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!

@Antipogees I think "evidence relating to habitual residency" won't apply to a family arriving abroad because you haven't been habitually resident.

You can apply now, using your abroad address, then update the address when you arrive.

@tentaclez

I hear what you’re saying regarding habitual residence.

We’re worried if we apply now with our current TW12 Hampton address, then we’ll shoot ourselves in the foot as this coming Saturday we’ll be moving less than 300 metres/ ~.2 miles from Orleans Park School.

@tentaclez
Turns out you were spot on (as per usual :) )
We had a reply to an email from the admissions team yesterday.

Thank you for your email.

Please provide a copy of your signed tenancy agreement and boarding passes to confirm arrival in the UK. This will be sufficient to process the application. We may ask for further information at a later date.

Best wishes

Without wanting to start world war 3 on here.

What is everyone’s thoughts on preference order of schools if you were applying on behalf of your September year 8 daughter and lived very close to York House Gardens in Twickenham

We’ve put preference order as follows, but have no real knowledge, nor do we know any parents with children at any of the schools.

1: Orleans Park (350m away)
2: Waldegrave (2.4km away)
3: St Richard Reynolds (1km away)
4: Turing House (3.7km away)

We know Grey Court in Ham, is a great school, we’re just concerned it’s a bit of a trek compared to the other three schools and we’re assuming that there’s not a lot of kids in Twickenham that go there.

@Antipogees are you Catholic? If so, do you have a Certificate of Catholic Practice? Without it, you won't get a place at St. Richard Reynolds, even if applying in the normal admissions round.

As all the schools are likely to be full in Year 8, it is a good idea to apply to as many as possible, including some that might have shorter waiting lists, so I would add Richmond upon Thames School, Teddington School, Twickenham School and Hampton High to your list.

If you can't list more than 6 on the form then you'll be able to add them later.

They are all good schools. I'd personally have concerns about Richard Reynolds because we are not Catholic but I only hear good things about it too. Turing would be a bit of a schlep but has been highly regarded. Their catchment is slowly moving closer to their site though so I expect a slight change in their results in coming years.

Thank you both.
We’ve done a dummy admissions application and got as far and the point of sending it, we’ll wait until Monday as we’ll have our last piece of admissions supporting documents.
There was only the option to list 4 schools though, so we’re struggling to decide on which 4.
We are not religious in any shape or form. Do you feel that will rule out all the local catholic and CofE schools?

@Coastalhaar Interesting point on the Turning House catchment moving closer to their site. Maybe with that in mind, we leave it off. Knowing that it’s a bit of a trek also.

Sorry I should also have said re pp. I haven't heard anything positive re Richmond Upon Thames school from either former pupils of local primaries or staff working there. Teddington had a tricky couple of years but I hear is back on track (and a simple enough bus and walk) and Twickenham had a long standing poor reputation which I believe they have now turned around and they were I think full in Y7 this current year and next. Quite a trek from StMags though.

It does rule out Catholic schools (which tend to be 100% Catholic if they're popular), but not CofE schools (which usually have a percentage of open admissions).

The Turing catchment has got tighter, but is still weighted around their admissions point in Fulwell and they're heavily oversubscribed. I expect their results will only get better in coming years. The cohorts that have had results to date joined when the school was in temporary accommodation and there was therefore a much wider catchment, spreading outside the borough boundary.

It recently got an Outstanding Ofsted report, so is likely to remain very popular and the catchment may shrink further.

The op's daughter is unlikely to get a place at Turing from St. Margaret's, but if she did then the H22 bus would take her straight there.

Thanks @tentaclez I think you misunderstood me. I'm fully aware of the H22 route, but it is not a short journey and as a single decker bus is often rammed at school time in both directions. You would also have a walk at either end, as you would on the 'new' 110 route.

Turing does have a great reputation and I'd be happy for my DC to have gone there. Indeed my DD wanted to be one of the first cohort, but wasn't in the end because we temporarily moved out of the country. More children from the Heathfield area have been offered places this year than previously. Still not a huge number but growing. That was my only point.

Fingers crossed for you OP. There are plenty of good schools in the area.

"More children from the Heathfield area have been offered places this year"

No they haven't..The numbers are on their website here: https://turinghouseschool.org.uk/admissions-data.php
There were 21 this year and 21 last year, and 22 the year before that.

They also publish catchment maps showing their distance admissions which are helpful. They show how the catchment has shrunk in recent years: https://turinghouseschool.org.uk/admissions-policy

The 21 Heathland admissions are probably heavily weighted towards children from Bishop Perrin primary, given how close they are to the entrance. I hear house prices around there have been going up. The Fulwell admissions point is a safer bet though.

"I'm fully aware of the H22 route, but it is not a short journey and as a single decker bus is often rammed at school time in both directions. You would also have a walk at either end, as you would on the 'new' 110 route."

Yes, but the journey to other schools will be similarly rammed. Coming from St Margarets you're more likely to get a seat than boarding in central Twickenham or beyond.

Anyway, all this is academic, because there is unlikely to be a place available to someone at that distance.

@Antipogees all the local secondaries are decent. People will criticise all of them in different ways, but compared to many other areas of the UK they're good schools. They suffer reputational damage by people slagging them off online. Not sure if that is a thing in New Zealand, but it's definitely a thing here due to the mobility of the population (renters like you) and the preference ranking system. All schools have their supporters and detractors but, to be frank, you might not actually have a choice, so don't encourage or be put off by negative comments, which are usually rooted in snobbery. Unless you can afford the private system, your best bet is to support and see the best in whichever school you're allocated, and take the attitude that it's just plain rude to look down on other local schools.

Hello again everyone,

Not much news, we applied for schools, for both children, 5 weeks ago.

We’ve heard nothing regarding our year 6 son, our year 8 daughter is on a waiting list as follows.

Orleans Park School - 2
Waldegrave School - Area A - 9
Grey Court School - 19
Turing House School - Band 2 - 16
Turing House School - Band 3 - 2
Christ's School - 1

We were #1 on the wait list for Orleans at the end of last week, the admissions team emailed us suggesting we add Richmond upon Thames College and Christ’s CofE.
We replied adding Christ’s to the list and have had a response today with our current waiting list positions for our year 8 daughter.

I find it odd they’d suggest adding specific schools to our application when the schools they suggest don’t have spaces.

Still very hard for both our children as they have no idea where they’ll end up.

You must mean Richmond Upon Thames School (RTS) rather than Richmond Upon Thames College (RUTC) which is a 16-19 6th form college? They are both next door to each other on the same site however.

Well that will be because they knew you would be #1 on the waiting list for the suggested schools. They want you to get a place so that you don't end up in the FAP process.

They will also know where places are likely to come up in September. When students vacate places in July, they can't re-offer them until they hear they've been registered somewhere else in September. For that reason, places are likely to be offered in the first few weeks of term rather than before the start of term.

Christ's is very good for sport. Being 1 or 2 on the waitlist is a high likelihood of getting in. Parents move and don't tell schools so there is a lot of movement towards the end of the first week of term.

I'm amazed you got any response from school admissions teams until term starts. They are on holiday!

In your location I would hold on for Orleans. You may need to home ed for a couple of weeks.

Christ’s is great.

@Antipogees , hope it's gone ok this week and you have progress with school places.

@tennissquare
Hi, thanks for checking in. Still no news unfortunately. Fingers crossed we’ll hear in the next week or two.
We had a reply to an email two weeks ago stating that they were anticipating an offer for our year 6 son at The Vineyard School, but were waiting for the summer break to confirm the offer.

Our kids are pretty anxious and we’re desperate for them to get back into normality soon as they’ve not been at school since the end of May when we left New Zealand.

@Antipogees have been following your thread Where did you end up?

@Zxynpo
Hello, our year 6 son has been offered a place at The Vineyard School which we’ve accepted.
Still no word at all on our year 8 daughter. I’m hoping we’ll hear any day now. My guess is there’s no places anywhere so the admissions team are figuring out where to place her.

gladto hear re your son (vineyard is good) but what a pain for your daughter, sorry to hear.