Dorset mums - Advice please. Epiphany school in Bmth or St Catherines RC in Colehill

[3girlsunder3]

Does anyone have experience of either school please? What can you tell me about either? I need to make a decision for reception & mid year entry - & have very little knowledge of either school. Please help if you can!

I don't know anything about the Bournemouth one but my friends niece is at St C's. She hasn't had the greatest time to be honest. Her cousin will be going soon as couldn't get a place at the school on the same road but is a more confident child and the consensus is she will fit in better.

Someone else I know has a son there and seems happy enough. Some of the Mothers are incredibly rude and think they own the road, telling people to reverse when it is them on the side of parked cars and I heard of one lady who pulled her child out due to some of the nastiness on the school run in the playground.

I do appreciate the road rudeness is a personal bugbear! I did look at it for DD 10 years ago but it was a different head who has subsequently left. I didn't like her or the feel of the school at the time but guess it is different. We moved but were considering St Mary's in Poole at one point, not sure what that is like now.

One thing to consider is that a lot of the other schools around it were oversubscribed this year but St Catherine's had spaces I believe. Might be worth considering that and asking around why.

we used to live very near Epiphany and have friends with children there. To be honest in the whole time I have lived in Bournemouth I have never heard anything bad said about Epiphany. However, I expect it is heavily oversubscribed as it certainly always was.

Epiphany, like many Bournemouth schools, is heavily oversubscribed. There were no out of catchment admissions this year and a fair amount of in catchment children didn't get a space. It's highly thought of, though.

Thanks for your replies. We have been offered places at both schools already, so need to decide between them. We were all set for St Catherines & then had a last minute offer of Epiphany which has thrown us! We have spent 3 years on the waiting list! are not Catholic & live in Bmth not Wimborne. We have lived away for the last 3 years so have no local friends which I feel will be a consideration.
We are moving from a tiny village school which was extremely cliquey & not a happy time, so I really don't want to get it wrong......

Epiphany is CofE and I think since it became an academy has to take a certain percentage of non CofE people too.

Certainly it has a lovely atmosphere from what I know and my friends kids are very happy there. If you live in Bournemouth then I would say take the place there rather than go out to Colehill. Most of the children live in Muscliff and Throop for obvious reasons but everyone was very friendly when we lived over there.