Secondary schools in Trafford

[claritabonita]

Hi there!

We are currently living in Sale moor but looking to move house as we've outgrown our current place. We have a little one already in primary school here and ideally would ideally want him to go to Sale Grammar.

I know this is very specific, but do you think he's still likely to get in if we move to Brooklands? If not there, which other secondary schools are good in the area?

Basically trying to decide if we should keep our search to the Sale Moor area or if it is safe to widen the net! I know they have quite a limited catchment size.

If we were to go to brooklands, any feedback on the area would be great too.

TIA x

Not sure about this year (although I know of one 'out of catchment' kid who's going, so it's probably true this year too), but in recent years all kids in the SGS 'priority catchment' that passed the 11+ and wanted to go to SGS got in.

Depending how far towards Sale you are on Brooklands, your fallbacks would be Wellington or Ashton on Mersey, both very good schools I believe (although you'll want to check the 'door to door' distance if your fallback is AoM, as that has a ridiculously small cut-off for admissions, being so popular).

Failing that, there's Altrincham College of Arts, which I also was impressed with.

Now...the above is all assuming that you're still in Trafford - I've a nagging suspicion that the Trafford boundary goes down Brooklands, so that if you're on the east side you're in Manchester city council, and on the west side you're in Trafford borough. You'll definitely want to make sure you are in Trafford...

The priority area (so kind of catchment) for SGS is M33, WA14 and WA15 so just check the postcode of any property you're considering. I don't know about catchment for Ashton on Mersey but Wellington is around 1 mile door to door - I think they have been out as far as 1.3 in the last few years. It is very tight.