west norwood?

[manitz]

we living in north west london (just). DH has to cycle to camden so we want to move to a bigger house but nothing coming up in our area, plus it's metroland so not many houses to choose from. Woudl like to move to somewhere which is no more than 10 miles from camden but where we can afford a house and which might have the odd nice pub and school. Does it exist? west norwood seems to offer the type of house we might like but what is it like??
thanks

hi there, i just wanted to say thanks to you all for all your information. whilst we haven't entirely written off this area for us, it is more of a leap to move to a brand new area and we have just seen an ideal house closer to (about which I will start a whole new thread!). Think we will offer which will make my enquiries a bit redundant but if it falls through i will prob return to norwood.
thanks again. x

Good luck, Manitz!

Does anyone have any more useful information on Evelyn Grace Ark Academy to date .The OSTED was quite damning and bias comments made by the so called inspector were inappropriate when relating to expectation that the school has regarding attainment of students given the locality

Hi kenyaq, if you are referring to the school's first OFSTED (not sure if they have had a subsequent one) which was a couple of year's ago, I do know that they have changed headteacher since then.

So - without being overly critical of the original head who seemed to do a good job of getting the school up & running - I expect that means that ARK have taken heed of the OFSTED & kept a close eye on what they can improve. Current head seems to have a great track record - he has previously been Head at Walworth (ARK) Academy, Deputy Head at Stockwell Park & Head of Upper School at Kingsdale, all local schools which have seen radical improvement.

No first hand experience but I know children who have been at Evelyn Grace for few years & they seem happy, achieving well etc...

btw - I think I recall the inspector's comments that the school had too high expectations of pupils & think the (then) head was absolutely right to challenge them.

But I also had some misgivings about aspects of the school when it first opened - too gimmicky, too much micro-management - and now that it has settled into itself I really wouldn't have those same worries.

Thank you for the info.The last Ofsted report was In 2012 I read this and it was really damning, I would have thought the then Principle Walker would have challenged the subjective comments from Ofsted.But to date have not found any response.