Secondary schools in South Bristol

[SarahBcn]

Hi all,
I'm currently living abroad and we're considering moving back to the UK after 2.5 years away. Bristol is on the cards and we''re thinking around Bedminster/Totterdown areas. We have 2 girls aged 2 and 6 and are thinking about where would they go to secondary school. It seems the ones everyone raves about are up in Redland area, which is out of our price range.

What are the decent schools further south?
Thanks

The Bedminster/Totterdown area is great for several excellent primary schools but is in a bit of a black hole for secondary. Depending on exact address you'd be in the catchment zone of First Priority for one out of Ashton Park, Bedminster Down and Oasis John Williams - all of which are fairly "bog standard" comprehensives doing a decent enough job with an extremely challenging intake of pupils, each school has a more than average share of pupils from more deprived households and a lot of families with the motivation to look elsewhere will do so especially if they feel their child might have difficulty surviving the culture of such comprehensives.

(1) if you are religious, attending a place of worship at least 3 times a month from when your eldest starts in y3 of primary school will practically guarantee a place at St Mary Redliffe senior school that is very well thought of generally.

(2) you can enter the lottery for places at the Cathedral School - odds of success aren't great as there are typically 1000 applications for the 50 or so places that aren't given to siblings and other categories of higher priority. These places are allocated at random.

(3) as you have girls you can also enter the lottery for Montpellier High School which is similarly random and slightly less oversubscribed.

(4) A large number of children from the area end up going to St Katherine's in Pill - a good 40 minute bus ride away but there's a direct bus route and loads of kids do it because it's a pretty good school that usually has plenty of spaces left over after taking all the pupils who live closer, as it is geographically located quite far from the more heavily populated areas.

A lot of children from South and East Bristol travel out to Keynsham to attend either Wellsway or Broadlands Academies. (They fall within BANES Council rather Bristol City Council area).

My understanding is that a new secondary school is now being built in Knowle which is South Bristol and there are also plans for an additional school in the city centre.
This means there could be a lot more options by the time a 6 year old and a 2 year old reach secondary school age.

There are plans for new Oasis Academies at Daventry road and temple quarter. I'm not sure what the current position is with either, I believe the Daventry road site has permission but work has not yet started. Depending on how you feel about oasis, there will be increased provision.