Moving to Bath

[ottley36]

Hi my husband has recently accepted a job in Bath so we will be moving to the area from Manchester. We are looking to buy/rent a house within the Bath area or local village but would appreciate any advise on primary schools and nurseries/pre-shools for DS's 1 and 3. Currently looking around North-East,East and South East of Bath...any recommendations on schools and/or places to live would be great!

Well the good news is that most of Bath state schools are pretty good all the way up from reception to sixth form. There are plenty of private schools too from nursery upwards.

The less good news (perhaps) is that the catchment areas for some of the (perceived) good schools are small and/or you need to be a regular church goer to get higher up the admissions criteria.

It is a bit of a slog, but the council produce a lengthy booklet that sets out all the admissions criteria (and number of applicants v places v catchment area). www.bathnes.gov.uk/services/schools-colleges-and-learning/admissions-schools/admissions-starting-school-2012-2013.

I'm not sure the Bath pages are too busy here (but the bathmums.co.uk seems to have an active community of parents contributing).

When you say NE, E and SE can you be more specific? Which areas are you looking at? Within the city or further out?

thanks for the link madcats I've also posted on Bath mums!
tallulah my husband will be working between Larkhall and Batheaston so ideally we would be on that side of Bath possibly out as far as Corsham or down to Bradford on Avon so any tips on possible locations around there would be great. No more than 10 mile commute. Thanks

We lived in BOA when we first moved here and we loved it. Sadly no houses came up for sale in the period around when we sold our house and we weren't able to wait. If you do end up there, there are 2 primaries and both are good.

We looked at only one nursery on that side of Bath - Hopscotch on the Wellsway. We really liked it, but ended up at Snapdragons over the other side of the city because it was easier for travelling.