Best primary schools in West Sussex OR North Oxfordshire (near Banbury)

[irisblue]

Ok, I know these are BIG areas, but I was wondering if anyone knows (or knows how I can find out) where the best primary schools are in West Sussex or North Oxfordshire?

We are currently living in London, but planning to eventually move out to Sussex or Oxfordshire. We had planned to do this in a couple of years time, but having recently visited our local primary school and coming home practically in tears (it is being watched by OFSTED - I know that in itself doesn't mean anything, but it is currently without a headteacher and a deputy, and everything just felt unloved, uninspiring and falling apart as if the teachers are just trying to get through their day rather than engage with the children) - I think we might have to move sooner!

Unfortunately, our borough seems to be a magnet for small children and the schools are so oversubscribed you basically have to live about 400 metres away from them, so realistically this is the school my DS would get into.

Anyway, I am panicking so starting to think about moving and our main criteria would be to be near a good school - and if we can do that, why not choose the best school we can.

Does anyone have any recommendations?
Thank you

If you live in london I'd imagine house / rental prices will be cheaper outside london.
West sussex is more expensive than banbury area generally.
AVOID BANBURY if you want a good school.
Look at the surrounding villages, Newbottle and Charlton is an excellent school but oversubscribed so you would have to live in the neighbouring villages. Lots of good schools chipping norton way.
Don't know much about schools in west sussex I'm afraid.

Why not go on rightmove.com and draw a search area of where you'd like to live, then look up schools in that area.

If you plan to move 'permanently', then you will want to look closely at the secondary schools, as in North Oxfordshire these are quite spread out with fairly defined catchment areas (of lots of village schools) feeding into into them.

In your position, I would look into these (Chipping Norton School, The Marlborough in Woodstock, The Warriner in Bloxham, as well as the schools in Banbury itself) and then work backwards towards the areas that they serve when looking at primaries.

We were moving back from overseas having previously lived just outside Brighton. We looked in West and East Sussex but found our money went a LOT further in the Banbury area. It's an hour-ish into London from Banbury station and links to rest of country are great too. In West Sussex to get a comparable house for your money you really have to look at areas with at least double the journey time to London.

We ended up on the North Oxfordshire/South Northamptonshire border, but crucially in South Northamptonshire for schools. I found it useful to look at secondary schools and work backwards...one of the most respected secondaries in the area is Chenderit School in Middleton Cheney.

From there we looked at the "feeder" primaries: Non-church: Chipping Warden, Greatworth, Farthinghoe, Middleton Cheney Primary, Kings Sutton Church: Weedon Lois, Culworth, Boddington, Chacombe and Aston le Walls (Catholic).

I'm pretty sure all these primary schools are rated at least good or outstanding. Whilst they vary a little in size, none are enormous, and are basically traditional village schools. This appealed to us. I think the combination of relatively value for money housing (compared to most, if not all areas within 1 hour commute to London) plus excellent schools, makes this little corner hard to beat!