the exodus has started ....

[mimsum]

4 children are leaving dd's class at the end of reception - the reception class which was ludicrously oversubscribed .... 3 of them are her friends, including her best friend from babyhood

not entirely sure how to tell her ...

the same thing happened in ds1's class and by the time he got to Y5 he only had one friend left - all the others had moved out of London

does this happen at other schools or is our corner of sw London peculiarly blighted?

It happens where we are too - also SW London. Massively oversubscribed reception, and only 23 children left in DS1's Y5 class. They have: moved out of London; moved abroad; moved to private schools.

DS2's best, best, best friend is leaving at the end of Y2 to go to a prep school . Two of DS1's friends are leaving, one abroad and one to a private school.

Nope, tis the same all over...

We left SW London (Tooting) five years ago. One reason was we got fed up with DD (and us) making friends who upped sticks and moved on just as we were getting to know them properly. So we decided to emulate and have never looked back.

Yeah, we're in SW London and DD1 isn't even at school yet and her bf is already upping and leaving. Am fairly used to it as we lived abroad before moving here and it happened all the time. Some of classes in the schools near us go from 30 to 19-20 by Y5 becasue of people moving away/going private etc.

TBH, am hoping we'll also be leaving in the next few years.

SW London too, and yes, loads of families left when the school issue hit.

SE London very similar. We haven't lost a precious friend yet but one of my friends has a dd who is becoming very despondent at the loss of friends.