primary school Edinburgh north

[anulka21]

Hi I would like to know which is the best primary school in Edinburgh North area? Thoughts on Granton, Wardie, St. David's primary? Many thanks.

I haven't heard anything about St Davids, I believe Granton and Wardie are both good schools though the latter is certainly the more "middle class" of the two because of the price of housing in the catchment. Are you thinking of moving to that area?

St David's is a nice school. It is growing rapidly though and there have been issues with children not getting into P1.

Wardie is a fab school but it is full to the gunnels. You would absolutely have to be in catchment. They've just lost a bit of their playground to a (much needed) extension, but it's rammed.

Wardie...if you can get in. There are a lot of behavioural issues at Granton.

Have you looked at trinity? It's a very highly rated school, the head is fantastic! Wardie is very good too. Granton has a lot of issues as is expected of a large school with a catchment that is predominantly social housing! There was 105 children in this years p1 intake . Victoria is also a lovely little school ... If you go by the school inspection reports though trinity is streets ahead of most in the city, wardie also very good, Granton is mostly rated weak! I know nothing about st David's, sorry.

Thanks for your replies. I live in the catchment area for Granton and St Davids but Wardie is not too far. Will try to apply for Wardie but i know i might not get a place. I have heard mixed reviews about Granton but none from people that have kids there..we all want whats best for our kids..

If it's any consolation my niece and nephew attend there and are doing fantastically academically ... Though there is a fair amount of bullying with them being the quiet, clever ones! There are many granton area out of catchment kids at trinity, it's a bigger school than wardie so in previous years has had more out of catchment spaces available but with current changes going on due to new building in the area it may not be accepting out of catchment applications much longer! It's certainly worth asking at wardie and trinity if you drive.. It's not much further. My daughter went to granton nursery and it was fine... There are certain benefits to a nursery in a more deprived area as there is extra funding for things! Not sure if this extends to the school or not! Hope that helps.

I was in a similar situation OP, we were in catchment for Leith Primary, also hugely mixed area and had heard bad reviews, though not from people who had their kids there. I sent DS with my heart in my mouth, if I'm being honest.

It was a fantastic school. Utterly, utterly brilliant and DS thrived there. We only stayed in the city for two years and DS is now 11, but we still talk about his time there and how much he loved his school.

We are in catchment for Trinity, and whilst I've heard great things about it, when we went to view it 3 years ago, a couple of things made me wary.

Firstly we were told that it was very likely that there was going to be a P1/P2 composite class in my DDs intake, 5 P1s would be put in a P2 class with 2 teachers. I just don't like the idea of composite classes and did not want to risk my dd going into that class.

Also, when we went to take a look around, a french class was being held in the corridors. Table and chairs set up with a teacher right outside the loos, and effectively blocking a corridor which was a potential fire exit. There were bags and all sorts of mess lying all over the place as well.

The playground was also a mess, with a fenced off (not very securely either) area of rubble. This lay like this for almost 1.5-2 years. The playground has since been refurbished and looks great, but it looked a bit of a deathtrap for a while if I'm honest.

I know these 'issues' might sound petty to some, but it put us off and we decided to send our dd elsewhere.

It's a shame you discounted it for those reasons... The playground was like that due to funding for the new one being pulled, however the psa managed to raise the funds, even if it did take a while... It was a lot of money! A quick chat with the head to request not being in a composite class would have been all you needed to avoid being in that class, she's extremely accommodating about such things! I guess a composite can appear in any school at any stage though as it all depends on numbers. There was a composite in our p1 year but hasn't been one in subsequent years as it was no longer needed.. Who went in to the composites were closely discussed between parents and teachers, the usual council policy of oldest and youngest doesn't get followed there! However I'm sure whoever got your place was over the moon

but what if every parent stood their ground and said they didn't want their child to go into a composite class?!

The day we went round was the Open Day - when we pushed for further details about the composite class, it was very much a 'shrug of the shoulders' and there was no reassurance that our concerns would be taken into account. In fact, it was spun as a positive, the lucky 5 P1s would be at an advantage being in an older class. Which might be all well and good for some, but not how I wanted my daughter to start her primary school education.

I don't know, being Open Day, when a school should be showing itself at it's best, we came away not feeling overly enthused.

Your best bet is to call all the schools..is it for P1? I know there are no spaces at Trinity, doubtful at Wardie. A lot of kids go to Granton but remain on the waiting list for other schools, possibly for years, until a spaces comes up.
I will say staff at Granton are fantastic and very dedicated to the school.

If it's for p1, no one has registered yet (soon!) so there's no chance they can say if there's an out of catchment place. I think its around April they know for those ones.

Was going to say the same thing as buckeye ... Registration is November 7-11th so no way of knowing which has spaces yet! You apply for your catchment school regardless.. I have to apply this year for dd even though she's being deferred til 2018.. Then you can make an out of catchment application on top so there's nothing to lose by trying.

Ah I see I thought it was to enter the current P1.
It would be waiting list and you wouldn't necessarily hear anything about a place before the start of term, if at all.

I had some off-putting experiences at St David's. I cannot say too much that can identify me or any of the other people, but I was outright told that the best way to ensure results were kept going was to work with the whole class at once, make them do one question at a time then put pencils down, give them 30 seconds to work, ask a "smart one" the answer and put it on the board where it could be copied down by the whole class - correct looking books and total lack of learning for all, yay! I am not sure if that teacher is still there now, but she was certainly there many more years on from that incident.

When I was there the class was 13/21 with little or no English and support hours from the Additional Language department of one afternoon a week. It is not so bad at P1, much trickier at P3 as there are many parts of the world where children start school much later, and kids were arriving into P3 without a single day of formal education behind them, needing to be taught from scratch to form letters all while carrying on the main business of the P3 curriculum. That was from the other side of the fence, but it was the poorest all round experience I had of Edinburgh schools. Worse than the non-denominational next-door school, Pirniehall, so it can't be blamed on intake.

Things change all the time, so this old experience might not be worth anything now, but beware of "results", they are not always what they seem.

Well eightytwenty, given you've got 15 years experience (presumably mostly good experience given you schooled there for that length of time) then absolutely you have more experience to pull upon.

But I didn't have that knowledge and could only go by what I saw and was told on the open day, (plus some other anecdotal experience of other parents) and it wasn't the school for us. We made an alternate choice and it's proved right for us. First impressions count and all that.

I have to get my two pence worth about Granting Primary.. I went there for p5-p7 and I excelled academically. The head teacher at the time was honestly amazing, he should have won an award for the work he done there at the time. My class teacher was too and I was awarded a scholarship to Mary Erskine's although I didn't take it up. I know this was a long time ago, but don't write a school off due to reputation go and see it and the teachers, honestly. You never know what you might find.