Do you know any of these school's in Poole as they all have spaces for dd

[twinsetandpearls]

Canford Heath First school

Hamworthy Firs School

Stanley Green First School

Sylvan First School

Turlin Moor First School (due to become a combined school from September)

Hillbourne school & Nursery

St Josephs RC VA combined school

Manorside Combined school

I have already had negative feedback about St Joseph's so reluctantly have scrubbed it as it is the only catholic school.

You two are lowering the tone of my thread

sorry twinset

sorry, going to bed now anyhow, don't know nothing about St Catherine's and yep I also know that a double negative makes a positive

Good night, Once I have finished planning my lesson I am off to bed.

Rather late to this thread but when I looked at St Catherines I was told that children do come from a fair distance around. I think the majority of children who live directly around St. Catherine's go to one or the other of the state first schools in Colehill .Hayeswood (opposite St. Cs has a head who has been there for 2 years and is extremely highly thought of, I think he is fantastic - Someone was saying the other day that when he left the school where he was deputy head a few parents were so upset as they didn't like the head, that they pulled their children from the school, a little extreme I thought but he really is superb and this reflects in the admission figures this year. When my DD was starting first school 5 years ago Hayeswood was very different and it had one of the super heads (IYKWIM) had to come and clear up the mess the previous head had made. She changed it completely and the new head took over a new school and it is now very popular. I'm not sure when the last Ofsted was done but it might not fully reflect the changes made over the last year.

Lots of people travel into Poole from Wimborne, your DP might be able to life share if he wanted to. It would probably take a bit longer than 15 minutes from here to Lytchett in the morning traffic, would guess at 25 mins but can't be sure.

Don't know if you have heard back from Dorset yet but spaces in Hayeswood, Colehill, St James (Gaunts Common, might be a pain to get to) & Witchampton (again a bit too far out probably but possibility of sharing lifts etc) and I think St Johns is supposed to be good.

Price wise your budget is tight but I've been keeping a close eye on houses locally and new stuff that is coming on is more realistically priced. A lot of stuff that is on has been sitting around for ages and ages and I bet people will soon get to the stage where they will have to accept low offers if they want to sell.

I'm assuming that the first schools in Broadstone and Corfe Mullen are all full then as Poole LEA didn't mention any spaces.

Reckon it is well worth you looking at St. Catherines because if she goes there then you will have a bit more choice where you can live ie they take over a very wide area. It does have a very good reputation and could well be exactly what you are looking for.

Hope you're not too stressed out. We moved at short notice after we thought we had DD sorted for a school in Somerset and I remember the stress of getting school places sorted only too well.

I would avoid Manorside completely - 2 crap schools merged into one big crap school.

I had a terrible time at St Josephs but that was due to them being so monumentally crap about ds and his SN. DD was fine there but I moved her when things went wrong with ds. The horrible head has retired now though and they have a fab deputy head who started after we left and I have heard really good things about her. Its definitely got better but I'll ask around for you.

is hillbourne a good school?

we are getting the deputy head as our new head from september so I hope so

Sorry didn't have much time earlier.

Stanley Green is supposed to be good and I've heard Canford Heath First school is good too. Not sure about the others although I would disagree with psycho about St Josephs being in the middle of the roughest council estate in Poole - that dubious honour must surely belong to Turlin Moor 1st school.

Does Heatherlands not have any space? It usually has a couple of spaces available and i think its a great school. They have been amazing with ds and I can't speak highly enough of them

I don't know anything about Hillbourne sorry.

Dorset LEA have still not got back to me, have phoned again and they have said they will call me as the person who deals with the enquiries is not in.

I will look up those schools chocolateteapot.

Archbishop Wake school in Blandford has got two spaces in dd year, it has a godd ofsted and the website looks good. We can afford the village which looks like what he had in mind and there is a local catholic chuch.

Does anyone know the school or the village?

IIRC then Blandford Forum is more a market town than a village - I could be very wrong though

It was lovely 20 odd years ago, I am not being very helpful but did think that this would bump it for any weekenders

Good luck is all I can say. I am home educating ds1 from Septemeber as we cannot get into a school we are happy with.

We applied to Baden Powell but living 5 metres or something out of the catchment we didn't get in and 18 children in catchment didnt get in so even though we have te appeal on Tues we dont have a hope in hell. We are on the waiting list for Baden Powell and Longfleet Combined. I am not prepared to deal with the rush our prime time traffic getting one child to a school half decentish 4 miles away and then the younger back to the first school he attends which is 10/15 mins walk from our house.

If we dont make any progress on the waiting list after a year he will start at one of the local private schools in Sept 2009.

Poole schools are a nightmare atm. I don't know your situation but if you can possibly move into the Dorchester catchment you can't go wrong school wise. Excellent primary and middle schools and first class Thomas Hardy School to finish. That is what I am thinking of doing.

I think we are giving up on Poole tbh and wll go for Dorset, as we know there are places , just hope we can get them.

Someone at my new school mentioned Dorchester as well actually had forgotten about that option.

Private would be a lat resort for us although it owuld depend on our finanaces once we have sold and bought a house.

Property very affordable around Dorchester.

Dorchester is a lovely town. I grew up there and didn't appreciate it one bit at the time, of course. The villages surrounding Dorchester that would be in the catchment are Broadmayne, Owermoigne, West Knighton, Piddletrentide, Piddlehinton and the Piddle Valley villages, West Stafford, Brianstspuddle, Tolpuddle, Bradford Peverell, Martinstown, Winterborne to name a few - some have their own village first schools that lead into Dorchester schools. If you want to live in Dorchester itself I would say its got more areas that are nice than not.

The Borough Gardens is a lovely park area - a really well maintained park with kids playground area, lawned gardens, brass band thingy, bowling green, tennis courts and really, really clean toilets! If you live in Dorchester itself, you can get by without a car as almost everything is in reasonable walking distance (if you disregard the new Poundbury development)