Hampstead Parochial Primary School advice: shall I accept Reception place offer?

[Leonida]

Hi,

My child has been offered a place in reception at Hampstead Parochial School. Reading the latest Ofsted report (June 2012), it mentions that 'the school has recently undergone significant turbulence in staffing and two clases have had several teachers this year'. Does anybody have children attending the school and can advice me on whether to accept the place at the school? I am concerned about teacher turn over as this is one of the few things that correlates with poor attainement (together with large class size). Also, I have read that there have been serious problems with the Boards of Governors in 2010 and that now the school has a temporary board. This all sounds a bit alarming. We also have a possibility of another local school, but this would also be a bit of a gamble. Any advice and information on Hampstead Parochial school would be very welcome!
Many thanks,
Leonida

If there is one thing I have learnt from Mumsnet it is this:

Accept your offered school

If you don't accept it you could end up with no school.
If you want to appeal / go on wait lists for other schools then do so, accepting your offered school has no bearing on your potential success for these other schools.

What Teen said.

Definitely accept. If you turn it down you may end up with no school.

What school did you want? Do you know where you are on the waiting list for it?

My friend has her children there. She moved the oldest from a private school to hampstead parochial. She is very happy with it, although she said that her youngest child could not read fluently at the end of Reception (the other one, who had been at an independent before moving to hampstead parochial, could).

But overall she was happy with the school.

Is the other school Christchurch? Or fitzjohns? I don't like fitzjohns at all, way too liberal and arty, for my taste.

Hi All,

Many thanks for your replies. I will accept the offer in the meantime. The other school we received an offer from is the Abacus school, which is going to open in September and is therefore more of a gamble. As we are in the Belsize hole, we won't be getting any offer from Fitzjohns, for instance (and I agree that it is on the arty/liberal side of things and I am myself a bit wary of this), or Christchurch.

Ihateveggies: do you know if your friends' children were affected by the high teacher turnover mentioned in the ofsted report? Would it be possible to talk to your friend briefly about their experience of the school?

If any of you has more information, that would be great.
Thanks again.

Hi Leonida, I will see if I can ask. She is not very good at keeping in touch.

I had the feeling when I saw her in January that her child was going for the 7+ assessment (I might be wrong). Not sure they were so happy about the school. These are people that can afford a private school 10 times over (think about 1 m a year salary), so the choice of state was very surprising to all they knew them in the first place.

My guess is that they will go back to independent schools very soon.

Let me see what I can find out.

Many thanks for trying to find out for me. I am not among the lucky ones who will be able to send my child to an exclusive independent school.

I sent her a text, unfortunately she did not reply. I would send your DD there anyway. Remember, there is quite a lot of turnover in independent schools as well.

Then do some extra work with your dd. do you get the book people in the office sometimes? I bought some simple books for my children to read.

Then, say words and then spell them all the time. They will learn the spelling before you realise. I sounded a bit crazy walking around with my son and saying "what w h a t a beautiful day d a y". It works, fool proof, I tried with another child and he also repeated the words.

The school is only part of the story, it is parents that make the difference. But don't make it boring, by sitting at a table and trying to teach. The child will switch off

Hi there

I hope you don't mind me jumping onto your conversation however I was wondering if any of you have any experience of Christ Church Hampstead as we have just been offered a place and any advice would be really appreciated.

In particular if you would recommend the school, if so why? Is it friendly/happy/are families treated equally?

it will not always be possible for us to walk, is the parking situation a nightmare?

:-)

Thanks