Moving to Central London - i need to choose an area with good schools!

[GemmaB79]

I am looking for advice on areas to move to in Central/ North London. I am having to move for work reasons and my son and are are really looking forward to it. The only issue is that he is in Year 6 and is due to move into Secondary School next year. I am planning to move for the start of the January term, 2010 so need a good primary school with an excellent comprehensive secondary school close by. Any advice on where to start looking would be gratefully appreciated please!!!!

Islington (where I live): forget it. Primaries are good but secondaries are shit.

I think Camden has one or two.

Muswell Hill is where Islington parents move to as there is one good school, Fortismere, but the catchment area is tiny. Also MH isn't very central & there's no tube. It's in Haringey btw.

I don't know about east London. Camden & Islington are the 2 main central/north boroughs.

HTH but it's not good news for you, I know.

You could look at Barnet (North).

I also live in Islington and I agree that there are no good secondaries here. You are definitely looking at only the state sector, correct?
If so, you might wish to look further north, toward Hertfordshire and commute. The North London line goes into Moorgate and King's X or you can change at Finsbury Park for the Piccadilly or Victoria lines into the West End.
If you do want to stay in C. London, you might want to look at Mossbourne Academy in Hackney for secondary and I believe that there is another reasonable, relatively new academy somewhere in Hackney - but you would need to be very careful about where exactly you move to - there are some very poor schools, too.

What sort of school do you want though Gemma - Hackney's not a bad idea as there's some great primaries, and good secondaries, but they're v.different in approach. So Mossbourne = state of the art new academy, very smart uniform, strict discipline and absurd numbers want to get a place. But also Stoke Newington = more old style liberal comp, also hugely over subscribed, received an outstanding ofsted last year and gets good results too. For both though you need to be v.close to the gates to get in.

Tufnell Park or Highgate areas within LB Camden. Good primaries are Eleanor Palmer or Brookfield and popular nearby secondary is Acland Burghley.

The word on the street in Hackney is that Michael Wilshaw (sp?) is moving from Mossbourne to Haggerston, which is becoming a mixed school. MS is the superhead, who has something of a track record of being involved with schools-with-excellent-GCSE-results.

He does do discipline, though. So you'll have to make a choice their, as Smee says, between liberal (and slightly less amazing results) and strict (and amazing results).

I don't know how the timing would work out for you - I don't know whether the move is confirmed and what the time-table is.

So that's Hackney again. Hackney does have some quite challenging primaries, though. It also has some very good ones. however, the very good ones you would find difficult to get your ds into even in year 6, unless you live on the doorstep. And then you have the difficulty of trying to find something in the catchment of both secondary and primary. Do you only have the one ds? Perhaps that's not such an issue.

"there" not "their"!

People are saying very good things about St Mary Magdalene in Islington though. Andrew Andonis' kids there so it can't afford to fail.

Is he is Year 6 now? Won't you miss the application deadline which is in three weeks time?

Barnet has some of the best schools in London. The primaries are plentiful and very good; however the secondaries are extremely competitive.

Good luck.

barnet does not sound v central to me and feels vv suburban - housing stock is not great either. i would suggest stoke newington school too. it is harder with boys as there seems to be a lot more good girls schools in the state sector. would you consider sw london??

This dyed-in-the-wool North Londoner would say that SW London -anything south of the river really - is no more central than Barnet!!