Moving from London to the Cotswolds (Secondary Schools)

[SSiska81]

Hello,
Looking to move my family, DH and DS (9, currently in Year 5) to the Cotswolds area. We live in Islington at the moment but our flat's expenses are too expensive, so we have the flat on the market and looking to move.

DH will have to commute to London once a week and another couple of times across SE England as he is in consulting.

I will be working in the area (looking at Swindon/Cheltenham/Gloucester/Oxford for potential employers) on a hybrid basis.

DS will not be trying 11 plus and we are not looking at independents so looking at good secondary comprehensive and non-selective schools.

In terms of places to move to, I love Cirencester, and surrounding areas. However, looking at the catchment areas, I cannot seem to find a catchement area where I can try getting DS into more than 1 school. Does such a place exist?
I like the look of Deer Park/ the Cotswolds School .
We have the option of renting so can be picky about location.

What would you suggest? I dont want to have just one choice, but unsure how to proceed.

Thank you very much.

I know in an ideal world you would want more than one choice, but both of those schools have good reputations, so I would visit them both, decide which you prefer and buy in catchment for that one. Job done.

Realistically, most postcodes wouldn’t “guarantee” you more than one school (and some postcodes not even one, depending on sibling numbers, feeder school rules etc)

It’s a fairly rural area and the catchments for some schools are big. The areas of overlap are often tiny.

Of course you can apply for a school that’s outside of your catchment area.

Off the top of my head I think the Cotswold School shares a tiny village with Farmor’s, which is also a pretty good school.

but broadly I agree with the above. Visit them, pick one.

Thank you all, would you say then the chances of DS getting into the first school is quasi 'guaranteed'?

Thank you - am trying to avoid relocating and ending up in, say, the other Cirencester school which 'requires improvement' as that would be a catastrophe, so what would you please suggest?

Thank you - will double check

Thank you - its a massive move for us and I dont want to get it wrong for my DS. I might be over-worrying.

The general experience, outside cities (and sometimes in them) is that each address is deigned to be in the catchment area of a single school. That’s the point of catchments - to give everyone a single school they are very likely to get into, rather than some addresses having a choice of 4 and some having none.

If you are lucky, you may have a good chance of getting into decent school A, and an outside chance of decent school B. If you are unlucky, you have an outside chance of 2 schools and no certainty. What most people will do is put their preferred school first, if that isn’t the ‘good chance’ school then the good chance school next, then a banker for if all else fails, so the one out of the routinely undersubscribed schools you would hate least.

Expecting a true choice between multiple desirable schools isn’t really a thing.

Sorry, cross posted. The way to guarantee your first choice is to move very close to it. By trying to ‘hedge your bets’ you may well end up living at the edge of 2 catchments and may fall just outside both actual admissions areas.

Consider 6th form as well as 11-16, if choosing to live in Cirencester.

Obviously all schools give the choice of moving at 16, after GCSEs, but Deer Park is 11-16 whereas the Cotswold School is 11-18.

I am not in that county, but my county allows us to access several years of admissions data, including furthest distance admitted.

Where I live, for primary school, our house was well within the furthest distance for one school. For the next nearest, we were within it for about 50% of the years, in the data.

So I would suggest getting that past data, if you can!

You're far better moving closer to the school you actually want. Schools are oversubscribed so if it's your eldest and no sibling preference applies then you need to be solidly within catchment.

Bear in mind travel times to the schools on buses is long with rural catchments (mine takes an hour + to do with what would take 25 minutes to drive) with routes and stops. We are 10 miles from the school, for reference. Think about your child's school day as well as being well within catchment as it's a long day if you're the last stop on the bus run.

Also, as your DD will need to move to a local primary partway through year 5, have a look to see if any schools have “feeder” primaries that take priority

I viewed Malmesbury school which was very impressive and seemed well run.

Does Cirencester or Bourton on the Water work better for your DH’s commute (and yours if you find work)?

Having looked at both those schools, they seems to prioritise catchment over almost everything, though I see that Deer Park says they usually go outside catchment to “direct distance” to fill their places.

Data here if you haven't already found it

Looks like Deer Park regularly goes out 10 miles on diistance.

This is so useful, thank you.
If it didnt show yet, I was not educated in the UK, so this is all new to me and trying to figure it out, thanks a lot!

Thank you - it makes sense. I just didnt want to miss out if such a thing actually existed...

I was going to suggest you look at the allocation day statistics but someone else has already done so. In my area of Gloucestershire we are pretty much guaranteed to get into our catchment school even though we live 8 miles away. Some schools have a priority catchment area which will be detailed on the school website- this is more likely for schools in rural areas. Some schools allocate on distance and don't have a priority catchment area. The distance can sometimes be very small in popular schools, such as Balcaras in Cheltenham.

Have you considered the North Cotswolds area specifically round Moreton-in-Marsh?

Children from the area either attend The Cotswolds School or Chipping Campden School, both of which have excellent reputations. Moreton has a train station with a direct line to Paddington which takes an hour and a half. The line also runs through Oxford which may be another consideration for your work and is about half an hour up the line. Going the other direction the train goes to Worcester.

I have some connections with Malmesbury School which has just been through Ofsted and is Outstanding again.It is a very impressive school.

If you are not familiar with the system it's also worth thoroughly educating yourself on the transport policies.

I live in the area (midway between Cirencester and Malmesbury) My kids went/are at Malmesbury School and it is an excellent school as are all the village primary schools that feed into it. Good luck with your move - it's a lovely area :)

Just to update you, we did it! We moved to Stow on the Wold and currently waiting to see which secondary school DS will get in. Thanks everyone