Areas outside of Watford - moving and schools

[LizXB]

Hello,

We are currently in Highbury, but for various reasons are planning to move and are looking at areas between Watford and St Albans. I'm looking for a bit of insider knowledge regarding schools really. If we moved for the start of the next school year in Sept 2012, my daughter will be going into Year 3. We would ideally be looking for a Catholic school, but I realise I may not be able to get this. Radlett is too expensive for us, but I like the look of Bricket Wood. Is this a nice area? Would you know if the schools in the area are oversubscribed? What are areas like Levesden, and London Colney like?

You can see I'm clutching at straws but what I need is a nice school and for my husband to be able to get to work on the train to central London, and I'm not sure where to start!

Any help or advice you can offer would be gratefully received.

Many thanks xx

I live in Watford near the train station, which would be ideal for your DH getting to work but honestly pretty awful in terms of schools - there are some good schools in the area but the catchment areas are tiny and they are hugely oversubscribed.

I'm still fighting to get my son a reception place because of the oversubscribing problem, one of the schools we are on the waiting list for had 152 applicants for 60 places!

I don't think there are any catholic primary schools here either - you might have more luck further out away from watford, not much help I'm afraid but thought I'd try to give you a bit of an idea what it's like!

Leavesden, Abbots Langley and Kings Langley are all nice. It's probably best to take some day trips out and see if you like the atmosphere of the place. St Albans is a really nice town too. Berkhamsted is quite expensive IMO, but a very good place to bring up a family.

There is a Catholic school just up the road from me. The village here is lovely and it's 10 mins drive from Watford and 15 mins drive to St Albans if you take the back roads

Leavesden is barely minutes by car from here too.

There is a Catholic primary in Watford - St Catherine of Sienna in Garston (just north of Watford - basically part of Watford). And a Catholic secondary - St Michael's.

Admissions (to non Catholic schools) are done on straight line distance here. You need to use this calculator to find out how far you might live from differnet schools (bit hard if you don't yet live here though - perhaps to use when you are actually viewing houses!).

You can find out how many people applied to primaries and how many got places here:

2011 outturn report for Herts

2010 outturn report Herts

Presuming that you'd be applying under the rule about a school being your nearest school (rule 5) or the distance rule (rule 6), you need to look at the solumns labelled "5" and "6" to the right of the table to see how many people applied / got places under each of those rules. For some schools, eg Knutsford in Watford, even if it's your nearest school, you might not get in unless you really are very near.

However bear in mind that when it looks like 300+ people applied to a school but only 60 got places, that this includes everyone who put the school 1st, 2nd or 3rd in their choices, so quite a few of them would be not having that school as their first choice.

We have just applied for primaries in Watford starting this Sept so feel free to ask any other questions . It took me ages to get my head round all this!

Would definitely be worth ringing possible schools to ask if they are likely to have a free place for year 3. This might narrow down your search quite considerably (in a good way hopefully)!

Then when you get to secondary there's some very good state options: Watford Boys, Watford Girls (both grammar and excellent results, academic), Parmiter's (very good results too), Queens (less good results, huge school but very decent too).

If Radlett is too expensive then St Albans definitely will be too.

Is there any reason why you don't want to live in Watford itself? Nice primaries include Knutsford, Nascot Wood (both Ofsted outstanding) and several other very decent ones (eg Parkgate). The train from Watford Junction is only 20mins straight to Euston - from most of the other places you will either have to travel into Watford (and pay £££ for parking) or the train will take longer. House prices really quite reasonable considering how close to London you are.

That's true those 2 schools are also close to the other school I linked. Sounds like Abbots Langley is the place for you to live