Primary school in Birmingham/Worcester

[Newtwinmom]

Hi all,

I'm new to mums net and hope I'm posting this in the right place.

Can I ask for some advice with picking a school? I'm from Canada and the English schooling system is very different and I'm struggling to get my head around it.

We're looking for a good school to send our twins in Birmingham/worcester and we're actually looking at moving areas to get into a good state school..

I've looked at ofsted and league tables and they seem to confuse me even more.

The areas that appear good are Barnt green/hagley/harborne/bournville/Moseley/halesowen/Stourbridge. Solihull and Sutton cold field aren't an option.

Are there any schools moms would recommend? Also I have no idea what questions I should ask or things I should look for when I visit schools? I went to private school in Canada but that's very different to private school here by the looks of things.

Any help would be much appreciated as I am just very confused and overloaded with info at the moment!

Thanks

Jessica

Don't know the areas you mention but in general I would go for the feel of a school.

Also if you are bothering to move house, look at secondary schools too - more disparity here IME, primaries usually more acceptable but some secondaries you might not choose.

How old are your twins? When will they start school?

Agree, secondary schools are more likely to be an issue. I've worked in a few schools in the areas you mentions, all lovely primaries (state and private) but issues with the big secondaries in all those areas.

Where is the job? The traffic can be quite tricky in this area sometimes, but if it were me I'd be looking further out of Brum - if the job's in Worcester I'd be looking at living in Malvern or Worcester villages, but if In Birmingham I'd live (and used to) in either Moseley or Kings Heath.

Yes, I take it you're referring to Worcestershire rather than Worcester city, as the areas you mention are near the Worcs/Birmingham border. There are gazillions of primaries in these areas.

Got any criteria to narrow it down:
Proximity to work area?
Nearness to home?
Rural? Semi-rural?
Small/medium?
Consideration of proximity to high schools for later?

Agree with others - bit difficult to say without knowing the age of the children - are we talking about pre-schoolers and you want to be in the 'right' area before they start ? Or are you talking about moving them in once others have already started, because the more popular schools are unlikely to have 2 free places to start at the same time if you've missed the Reception start. Or, is it secondary you are thinking about ? Or even, Primary initially but with a long term view to secondary ?
I live not far from one of the areas you mention, and there are at least 6 Primary schools within a mile of my house, double that for a mile and a half.

We need more info!