Best State Primary Schools - South West London ?

[wandsworthtown]

Hi, posting here for some advice.

We have a 3-year-old who will be eligible to apply for reception this December.

We are new to London, currently renting at the moment and are looking to move as the current place does not have any schools nearby.

If you had a choice to move near a good state school of your choice in South West London, where would that be ?

We have currently shortlisted the following schools

Honeywell & Belleville in Clapham
Brandlehow in Putney
Marshgate & Vineyard in Richmond

We like Putney the most as we like new builds in that area and will eventually look to buy.

Any views about Brandlehow school? Does this list sound broadly sensible.

Are there any other areas/ schools that we might be missing? DH's office is in Victoria and my office is in Waterloo so South West is relatively convenient from a commute perspective.

Any thoughts/ advice will be greatly appreciated.

There are loads of excellent schools in South West London. It depends on what you consider to be important? Lots of the middle classes focus on Honeywell and Belleville (they’re in Battersea not Clapham) but they are two very different schools and there are lots of other outstanding schools in the area. Your best bet is to visit on the open days as the feel of a school is the most important thing.

@Pud2 - thanks for your comments.

We want to send our DS to a reputable/ independent secondary school so state schools that are good feeders will help.

Which other schools will you recommend in SW London?

Also, how are Honeywell and Belleville different and how do they compare to schools in Richmond.

Sorry for the naive questions, we recently moved to the UK and are new to the UK's education system so still figuring this out.

State primaries feeding into specific private secondaries [that's how I read OP's second post] isn't, as far as I know, really a thing in that part of the world. H&B are feeders into Bolinbroke Academy, a possibly desirable state secondary.

You won't find all that many people are intimately familiar with schools in all of those areas - you could try 'Nappy Valley.net' or similar.

You ask if there are any schools missing from your list, well as a rule of thumb an area has one primary school for every c 3,000 inhabitants so, I mean, there must be over 500 primaries in SW London [you say that where you live currently doesn't have one nearby, I'd be mildly astonished if there wasn't one within say 5,6, 700 metres of your house], it'd be impractical to list more than a handful of them, thereby missing out dozens of very good ones.

You don't really explain what you mean by "good". Being totally blunt the newish invention 'free schools' have in many [most?] cases been set up with some form of segregation in mind, targeting the offspring of parents from particular religous and/or socioeconomic backgrounds. You might want to give one or more of them a look.

All the primary schools in the Boroughs of Richmond upon Thames and Kingston are excellent, you need to be driven by your housing budget and then find out if the nearest school has space. I know it's sounds hard to understand but there is loads of choice of schools especially if you move to somewhere like Twickenham with fast train links and lots of schools some of which will have space.

As the PP said, state primaries don’t feed into independent schools. Belleville is a huge school - five form entry I think, and it’s an academy. Smart and branded. Honeywell is smaller and is made up of two separate schools with separate heads - infants and juniors. They have no uniform. As suggested, you’ll get more response on Nappy Valley Net

Surprised you haven't listed Barnes Primary school