefore you will only have a choice of the schools that have places. They may not be the best schools in the area or ones that you would naturally choose but the council is only obliged to find you a place- it doesnt need to find you a place in the school closest to you or the school that you prefer. It doesn't even need to meet preferences like single sex vs co-ed. It's highly unlikely that you'll be able to get a place at an academically selective (grammar) school for the 12 year old.

When your 9 year old applies for a year 7 place you'll be in the main application process and can state a preference so you need to make sure you live in the catchment for your preferred school. If you're targeting the selective secondary schools for the 9 year old, look into it immediately you get back as will likely need to tutor him/her for the tests

Hi mums...after online research below are few areas that are coming to our mind

1. Watford
2. Reading
3. Bishops stortford

Max rent 2000 for 2 bhk

Good secondary schools(non grammar) cluster around as we have missed the bus for grammars last week

London commute around 1 hr

Thanks in advance

Watford is grammar schools so that might be a concern for you?

Reading is a good city lots going on and lovely river

I know Watford is a grammar school, not targetting that but many more good and excellent secondary schools in that area

2bhk? Does 2k expect to include utilities , council tax etc or just rent

All schools primary and secondary in Bishops Stortford are pretty much over subscribed, lots move to the area and local facebook pages are full of people moaning they can't get their choice of schools.
Secondary's have a strange admissions process as well so for 2 of the best schools the Primary matters, for another 1 if you don't live on the doorstep you have no chance of a space.

Maybe just rent

@LIZS just rent

Do you mean bedroom or ?

2 bedroom house...per month rent 2000

A 2 bed house is likely to be very small for 4 of you.

Anyone has experience in getting "in year" admission in Grade 7 for south west consortium group of school. We are moving from India in April'25 and planning to move to Watford. All secondary schools in this area belongs to south west consortium which must have taken exams last year for Grade 7.

Any guidance, pls help.
Any good schools in that area apart from south west consortium where chances are there that I might get "in year" admission.

I’m not familiar with all the consortium schools but at least some of them (certainly Parmiter’s) offer a relatively small number of place based on admissions test performance, with the rest going according to fairy standard admissions rules of which the relevant one for you would be distance from school.

These are the in year admissions criteria in full, but you’d need to check each school individually:
www.parmiters.herts.sch.uk/_site/data/files/users/4/admissions/5893B5F6F8508D24472833D94CB3FB5C.pdf

So in theory, if you could move to a house that’s extremely close to the school you wanted then you should be at or near the top of the list of a place comes up.

Looking here it appears that the only Watford school with vacancies at the moment is Future Academies so your child would likely be allocated a place there and have to go there until and unless a place came up at your preferred school (unless you homeschooled or could go down the private school route.)
https://www.hertfordshire.gov.uk/services/schools-and-education/school-admissions/in-year-admissions-change-schools-during-the-year/school-vacancies/school-vacancies-year-7-to-year-11.aspx

The Grange Academy in Bushey also has spaces.

I don’t really know anything about either school but I don’t think Future Academies is very well regarded, or at least not compared to the Watford Grammar schools and Parmiter’s.

The difficulty is that pretty much all the good secondaries in the area are over-subscribed and it’s difficult to get a place outside the normal admissions point.

And there may be additional competition for places now as the addition of VAT to independent school fees is leading to independent pupils transferring to state schools.

From whatever I am reading, apparently getting into south west consortium schools seems to be really difficult. I feel I should rethink at another area where more secondary school with less over subscription are there, like Harrow on the hill..... Any suggestions

Hopefully someone will be along who can comment on Harrow on the Hill and/or make some other suggestions.

However, I think it’s the case that many/ most good schools are oversubscribed in most areas unfortunately. There must be exceptions but I don’t know what they are- probably outside the commuter belt around London.

The current Y7 is a very high birth rate year which means there is not much spare capacity generally.

Your best bet is likely to try to find a school you’d be happy with which you can move extremely close to and then to wait for a place to come up but accepting that you’ll have to take whatever school they give you in the meantime.

I would contact a few admissions offices at schools you are interested in to ask them if there is much movement, how long their waiting list is to get a feel for whether it would be worth considering.

Sorry not to me more positive, it’s not a great system. Even for those doing normal y7 admissions it causes huge amounts of stress as there is so much uncertainty about what school you’ll be allocated and lots of people can’t get their chosen school or even their nearest school because they are full.