Recommendation on schools - London

[chickchoo]

Hey all,

Can someone help pls?

We are planning to move to London sometime this year. Though job will be in Central London, and we want to first look for schools before deciding where to move to. DS is in Yr 4 now, and will be in Yr 5 coming Sept.
So my focus would be moving to an area of good secondary schools.
Are there any schools where they can progress into secondary in the same school itself. So that I dont have to bother again next year? I'm open to both independent and state schools. And any school likely to have spaces too (now that may be the difficult part I know)
I hope I will have some good options as I am open to the area. Hope my thinking is right.

Many thanks for your help !

I'm interested to know too!! though I have my area limits..

chickchoo, did you manage to get anywhere with this?

London is a big place, unless you have areas or schools already in mind you are not going to get much response. "Good" is a relative term. Virtually all the inner London schools with good exam results tend to be faith schools, which means you will need to be a church goer and have evidence you support the faith community in other ways. On the outskirts of London, there are a handful of academically selective grammar schools but they are extremely difficult to get into. If money is not a problem you will probably want to look at private schools. Get a copy of the Good Schools Guide (I think they also have a subscription website online)and do some research. For almost all London secondary schools you need to consider entry at 11. Even those private schools with a junior dept are likely to have their main entry then and places in the senior school will not be guaranteed.

I think this is a hard thing to ask on a forum as most of the good schools in London are faith ones and those that are not tend to be in areas with expensive housing eg Fortismere or grammar schools and impossible to get into.

eg in the borough were I live (Barnet) the top 5 best schools are either grammar schools, faith schools or private.

In terms of getting a primary place, best bet is to rent near a good 3 form entry school as with a school of that size, if you are close enough a place is bound to come up even if its oversubsubscribed.

UCS School in Hampstead do an automatic transfer from the junior to senior school with no additional exam. There is usually an exam for 7+ entry into the junior school.

City of London boys has an entry stage at 10+ (Yr 6) with an entrance exa.

exam

Is being a Christian and going to the specific church good enough.. or do you have to be a RC or CoE to be considered for school..

Sorry if I am being really naive here, as I am not from UK, and we have our own orthodox sub-sects of Christianity in our country.

King Solomon's Academy goes from 3 years to 18. It is in NW London. I have no idea how good it is, though I hear very good things about the primary school part.

I'm delighted to get some feedback - I had given up hope sometime back..
I would rather stay in a good area, with a good catchment areas for schools even if it means they are a bit more expensive, rather than go private. Thats my thinking for now. So I am on the lookout for such schools and areas.

Good School Guide is a good starting point, and I will be registering that defn. Thanks ! Am going to try and be as near the school as possible, if there is a chance ;)
Thanks for Fortismere and King Solomon !
Anyone know of any other reputed comprehensive schools?
Many thanks in advance, and really appreciate the help.

If you don't mind paying, I believe the American School in St John's Wood takes children from reception right the way through secondary. Has amazingly state of the art facilities, etc but I do hear it is rather expensive.

King Solomon Academy is in Lisson Grove and got an outstanding from Ofsted a couple of months ago (as good as it gets). It has automatic transfer from primary to secondary.

Ark Academy in Wembley will have automatic transfer at age 11 too - it's a new school so only has first two years of primary pupils so far but got good from Ofsted on strength of work so far. And brought in an outstanding principal with a good record on delivering results Globe in Elephant and Castle also offers automatic transfer at 11. All three non-denominational state schools

Do some of you people have no understanding of what the statistics mean?

Schools which are selective get good results. That DOES NOT MEAN they are better schools. Schools which have a representative intake and STILL get better than average results are very good schools even if the exam average is not as high as at a selective school.

Look at schools which have an equal number of children from each of a range of ability bands, but do better than the national average.

There are PLENTY of very good state comprehensives in London which do very well educating a wide range of ability, and do not require religious committment, passing the 11 plus with a very high score, etc.

I'm going through this for reception but I suspect the issues are the same, save for grammar and other exam entry schools.

Mathematically, you are almost certain to be better off to pay a larger mortgage than pay school fees (though I know there are social and other benefits to private schooling). At say £15k per child in after tax income, then that is around £25k in pre tax income (at 40%) and over 10 years, that would pay for a repayment mortgage of about £250k. So in theory, you could spend £250k more on a house in an area with a very good school which was free.

Very good point, Nettofabulous, to which I'd add that non-selective comprehensives in areas where there are selective schools (faith, partially selective foundation etc) have effectively had some of their high ability children 'creamed off' so its even more impressive when they get good results, and probably indicates a very high standard of teaching & engaging children.