How much should primary schools influence where we buy?

[mimou]

We've just had our second child and are probably going to have to consider moving in the next year as our current tiny 2 bed is not going to be big enough when DS2 moves out of our room.

We've seen several houses we quite like and could just about afford, but all of them fall in the catchment area of the worst primary school in the district. It has been in special measures, and although it seems to be improving still only scores 60-70% level 4 in English/Maths as opposed to 90% for most of the other schools.

Our oldest is only 2 but there's no guarantee that we'll be able to afford to move again before he starts school. On the other hand it's very much more difficult to find something we like and can afford near the other schools.

Should we be resigning ourselves to buying something much smaller for the sake of being in a good catchment area?

i used to visit schools for work and go into classes to do extension activities. i would say you can get a really accurate idea of what a school is like in about ten minutes of visiting... and it's often not what ofstead say.

i wouldn't mind my child being in a primary with low english scores if the reason was due to lots of ESL for example as we speak english at home and read a lot so i would be glad of the exposure to other language speakers at school.

for me the atmosphere in the school and sense of community is far more important than the results.

I would go and visit the school. When my DS started school we were delighted with it but after 1 term they had an ofsted inspection and the school was put into special measures aghhh !!

Then the local council swung into action we got an exec temp head for 2 years and tons of funding. We then got a fab new permenant head and two weeks ago were graded again and got outstanding :o

We are very glad we stuck with the school. Special measures can often be good for a school and if you get in at the right time your child benefits from these improvements

Good point jnb- the schools with the most difficulties often end up with a lot more funding - in our LEA they get a lot more money and teachers are more creative in how they teach. Sometimes they get good young teachers and more male teachers.