Moving to Loch Ness/Inverness, anyone live there?!

[SuperGlowBug]

We’ve been seriously considering moving up to the Highlands. My parents are from around Inverness but I was born and raised in England. Have spent a lot of time up there though, although not around Loch Ness and obviously only holidays!

DH and I have five DC ranging from 6 months to 13!

We were looking at the Loch Ness area as from what I can gather the schools are good.

DD has just started in year 9. She’s August born so very young for her year but very academic. DS is in the last year of primary (year 6, June born). We’d be looking to move ready for DD starting year 10 (Scottish year 4?) and DS starting secondary, so over the next summer holidays.

Any advice on schooling/the area/anything really much appreciated!!!!

The Highland are huge - is it definitely Inverness you are thinking of moving to ? Or some of the smaller towns and villages nearby?

Remember if you move to a more remote area , your children will have a long commute to school by bus. And it’s hard for them to do out of school activities and see friends etc.

Summer born children will be in the same school year as in England . But children here have to be 4.5 to start, they can’t go any younger.

I hope I’ve understood your children’s ages correctly - can you say what ages they will be next summer ?

If I’m right , your Ds will be starting high school ( he will be 11.5- 12.5) and that’s a great time to move.

Will your daughter be turning 13 or 14 next August ?

Starting 4th year will be much harder on your DD as the other pupils are one year into a two year course that ends with them sitting National 4/5s exams ( the equivalent of GCSEs).

Given that she is young for her year, it might be possible for her to start into 3rd year instead, and do the full two years. She would then sit Highers in 5th year ( these are what she needs to get into uni ).

You would need to speak to the school once you have decided where to live, they will be used to children moving up from England .

Most children in the highlands go to their local ( catchment area ) school, as there’s usually little / no choice and they are mostly very good. If you live in the area the you will get your kids in , 99.9% of the time. The system for allocating placing is totally different from England.

Thanks for your reply 😊

She’s just turned 13 so will be 14 next August. She’s just started in year nine (s3) so will be choosing GCSEs for next year.

There is a really good school just outside Inverness we were looking at (Glen Urquhart) and we’d live close to it. I have family fairly close but we’d want to be close enough to Inverness for the kids as they get older.

DS was 10 in June so I guess he’d be in P7 next year?! Ugh I’m no good at working this kind of thing out!

August and June are good birthdays for Scottish schooling. Means they'll be in the older half of the year.

August 2005 born children are entering S2 right now.

Ahh, so she’d be entering S3 next year. That’s better then, I think...!

Most 14 years old here are going into 3rd year, not 4th.

She’d be 14 in 4th year, 15 in 5th year and 16 in 6th year. She would need to take a Gap year after 6th year as most universities won’t take her at aged 17 and one month.

Even if they would, its not a good idea.

She would be 6 months younger than the very youngest children in her year , that is those born in January and February. Some 50% of these child don’t start school until 5.5 as their parents choose to defer their entry. Some kids in her year would be 18 months older than her.

So it might well be a good choice to have her start into 3rd year here. She might have an easy year academically but that’s no bad thing. At most schools she will be doing 8 -9 subjects for National 5, if she’s academic .

There’s more of an emphasis on a broad education here, so she will probably have to do

English, maths, at least one science and social subject, arts, computing, modern language . Plus PE, RE and PSE .

So she may have to do a subject that she wasn’t doing for the last year in England .

Also you have some subjects in England that may not be available at her school eg economics

The exact combination depends on the school and the timetable for her year, but that would be typical .

DH's DGM lives in Drumnadrochit. She's very old so I don't know much about facilities for young people but I think Glenurquhart has a good reputation. It doesn't look as though it's far from Inverness but bear in mind that the Lochside road can get very busy with tourists and tour buses!
It's a lovely part of the world but I wouldn't live there. Have you looked at other places - the Black Isle and Easter Ross are just a bit further?

What about work? I'd be tempted to look southwards down Perthshire way.

Highland Council school catchments

highland.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=531a30ee33564231866ff94e96607f26

Thank all

weebarra would you not live there because of the tourists?

For us the main things are great schools, being rural but close enough to a city for kids etc and being close to extended family.

The school inspection reports are difficult to gauge as some of them have no reports available to read and that’s on the official website.

No, but I do think there might be nicer places to live.
This will tell you more about high school leavers - P20 is quite relevant:
www.skillsdevelopmentscotland.co.uk/media/40874/highland-council-cpp-report-dec-2015.pdf

Fwiw, DH's family live about an hour north of Inverness and it takes us 4 hours to get there from Edinburgh, so in terms of closeness to extended family anywhere from Perthshire up would probably work

Both schools in Drumnadrochit are excellent. There’s only 220ish pupils in the whole of the high school so there’s a great community feel. The tourists aren’t that bad. :)

OP - do you live in the country right now ? Because if not you need to think about the practicalities of that with a 12 and 14 year old. It’s probably the hardest age because they are old enough to want to go places, see their friends, go shopping / skating / bowling , do sports but not old enough to drive themselves anywhere. You and your Dh will have to drive them everywhere .

I

We do live rurally, just outside a city and do spend a lot of time in the car, mainly on school runs as DC gonto school in the city! Would be happy to ferry them around in and out of Inverness at weekends etc.

What do the kids up there get up to?

We used to spend a lot of holidays in a village an hour north of Inverness and there really wasn’t anything for teens to do. We used to hang out at the benches on the Main Street and wander around the coop!

Ineedtobuyafan - thanks for you reply. Did you want to move and did you like it once you were there? Did you make friends easily?

I know lots of teens sadly get killed on the roads, I know of a few from when I was younger. I’ve never actually been along that road but that’s pretty frightening!

Fortrose academy on the Black Isle is meant to be good. Can’t find an inspection report for it though...

drumnadrochit is not a big place and loads of kids will be bussed into school from further out, it is 20-25 minutes to Inverness easily commutable for work, if she is at Glenurquhart school so will her friends be they won't actually be in Inverness, I believe there is a reasonable bus service to Inverness which would be fine for a teenager and her mates at the weekend and it's an easy enough commute for work, Fortrose and Nairn also have good schools, I'm not so sure about Dingwall but Beauly is also nice but you would end up being a taxi for older ones but all the other kids there are in the same boat

I love it, it's my favourite place in the world. I don't live there but go as often as possible. Aleister Crowley had a nice house there called Boleskine - sadly it burnt to the ground last year. It's said he let all the demons he conjured to run free in the local woods.
Anyway I digress, folklore aside it is lovely but impassable in winter, Amazon doesn't deliver there and the locals tell me they only got electricity in the 1980's.
I would if I was younger.

I live in Inverness, I drove to Drum yesterday and in the car was just thinking how lucky I am to love in such a beautiful part of the world!

I agree that Y10 is the equivalent of S3 (but your dd would go from being one of the youngest in the year group to one of the oldest - no bad thing )

So it's probably as good a time as any to move if you're going to, as some but not all schools start their Nat 5 (equivalent to GCSEs) curriculum in S3 and then sit them in S4.

If your ds is going into Y7 next year, he would go into P7 (again, as one of the oldest), the last year of primary in Scotland. (7 years in primary, excluding Reception, which we don't have, and then 6 years at secondary).

On a practical note - and so that your kids don't whinge at you - if you are moving, try to do so in May/June. That way, they get to get to know a few people before the school holidays - and, in your dd's case, start the S3 curriculum as many secondary schools start the new timetable before the summer holidays, before stopping at the end of June.

Most Scottish state schools go back in mid to late August so your kids might feel shortchanged if they'd only just finished their "English" school term at the end of July

I was going to say Nairn because it's on the train route into Inverness, you could also look at the outskirts of Inverness (Culduthel maybe?), you don't need to be far out of the city to feel that you are in the countryside.

I have an August 2005 child too, just started S2. At the end of this year they'll make their choices for exams at the end of S4, which she'll sit in 2021 when she's almost 16. She's the middle of her year group rather than one of the very youngest.

Someone who was 10 in June would have just started P6 and will be going into P7 next summer. Again, towards the older half of the year rather than one of the younger ones.

There are definitely school reports - you must be looking in the wrong place.

education.gov.scot/what-we-do/inspection-and-review/reports

Inspection reports only remain on the website for 5 years. if there's no report there, that means that they haven't been inspected for 5 years which in turn means that there are no major issues - schools which are struggling get frequent visits.

Ah so that’s why I could t find the report! It seems they are neck and neck with Glen Urquhart for most things, but a much bigger school.

Just wanted to say thank you everyone for your experiences and advice! (Aleister Crowley )