London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Secondary Schools - What would you do?

[Antipogees]

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping to get some feedback from you all regarding how we best tackle getting into our preferred secondary school.

We’re moving from New Zealand to England in June this year and are aiming to move into the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames (ideally St Margarets or possibly Ham).
We spent 4 years living in South West London (SW14) 7 years ago, so know the Borough fairly well.
Our daughter is 12 (D.O.B 12/12/2012) and our son is 9 (D.O.B 11/07/2015).

We’re unsure if we’re best to put all our eggs in one basket and rent a house as close as we possibly can to Orleans Park Secondary school, if we missed out on that for our daughter then it feels like we’re kind of living in no-mans-land in terms of which school the Richmond Council would then offer her a place at.

Would we be better to move to Ham and move as close as we can to Grey Court School, it feels like there would be a higher chance of getting into Grey Court if we lived very close, vs Orleans Park.

Our preference of secondary schools in the Borough is
Orleans Park
Grey Court
Waldegrave

After those three, we really have no real opinion on what would be best.

Both our kids are more academic than sporty, they both don’t mind sport and participating, they’ll just never be Olympic athletes etc.

Obviously we need to find our son a primary school also, but this seems a bit easier than finding a secondary school for our daughter.

We’d prefer to live in St Margarets over Ham, as it’s a little more lively and it has better transport options in terms of getting into London for work etc.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, do we move somewhere that’s kind of in the middle of multiple school ‘catchments’ or do we focus on one school and try and move as close to that and cross our fingers.
We’d no doubt be signing up for a 1 year lease on a rental property so that could bite us if we end up being placed in a less than preferred option by the Council and we’re quite some distance from the school.

Is another option that we move to St Margarets, try and get our daughter into Orleans Park and our son into Orleans Primary School. If our daughter misses out, then we take the secondary school the council offer us and bide our time with our son eventually getting a year 7 placement at Orleans Park and then try and get our daughter into Orleans Park as a sibling? That would be a three year process though I guess….

It feels like arriving in June and applying for schools once we have signed a rental lease is pretty optimistic in terms of gaining a place, are we better to apply for schools in June/July before the summer break, or do we wait until the start of the school year in September?

We’re not religious at all and sadly can’t afford to pay for private schooling.

Please let me know what you would do in our situation.

Thanks!

While Richmond will have to find you a place somewhere in a Richmond school, there's nothing to stop you applying over the border in Kingston or another neighbouring LA if there's a place in one of their schools you prefer.

Yep, sounds idyllic, but unfortunately that's not practical in a densely packed city, with no space to build new schools, a highly mobile population, and very visible performance metrics that make marginally better (on paper) schools disproportionately more popular than others. If everyone who wanted a place at Orleans Park got one, it would have expanded its estate across the whole of Marble Hill and York House Gardens by now.

It's ironic, because when my kids were in infants, Orleans Park was considered inferior to Teddington School. A decision by an Ofsted inspection team to rate it Outstanding a few years ago has made it a magnet for families like yours from all over the world and massively pushed up nearby house prices. It's mad. People who make a life here for a few years, with children at local primaries, have a more balanced perspective.

That’s tough, I kinda feel bad now that I’m feeding that frustration from the locals.

Could someone please tell me if a rental accommodation agreement can be used as evidence of your address when applying for a secondary school placement, even if we haven't moved in yet?
We’re wondering if we find a place to live and sign an accommodation agreement but can’t move in for say 4-6 weeks whilst we wait for the house to be vacated etc.

You need to check the rules in the in-year admissions brochure which is online.

Can anyone tell me if a 2 bedroom flat is considered acceptable for a family of 4 when applying for schools in the borough?
I can’t find anything online to give me a solid answer.
That would mean my two children (12 year old daughter and 10 year old son) sharing a bedroom.
We’re searching desperately for a 3 bedroom and that is our preferred choice, but it’s slim pickings sadly and we’re running out of time.

Thank you.

Do you mean acceptable to the Admissions Team? Yes, so long as it is the only address you have in the borough.

Might be a bit cramped though.

Hi tentaclez, yes, sorry, admissions team is what I meant. Thank you for your reply.
It’ll be horribly cramped and we’re trying our best to avoid it.

Do you know if the 12 month minimum rental is at the time of applying for schools? As in, if we’re 1 month in to our 12 months will that be rejected?

It means you have to apply from a semi-permanent address, not for example rent a serviced apartment for a month only.

i really don’t think a 10 and 12 year old of different sexes sharing is a good plan. Moving to a new country is bound to be stressful, and new schools, and you aren’t going to want to move again immediately. They will need their own space.

Try some different areas? Westminster tends to have spare capacity in its schools

I feel for you. We moved back into Richmond Borough after a few years abroad and remember the stress.
That was over a decade ago so my experience won’t be that useful but I would agree with PP that all the schools are decent. We wanted OP and Nelson and got Twickenham School and Chase Bridge. House was in Whitton (which I love).
We were not keen at all on TS but they had a good experience there. They managed to get great results, made wonderful friends and then went to OP for 6th form.
I would be massively against choosing a 2 bed flat because of schools. Especially the ages your two are. Having a bedroom as a teenager is much more important than the school they go to! I would pick a house I love somewhere in Twickenham/Whitton/Teddington/ St Margaret’s on good bus routes.
Best of luck.

Just googled to see what you could get for £3k these days. Good grief it’s awful.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/160030148
That would be my pick from the very slim pickings. Tidy house near the station. There’s just nothing decent near OP!

Richmond's secondary admissions brochure says that if your rental agreement is due to expire before the start of term (including any break clauses) they will need further verification of continued occupancy, even after you get the school place offer.

I can't see anything in there about 12 months minimum occupancy, can you? Six months should cover you until September, but most landlords prefer 12 months, for obvious reasons.

Thanks everyone, I appreciate your comments.
We’re pushing hard for a 3 bedroom house, we’re under no false illusion that we’ll probably end up coughing up £3500pcm to get anywhere near Orleans Park, Teddington or Grey Court secondary schools.

I’m going with a safe bet that to stand even a remote chance of getting a place at any of those three schools, that we’ll need to be closer than .6 mile, if not less.

I’ve had a good scour and couldn’t see anything on their brochure.
Before start of term is referring to the start of the school year isn’t it, rather than the start of every term? Gosh, that would be a juggle.

I have that property saved, but I think at 1.2 miles away from Teddington school, there would be no chance of a placing.

Maybe consider the school near this rental.

Quite often families on school hunt put way too much into a few school not realising that other school are quite as good.

That is the closest secondary school to this rental sadly.

The national Schools Admissions Code says (my emphasis):

"2.13 An admission authority must not withdraw an offer unless it has been
offered in error, a parent has not responded within a reasonable period of time,
or it is established that the offer was obtained through a fraudulent or
intentionally misleading application. ...

2.14 A school must not withdraw a place once a child has started at the
school, except where that place was fraudulently obtained. In deciding whether
to withdraw the place, the length of time that the child has been at the school
must be taken into account. For example, it might be considered appropriate to
withdraw the place if the child has been at the school for less than one term."

So, I would say that so long as your fixed term rental period covers you until when your child starts school you should be ok. It wouldn't be considered fraud unless you lie about your intentions, e.g. tell the Admissions Team in an email that you expect to renew the contract. However, if you do lie to them then you would have to stay there for longer or risk the place being withdrawn.

Another outdated anecdote but a friend from work bought a one bed flat right by Waldegrave and got her daughter in there based on address. They never lived there as their family home was in Hounslow. The school apparently didn’t query the size of the property!

If someone had reported them the place would have been withdrawn. Shame you didn't.

They would only query the size of the property as part of a fraud investigation. If they have no reason to suspect fraud then it won't happen. It's a shame that Hounslow doesn't share its Council Tax records with Richmond.

No child is left without a secondary school place.

On National Offer day, the furthest distance offered for Teddington School was 5.6km, so I'd have thought you would have a reasonable chance of waiting list movement at 1.2miles (1.9km). Have you asked them where it would place you on their waiting list? If not, it's half term now, so you won't get an answer until at least 2nd June: https://5f2fe3253cd1dfa0d089-bf8b2cdb6a1dc2999fecbc372702016c.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/uploads/ckeditor/attachments/17528/LBRNotestoparentsfollowingsecondary2025allocation.pdf

Not yet, we’re in New Zealand still, we arrive on June 10th and will start reaching out to the admissions team and schools the day after we land.

Ideally we’re hoping to have our year 5 son and year 7 daughter placed in schools before the summer break. I’m hoping it may be slightly easier than in September at the start of the school year.
Wishful thinking I know, but we’re crossing our fingers.

It's not wishful thinking to expect them to be placed in schools - they are entitled to get places within 4 weeks, or else your applications will be referred to the FAP.

You can reach out to the Admissions Team as soon as you've signed a rental agreement. Better sooner than later as they are extremely busy right now.

Thank you tentaclez, I really appreciate all your help throughout this thread. We’re very grateful.