London school catchment areas ?

[jillspenser]

Hi all. New joiner. Have DD approaching school age, and currently living in Crouch End, and looking to move to South London to be closer to my mum in Kent. Been looking at primary school catchment areas, some look very small, infact found a nice site....

www.schoolcatchment.co.uk

that helps with that.
But need advise on where to move to, thinking of Croydon, and want to take into consideration the school catchment areas. Help, as I don't know south London at all, so open to ideas.

Well look at the schools first. Find ones you like then see how close you have to live. It depends to on what part of Kent you need to be near but I'd look around Beckenham myself rather than Croydon. Also look at possible secondary schools. I have friends moving to West Wickham for that reason and primaries are god there, they say.

Also the borough of Croydon is huge. Are you looking at, say? The Crystal Palace end? Addington? Croydon centre?

Schools in Bromley are over subscribed, so if moving there try to choose accommodation very close to several schools, as the borough has a number of black spots where if you don't get into the nearby school, there is little other choice. I understand Croydon has over a hundred children without a primary place currently and the projection is that it could be much worse in a couple of years. The free schools opening up may help a bit, but the ones near us have immediately become oversubscribed - they don't even have buildings yet! Would you consider somewhere like Sevenoaks or Tonbridge, or look north into Herts? Sorry to be gloomy but please do your homework before moving.

No idea about Croydon but Bromley is nice and oversubscribed. We live in
West Wickham and our 2 entry Infant has 48 sibling places out of 60 in total this September.

If you think about it choose the area carefully. West Wickham is a great are.

oohh, West Wichkam looks quite nice, I want to be getting into London Bridge work wise, and it seems to fit the bill. There also seems to be quite a few schools around as well. Will look into it.

Anyone know what Chislehurst is like ?

What's your budget (if buying), and which part of Kent? Roughly. (Because from my bit of S London I would go in different directions depending in which bit of Kent). And will you be driving to Kent, or would it be good to be able to go on the train ? Because lots of S London longed near me go into bits of Kent. But useless for others.

Chiselhurst is expensive and state schools oddly placed. We looked there but decided against in the end.

Re the website aboyt catchment areas...it might be handy as a general guide but I suspect it doesn't show info in schools which are their own admissions authorities, which a lot are (think some church/faith schools, academies, free schools, grammars). And 'catchments' (or more correctly, furthest distance offered) change from year to year. Deffo check with the LA about which schools you may be offered a place at from any prospective address.

There is no such thing as a "catchment" in London. You put down your choices, but all the LA are obliged to do is allocate your child a place at a school in the borough. It may well not be your closest school, and may be a considerable distance away.

The popular state schools in Chislehurst are hugely oversubscribed. Sometimes even church going siblings do not get a place at St Nick's, for example. Red Hill, which used to be pretty much guaranteed, is now very oversubsubscribed, and to get a place at Edgebury, you need to practically live next door.

If you are moving to Bromley you need to be no more than 0.2 of a mile away from certain schools, so in the same road as the school!

Actually the LA don't have to allocate you a place in borough. Sometimes it's out of borough.

Beckenham is nice. Plenty of primary schools but black spots. People also flee to the supposed naicer schools but there aren't really any bad ones IMO.
Secondary is trickier. I think north Beckenham doesn't have decent secondary schools for boys especially - you have to look over the boundary to Croydon/Lewisham but quite far.

Also important that while a school's official catchment area may be one thing, the maximum area from which they admit children is usually very different and smaller. You can check with the relevant council the furthest distance a child was admitted from.

In Bromley where we are the booklet the La produces gives you admission distances for the last couple of years. That should be available soon on the website. Some of the distances are vanishingly small. We do have a couple of free schools opening, a Harris academy and a bilingual French school if either are of interest. You would need to pick your area carefully but it is handy for commuting. London Bridge via brome North/ Sundridge park (have ti change at Grove Park though) or Bromley South to Victoria/Blackfriars and to the coast. The secondaries are good too but maybe oversubscribed too in a few years. Also you can take 11+ for neighbouring borough Bexley grammars or Kent ones. Also two super selective in the borough, one for boys and one for girls.

The primaries in Bromley are broadly good but many are having to expand which affects their grounds and of course makes them less intimate and friendly for the children although whilst that may be an issue at 5, it is probably less so by 9/10.

Bromley is also a nice enough place to live and close to most things due to its transport links which is good.

I would be very careful with that catchment site, it looks a very blunt tool! The schools closest to us use shortest walking distance, which narrows the actual radius considerably and doesn't make it round, and one of the schools has 'those for whom it is the nearest school' which means that it is not actually in the centre of the area from which pupils come, but skewed close to one edge. The circle for DS's primary is way wider than the places people actually get in from.

The booklet for 2015 Bromley schools is out already. Here

That website is out of date as it shows last year's figures and does indeed show that we were in the catchment for DD's school (and she did get a place) but we wouldn't have got in this year. One of the schools near me was 1.4 miles last year but only 0.4 miles this year .

Actually just had another look at the catchment website and you can click to 2014 at the side and you can see you much some of the catchments have shrunk this year.

You could try www.wouldliketomove.uk they allow you to search for homes by school catchment area... only downside, they seem to have only just launched so not many listings. They are trying to get people to list even before they have approached an estate agent so they can save money on a quick sale / rent.

Usually big fluctuations in radii size from yer to year are caused by the number of siblings admitted that year. In general, large proportion of siblings then smaller radius. If that is the reason then a radius which shrinks a lot one year can expand a lot the next.