Confused where to move commutable to London with good schools

[Sofita90]

Me And my husband are both foreigners that live in London zone 2. As we are going to welcome our baby soon we decided we shall move somewhere more quiet ,with good/excellent schools and live in a house instead of a flat. Our budget is about 1-1.2 million max looking for 3 bed house. We are visiting many areas and we are confused so I thought to share the list and see if anyone has other ideas. He works for home so no need to commute often but I commute 3 times per week for now and we want access to the London job market.

the areas we have considered are:
st Albans
harpenden
North Kingston/Ham (it seems to be ticking the boxes but a bit more busy than I would love)
Teddington ( not many good secondaries thought)
twickenham
Tunbridge wells
Sevenoaks
Winchester( seems to be too far)

Any feedback ? Where would you move if you did not have family ties in any place ?

St Albans and Harpenden all very well connected for London with fantastic schools, both state and private. Lovely places to live too, plenty going on in St Albans, and lots of countryside nearby.

Redhill, Surrey.

Which London station do you want to come into and is one hour your limit on train ? How long walk or drive to station?

You need to figure out your priorities. Is it staying in London / being as close as possible? How often will you both commute?

As @MikeRafone and others have mentioned, the place to start is where in London you will be working.

Then work back out along to transport lines from there to narrow down your search area. Then consider how reliable the transport links are and what alternate means of transport might be available.

That will provide you with a much smaller search area, within which MN recommendations will be invaluable.

Good luck.

There aren't really any awful ones - I'm a bit out of the loop as my youngest is 14 now, but Claremont, St James', St John's, Bishops Down were the top 4 when we were moving here. If you want to be in a village, then Speldhurst and Langton Green primaries are well regarded (or used to be) and highly sought after.

The grammar system is divisive here and tutoring is endemic - the state primaries are not allowed to prep children for the 11+, the prep schools advertise their success rates so the playing field is horrendously uneven. There will always be a handful of children whose parents claim they haven't tutored - but what that usually means is that their (teacher/accountant/lawyer etc) parents have run through papers with them; it's not common for children to have done zero prep because success depends on speed and accuracy in the test, so recognising (in particular) what the VR and NVR questions are asking and practising them, does make a difference.

There are very good comprehensives here (Bennett, St Gregs, SKA) but the first two have religious entrance criteria which you said you didn't want, although St Gregs does take 40% non Catholics.

Thank you so much for the detailed reply. I appreciate it

I'd love to live in St Albans or Hitchin, but I'm not well off enough! But if your commute works if you come in to St Pancras/Kings Cross, they'd both be perfect.

Also Hertford has 2 train stations. Nice shopping street with cafes etc and the theatre has just been totally refurbished including a cinema and is fabulous.

Can't go wrong with Ealing area. Great schools and loads of parks. Nice family area. Piccadilly line or Elizabeth line in to London. Cheaper than Richmond.

It takes longer to get into central London from Ealing than it does from my massively cheaper area towards the end of the Thameslink line

Have they finally finished the theatre now? That's taken a long time.