Halliford (in Shepperton) or St James (Ashford) school

[harry75]

Hi!

We are looking for secondary school for our DS. The state schools are not great around our area where we live, the only nearest private schools are:

1. St George's (in Weybridge)
2. Halliford (in Shepperton)
3. St. James (in Ashford)

St George's seems highly selective school and most of the children comes from their own junior school, so very difficult to get in.

Halliford school is quite small and having friendly environment. Fees is almost £1000 less (per term) than St. James but I have the feeling its like a back-up school for most of the parents and is less academic. This impression is from the forms and from their results. On positive side, because they are not very selective, I would expect their result to be lower than other selective schools as well.

St. James seems to be nice school as well. Headmaster was focusing his speech to improve results and making this school more academic capable.

Not sure how are the teachers in both schools but children seems happy!

Please if you can give your input, share your experience, that would really help us in making our decision.

Thanks!

...please if you can give some feedback, would be really helpful!

Not personal experience though did look at both Halliford and St James's for Ds. Know 3 boys at Halliford. All doing really well and happy at school. Halliford has become more academic and seem to have a good value add. The boys I know where all middle sets good state school. Boys certainly do fail the entrance exam.
St James lost a few pupils when it moved from Twickenham. They moved to Radnor House. I don't think the last head was that well thought of and results seemed to go down. One mum I know with Ds there said they had a few niggles and it wasn't as good as you thought it was going to be. Talked the talk but didn't walk the walk. however this is anecdotal

mary21 - Thanks a lot for feedback. Good to know that Halliford school has become more academic.

Do you mean Halliford school was non-selective previously but now they are selective i.e. they do refuse children if they fail entrance exam (which might have improved their overall results as well)?

BTW I was checking locrating web site and that does not show very good ranking of Halliford school but on Halliford website I can see GCSE A/A*s are around 38% which is not bad against St James where its more or less same and againt St. Georege's which has 66% but as I said St. George's is highly selective and that reflects in their results.

At Halliford there are a lot not staying on for 6th form, parents and boys not particularly impressed is what I've picked up from talking to them. It may just be an odd year group but historic 6th form numbers may be worth looking at because low numbers staying on wouldn't be a ringing endorsement.

cakeisalaystheanswer - Thanks a lot for your feedback about 6th form at Halliford. Do you know any particular reason they are not happy, is it because of teachers or anything else? TIA!

Just checking their 6th form results of 2015 and its A/A/B is 53.6% and A/A/B/C is 80.4%.