Surbiton / Long Ditton vs Teddington / Strawberry Hill

[OliveTree90]

Hello, looking for some advice :) Considering whether to buy a family home in Surbiton / Long Ditton area vs Teddington / Strawberry Hill. Primary options would be Collis / Sacred Heart / St Andrews etc potentially in Teddington with Grey Court / Kingston Academy maybe / Richard Reynolds etc for secondary depending on where exactly we end up. Surbiton would be Long DItton Infants and Junior / St Pauls / Hinchley Wood Primary based on the areas we are looking at. The worry is the secondary school options in Surbiton as we were hoping to move abroad perhaps for a few years perhaps but seems that with the feeder system, even if we were in catchment for some secondaries, we would lose feeder school status if we move abroad. I'm confused about whether there are good options in the area for secondary that do not rely on feeder school status? Catholic schools are an option. Surbiton commute much better of course and we can afford a bigger place. Also concerned about flight noise in Teddington. Any thoughts from parents from a secondary / primary school perspetive from either area? General area advice in terms of Teddington vs Surbiton? Thank you! :)

@coathanga You will see above, someone asked me if Catholic schools are an option and I was responding. You saw in my post, my main concern is we are likely to move abroad, so would like to come back to some secondary options hence needing to understand the feeder system.

Each Catholic diocese (for VA schools) or Catholic academy trust (for VA schools that have converted to academy status) has its own admissions system. They have developed differently for historical reasons. The admissions authorities no doubt liaise with the Catholic Education Service to try and make sure there are no geographic gaps. The CES lobby for new schools where gaps are identified, but they are competing for limited precious resources with non-faith schools, which are obviously more inclusive so generally favoured by Local Authorities if/when they are consulted. There are exceptions. The go-ahead to establish St. Richard Reynolds in Twickenham benefitted from having local political backing (but was very controversial at the time).

@OliveTree90

The catholic boys would be Richard Challoner for Surbiton I believe. You only tend to get 1 catholic school per borough (per sex). I know people who have got in without being at a feeder but they lived fairly close.

Richard Challoner and Holy Cross are the Catholic options, they do have feeder schools but lots of kids go who don’t go to the feeders.
The New Malden schools generally are excellent. You’d need to be considering more the Berrylands side of Surbiton than the long Ditton side

Thank you everyone. Will take a closer look at Richard Challoner also. @coathanga thank you - you seem to know a lot about how these schools are set up! Have a lovely evening everyone.

If you have boys, look at Coombe boys also. It’s very aspirational and the new facilities are going to be absolutely incredible. In my quite MC/elbows out demographic of mum friends it was the second choice if the boys didn’t get into Tiffin.