canterbury/kent coast

[libertytrainers]

visited yesterday and love the area, am suprised houses are cheaper (than the norm) any reason for this?

Outside comfortable commuting distance for London.

Some areas of significant deprivation/high unemployment (doesn't fit with leafy Garden of England stereotype).

Schools can be patchy, in particular secondary non-selective schools (Kent is still an 11+ area).

Where specifically?

Canterbury is not the kent coast so you need to be more specific. If you are talking about Thanet there is massive unemployment and areas of great deprivation .

canterbury

Canterbury is on the surface lovely. Do you have children and if you do, how old?

my son is 20 at at uni the youngest is 12 we live near st albans now so am attracted to to what house prices can buy in canterbury

Are your teenage children likely to be comfortably in the top 20% or so of their year group academically?

er no not at all! He likes whistable though

lol i pay no attention to school/ofsted tables

It's not about the tables, really -- but secondary education in Kent is still selective, so the top 20% or so go off to grammar schools and those that are left go to secondary moderns. There aren't really any comprehensives (some faith schools claim to be "comprehensive" but relatively few children who score highly enough on the Kent Test to get a selective place go there, and there are some schools like Homewood in Tenterden that take a deliberately academically diverse intake, but very few of those). Naice middle class parents whose children don't get through the Kent Test will often scrape together the money to go private, so the education system can be quite academically and socially divisive.

Aren't houses in the nice bits of Whitstable quite expensive? I was browsing the property supplements last month and wondered what had happened to Whitstable over the last few years.

You really need to decide whether you want to get into the selective education thing if you move to Kent. Because if you want to use state secondary schools you have no choice.

I, personally, would never live in Canterbury again.

In Kent a very high % (20/25?) go to Grammar which means the fortunate ones go to great schools (although I know of at least one Kent Grammar in special measures) and the rest go to schools with low aspirations and an intake toward the bottom end of the demographic scale. Picture your local 10 class intake comp and take out the top 2-3 sets

Almost right, ClubName- apart from the low aspirations at the high schools. Some, maybe. By no means all.

Sorry, Marortana, I meant low aspirations from the families really. Obviously not true in all cases but families who can afford it and/or have high aspirations for their Dc will do whatever it takes to avoid them being in the High Schools. (Tutoring, moving house, going private)

IME the High Schools also have more of the behaviour problems usually mostly found in the lower sets at a Comp.