Moving from South Africa

[TamNaick]

Hi all. My family is moving to London and we need to find good schools for my boys aged 6 and 4. We don't have a move date set due to the lockdown in SA. We were thinking of living in the Hammersmith and Fulham area. Would really appreciate your advice on the area itself, quality of schools in that borough and how long it would take to get a response on available places at school. We don't have an apartment as yet as we're not sure when we will be allowed to travel, this makes it really difficult as we can't apply to schools as yet. Any advice would be great. Thanks.

I don't know the area at all but are you looking for state schools or independent fee paying schools. That will help give more constructive advice.

Hi there. Thanks for your reply. I've heard that state schools in that area are really good. Would appreciate any views on it.

When is your youngest 5 as you may be able to apply for school places at the correct time (Jan 2021) to start in September 2021. However your eldest child will be outside or namal dates for school admissions and can therefore be placed in a school that has a vacancy (and the best schools tend to be hugely oversubscribed) so you may not get a huge amount of choice.

Best to pick a decent area with lots of choices of schools and then apply for school places. Targeting individual schools may not be relevant if both your children are already of school age as they can only be placed in a school if a vacancy exists (and that may not even be in the same school).

My youngest turns 4 on 27 June 2020. Thank you for the advice. I will definitely look for a good school district. Please do let me know if you know of really good ones.

I can't help you with the school district as I have never lived in that area of London. However your youngest being 5 before the end of August means they are already of school age so in September they would be starting year 1. So you will be looking for in year admissions for both children. When are you hoping to make the move?

Your youngest will be starting Reception (first year of school) and your eldest will be starting year 2 (assuming he will still be 6 on 31st August).

Generally most schools in London are good and somewhere like Hammersmith and Fulham will have a reasonably transient population, so places will come up. Saying that, you will be offered whatever places are free, and this may not be at the same school. I don't have local knowledge to help there.

Thank you that is very helpful. We don't have a date as yet. Still working on that.

In year applications can be really tricky in london. You wont get a choice to be honest and its likely that you will be offered an unpopular choice. Catchments for popular schools are really tiny. If you are able to use the independent sector I really would unless you are willing to live a little further out, chiswick perhaps? The boroughs you have chosen have a massive divide between the rich and the poor. Not many people in between. Therefore most state schools will have a high proportion of very deprived children as the rich will usually choose to educate privately. I would choose to live further out to get a better choice of state options. You will need to read the Ofsted reports of all the schools in the catchment of your property.

How about Wandsworth OP? Lots of great state schools in Wandsworth, Putney etc. Lots of movement in all years so move near some good ones and you will get a place somewhere.
Where will you need to get to for work?
I don't really know the primary schools in Fulham/Hammermith, other but there will be ones that are more sought after and places will come up. Slightly disagree with the point above that everyone there is rich or poor with few in between!

Hammersmith and Fulham has loads of inbetween parents!

Read up on Ofsted reports and the admissions criteria for each school. The CofE ones can be very hard to get into as they expect Church attendance which you will not have.

There is a big difference in areas in H&F too. Some areas have expensive housing and others are less expensive. So you need ot look carefully at your budget and decide where is the best family area. Around Ravenscourt Park is lovely.

As an aside, you might not be aware of this, but lots of South Africans love Wimbledon. Not sure why, but I can assure you they do. Take a look at Wimbledon if you want a SA local community.

Southfields is also a popular area for South Africans - you can get a lot more (house and outside space!) for your money and there are good primary schools. St cecilia’s is a good State secondary School too

Very useful advice. For work I would need to get into Paddington. Will definitely look at the areas suggested (and the ones where the Saffers are) and some independent school options as well. We have looked into a few already. Should you have advice on affordable ones, kindly let me know. Thanks all.