Dear Surrey Mums,
I very much need your honest opinion. We are a British (my husband) - Polish (myself) family with 2 children both born in Italy, where we have lived for the last 8 years (lucky, I know :). They are going to be 7 and 5 in a couple of months. My husband is going to work in Redhill and we're just going through an agonizing process of deciding where to live and which schools to choose. We already know that we have no chance of getting a place for our children in any of the Ofsted 1/2 state schools so we decided to put them in one of the private schools. Now, in Italy the schooling system is not the same as in the UK as some of you might know. Children start school when they are 6+ and they go straight to year 1. What that means is that our daughter is currently in Year 1 learning to write and read whereas our son would still be in pre-school and not learning much reading or writing for the next year at least. So from the UK academic point of view they are 'behind' and will probably need some extra support to start.
Having said that both our children are trilingual...kind of an asset I would think. Our daughter can now read in Italian, but she's now started to read in English and Polish too and she speak all 3.
Ok, to the point. We are considering the following options: Reigate Micklefield (St Mary's hasn't currently got a place for Year 2) or Guildford Cranmore (West Horsely) for our son and St Teresa's or Tormead for our daughter. With Tormead we're not sure if we get a place because of the academic difference at this stage. She would need to sit an 'exam' to see if she would be capable of closing the gap.
So here's my question. Can you tell me about your experiences with these schools, what is good/not so good about them. We're (or at least I'm) not familiar with the idea of girls/boys schools - what's your view on that? What is important for us is that our children feel good at school, but also considering the fees we would like them to get a really good education. Which school do you think would be good for 'foreign' kids.
In terms of the location itself I have another question: 1/ we are coming from a vibrant Italian town (we live right in the old town),
2/we will be new to the area and won't know anybody - we will need to create our social network from scratch
3/I will need to look for a job
What is it like to live in Reigate (we know Guildford a bit more)?
I'll very much welcome your views on both or either of my questions. Thank you!