Primary schools/family areas in Edinburgh?

[ocelot41]

Absurdly excited - am in with a good shot at a job in Edinburgh, but last lived there many moons ago when was pre- DC. If I was successful, once I had stopped dancing, what would I do about a primary school transfer for DS? He has just turned 6 and is currently in Year 1 in an English state school. Which are more family oriented areas to live in?. OK, OK I know I am getting a bit ahead of myself here - just so excited!!!!

Ocelot, two of my family members have kids with " foreign " accents and neither of them has ever been bullied because of this . In the schools they go to there are many kids who do not have Scottish accents . I can't imagine morningside is any different .

That's great news - thanks for the reassurance!

Just to be clear, I've not experienced any issue because of my accent. In Edinburgh at least, it's very common not to have a Scottish accent. It was the tone of the campaign that I was referring to - apologies for any confusion.

Ocelot... did you say you got a job with the Uni?
I'm hoping to get an interview there soon. Looking for places to rent while our house sells... did someone mention Portobello?
I'm wondering how a 40 year old mum of 3 goes about getting a house share that ISN"T with Edinburgh's youth!

Hiya Brain. Oh good luck! When is the interview? Not sure about house share, do you mean a flat in a shared tenement or villa or having flatmates?

Not in Edinburgh but also wanted to reassure you that not everywhere was nasty during Indyref.

My experience of it (in Glasgow) was very positive; there was a real sense of political engagement and people would even talk to strangers (non confrontationally) about it, eg at the newsagents, a bus stop. And given that I live in an area with a very high ethnic population, this wasn't about racial nationalism, it was indeed about civic nationalism.

One of my MN friends (met through Woolly Hugs) is English and moved up here prior to the Indyref specifically so that she could vote Yes. After a month up here, she knew it was home.

There was a Twitter photo of a house near where my SIL lives (which I saw myself) where one window was filled with Yes stickers and posters while the other window was filled with No and Better Together posters. A predominantly council house area. The windows didn't get smashed despite the publicity

I was able to disagree respectfully with my 3 No voting friends: good debates with one and a promise to campaign with me if we ended up being taken out of the EU against our will as I predicted (And yes, she's standing by her promise ), debates online with the 2nd (she lives the other side of the country) and I respected her reasons (I'd shared them once) that she felt as British as she was Scottish she's reviewing her position and agreed not to discuss it with the 3rd as the whole debate was distressing her. They are all still friends.

Hope your move back up here goes smoothly

Oh that is so thoughtful of you prettybird. Thanks for posting. Tbh, the longer this post Brexit nightmare goes on, the more utterly impressive and mature Scottish politicians look compared to the blithering idiots we have been landed with...

The more i read from you guys the happier I am about leaving England behind!
No interview date yet... I'm just v optimistic.
Not sure about the house share. Didn't know there were options! I'd go for a small flat but DH wants me to slum it in shared.
Prices don't look too bad. £500 a month. That's do-able.
Our house is going on the market tomorrow!

Good luck with your interview, Brain. Are you moving up come what may, or does it depend on how the interview pans out? I think you mentioned being a lefty vegan somewhere upthread, in which case Porty is definitely the place for you! I know I'm biased, but I think it's the place with everything. It's 20 minutes on the bus to the city centre and the buses are good. Also cycle-able with a lot of the route being through parks if cycling is your thing. The schools are good - my DDs were very happy at Towerbank Primary where all the local younger children go, and Portobello High School is good and after the summer moves to its brand new building (about time too). There's a real community feel with lots going on - including a thriving arts and music scene, and lots of green and leftie actvism. But its crowning glory is of course our gorgeous sandy beach and 2 miles of pedestrianised prom.

Indyref-wise it's pretty solidly 'Yes' and visibly so through posters, street art, Saltires and so on, so you can't be unaware of the local support for independence. I was a no voter last time and although I did sometimes feel I was on the wrong side, I never got any hassle about it. I can't say I'm looking forward to doing it all over again, though, and I hope we don't have to.

Ah ha! You've got me pegged right. I cycle to work now so would love to carry on but I'm not much of a fan of cycling in the rain. We'd given up on Portobello after seeing the school league tables for the high school. But perhaps things might change in the next 5 years...
Next step for us is visiting. It does sound like a nice place. So definitely worth us listening to your recommendation.
Do you know of anywhere reasonable to stay overnight while we check it out?

League tables always have to be looked at with a pinch of salt. There are so many ways of ranking them. Do they take SIMD into account (the index for deprivation). Have they ranked them for added value? If they rank on numbers of Highers passed, do they do so on the basis of the numbers passed in S5 or do they include 2 year Highers? If they rank on numbers of Highers passed by S6, do they include Advanced Highers? unbelievably, some league tables don't

Caveat: I know nothing about East Coast schools; just know some of the shortcomings of league table rankings.

I would strongly recommend actually going and seeing the schools (both primary and secondary) before making any adjustment.

TBH you can't judge how solidly pro indy people are from posters - in the run up to the last referendum poster count in Edinburgh would have suggested about 80% pro. It wasn't but there is a bit a tendency for No voters to just keep schtum!

Whilst the referendum period wasn't much fun for a lot of people I don't think anti-Englishness was ever much of an issue in Edinburgh, it's far too multicultural and the posher Edinburgh accents sound borderline English anyway.

I think Portobello is fine high school wise, last time I checked it was fairly middle of the tables. It's also currently being rebuilt, almost finished I think. League tables don't always give you the full picture - in Edinburgh the vast majority of people go to their catchment school and if you look at the Edinburgh league tables for secondary schools they pretty much (with a few exceptions) reflect the average wealth of their catchment - the correlation is really pretty strong. Whilst there are some schools I wouldn't touch with a 10ft barge pole there are a lot of factors which can affect educational attainment beyond the quality of the school.

I had no idea Portobello High was down in the league tables - is this a very recent thing? My DDs both went there, and I don't remember the place having a bad reputation. They did well, especially DD2 who has dyslexia and started there a very shy loner who lacked confidence and ended her time there a bright, happy, socially adept and confident young woman. They really do need that new building, though, the existing building has been on its last legs for what seems like forever. New one looks on course to open in August as planned.

It's worth joining AirBNB if you want to stay in Porty itself. Lots of locals are on it, and it's a good way to get some inside knowledge of the place. There are some local guest houses, but all pricier than AirBNB would be. If you're visiting with your kids, a Premier Inn can sometimes be a cheapish option with a family room. The closest one for Portobello is the one on Willowbrae Road, but the new one by Waverley Station is also only a short bus ride away. If you come during August be prepared to pay a lot more for accommodation because the festivals push prices up.

I'm just surprised a lefty vegan would pay any attention to league tables tbh

Am off for a long weekend to introduce DS to Edinburgh! He is excited...

Oooh. Good luck with the trip!
Looks like there's lots of property to choose from. We've been searching "royal high" and "Portobello high" on the property sites. And found the epsc website. (that helps after plotting their catchment areas on right move).
With 3 children I'm keen for them to have the best education but we can't afford public school so I went by the Edinburgh city league tables. It's the only thing I can go on. No time now to visit schools before the summer holidays :(
We're moving no matter what.
I'll get a job there asap & commute back to the south east until we sell our house.
So exciting.

Anyone know about clermiston or north side?
If we move there we'd be mortgage free...

StatisticallyChallenged....
Which areas would you avoid?
We found a fab place in Ratho but then realised its right underneath the airport flight path...

I grew up in a really rough part of Edinburgh where the catchment high school was very grim - super high rates of drinking, teenage pregnancy, truancy, bullying, crime etc, coupled with really low rates of attainment. I wouldn't choose to send my DD to that school, or others which are similar.

In general Clermiston is OK, it's kind of a varied area with some bits being a bit on the rough side but afaik most of it is OK, and it feeds to Royal High which is good.

High school wise, ones I would definitely consider are:

• Balerno - Ratho and Kirknewton are two out of town areas which feed to Balerno and are often cheaper
• Broughton - seems to be becoming increasing well regarded - but when you are looking at property be aware that it has a really mixed catchment, stretching from the New Town through Stockbridge and Inverleith right down through Granton and Drylaw. There's a fair few Edinburgh schools like that!

-Boroughmuir -Craigmount

• Currie
• Firrhill

-James Gillespies -Portobello -Royal High -Trinity - seems to languish surprisingly far down the league tables for 5+ highers, but is better for fewer and has a good reputation locally. Loses a lot of children to private schools both at the primary school transition and I also know of a few who've gone for S5/6 which I think may have an impact.

There are doubtless other good schools which I'm not familiar with though!

If it would help you could say what you need housing wise, budget and where you need to be able to get to for work and I'm sure we can suggest some places that might not be immediately obvious to a non-local!

That's a pretty unsnobbish list actually Statistically, there are many who wouldn't look beyond the RH/Boroughmuir/JGH trio! What you look for changes with your actual child of course - is it academic success alone you want, does your child need help with confidence or have dyslexia etc - there's a lot more to what they can do for your child than the magic 5+ Highers. But this can be much harder to find out in advance.

You definitely need to see beyond the motley trio, there are some other great schools in Edinburgh. Our high school is kind of middle of the table, one of those with a really mixed catchment (as was the one I actually went to, even at 11 I was stubborn and refused to go to my catchment school, primary was bad enough!) and there are a fair number of people who use the state primary then private secondary because it's not BM/JG.

There's absolutely a lot more to it than league tables, and if you have any sort of SEN to factor in it can be an entirely different story.

My childrens school is classed as deprived despite the fact that our house is in an area a lot of people try to get into for the primary.

The pastoral care has been amazing and both children are doing really well. It's only got 600 pupils and when it became our catchment school it was 3rd bottom in the dreaded league tables and has climbed right up them and turned around massively.

I always feel you should visit a school and get a feel for it. We definitely don't regret choosing our school.

Groovee which school did you choose?

StatisticallyChallenged...
My three don't have any special needs - they're bang on track for performance. But their school down here has just been branded as 'needs improvement' by ofsted. So I guess moving to The royal high primary or clermiston primary won't be detrimental!
Trouble is... all the houses that we're looking at in edinburgh look like council houses in the south. So there's no way for us to judge by architecture.... unless they're ex edinburgh council iykwim...

Interesting chat about schools, it's something I'm paying attention to at the moment with a young DS who'll be starting school in two years.

We currently live in the catchment for Liberton Primary and High School as it's the only area in which we could stretch to buying a small house rather than a flat. Does anyone have any experiences or knowledge of these schools? Liberton HS doesn't seem to have a good reputation but not sure about the primary.

It's playing on my mind just now as I'd like to consider having another child but I'm not sure we could afford to move to a catchment with a 'better' HS (or stretch to private education) if we were to have another baby...

Clermiston is predominantly ex council - lots of it has been bought out now. I'm guessing the reason you're finding a lot that look like (and are) ex council houses is probably a mix of budget and specifically looking for houses. You'll tend to find (very broad generalisations!)
-older, often stone built houses which are often very expensive!
-detached/semi-detached 'bungalows' (which are often 2 story) such as you see in Orchard Brae, huge parts of Corstorphine, etc.
-ex-council houses and flats, even in what are now very desirable areas. Edinburgh has a fair amount of former council properties and speaking in really broad terms the estates which were build with predominantly houses rather than predominantly flats tend to have been largely bought over under right to buy. It's very hard to get an actual council house these days for this reason
-new builds - especially modern flats more centrally
-period flats - big old tenements especially. These dominate the more central parts of Edinburgh and unlike in a lot of cities it's very normal for families to live in flats here.
-there are some estates of housing which weren't build by the council but went up around the same time and so don't have an especially distinctive look, e.g. Baberton which was built by Wimpey, I think much of Barnton and numerous other places too.

After a cheese-tastic weekend (Royal Mile, Camera Obscura, lots of play parks, and yes, Tunnocks tea cakes) DS has declared that he loves Edinburgh - woo hoo! Except he wants to take our whole house in the removal van. Which could be tricky. Very heartened by the friendliness and warmth on this board as leaving our friends wlis going to be the saddest thing. Anyone up for a meet in the autumn?