Helensburgh primary schools

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ello,

My family and I are moving from Bristol to Helensburgh. Right now our children are registered at John Logie Baird (one at the nursery and one in primary school). Just wondering what the school’s reputation is, we registered there as it was our catchment school but we’ve now (possibly too late) seen that it appears to be in the dodgier bit of town and are wondering if we should file a placing request for another school. Any input much appreciated, we are still waiting on closing dates etc (nightmare to move from England to Scotland with the different house buying processes!)

Thanks so much for any info :)

And sorry if there is already a post like this, am brand new here and just figuring it all out!

I live in Helensburgh and am surmising the move is due to the Navy. If so are you going to be living in Churchill?

There are four (state) schools in the town - John Logie Baird, Hermitage and Colgrain primaries are all non-denominational while St Josephs is catholic but does have a reasonable number of non-catholic pupils.

Hermitage primary and Colgrain primary both have several year groups that are at capacity so you may not get a placing request. Hermitage doesn't have a nursery and Colgrain's is always oversubscribed so if you do manage to get a placing request to a different school it's unlikely you'd be able to get your pre-schooler into the same place - might be possible at St Josephs but unlikely at this point in the year...

John Logie Baird does take in from Churchill which has some social housing and the largest navy estate (which can result in more turnover of pupils) but Kirkmichael/Craigendoran where the majority of social housing is in Helensburgh is in the Colgrain catchment. TBH, Helensburgh has some less desirable areas but in terms of "dodgy" you could probably narrow it down to a couple of streets/blocks of flats...

John Logie Baird doesn't have the best reputation in the town but it's difficult to tell to what extent that's "real" and to what extent it's just that some parents always need there to be a ranking system My oldest went to nursery there and we found it fine, although we shifted her to St Josephs for primary.

My son is in St Josephs @Sturmundcalm ... it was either that or Colgrain for us because I don't drive and they were the most accessible I preferred St Josephs nursery, so he's just stayed. He's one of the non catholic pupils lol.

Hi both, thanks for your reply! My husband is a civilian worker and we wanted to move and a post came up in Helensburgh and the area looked totally perfect for us. We won’t be living on the Churchill estate (we are buying a house near the golf course). We just had read some possibly outdated articles about what the less desirable places in Helensburgh were and the school looked like it was on the edge of those. I think there was also a thread on here from a few years ago that said to avoid JLB so I think we’ve just worked ourselves up. We have enquired at Hermitage to see if they would maybe have a place for our son (would be going into P2) but like you say, we’d then have to move our middle son or have two drop offs…it looks like JLB is totally fine on paper so it might be much of a muchness. There’s a lot of elements going into the reputation of a school but since we don’t know the area well, I just wanted to find out a bit more.

So thanks very much, i feel a bit better. Helensburgh did seem and look so so nice, I’m sure what is considered less nice is all relative. Thanks so much again :)

My son is due to move to P2 in St Josephs in August. There's a lot of "non catholic" children at the school. It's fairly close to the houses near the golf course too. There's quite a few navy kids in my sons class even though their catchment is JLB and I personally wouldn't have sent my son to JLB .... BUT, the parents of children I know that are at JLB, all really like it.

As @Sturmundcalm says, the "non desirable" areas here really are nothing compared to real non desirable areas lol

Not Helensburgh but having moved up last year to Scotland I'd start with your catchment school and think about moving if it becomes necessary for whatever reason.

We're at the least desirable school in our area and probably does have a more deprived catchment than most but throughout lockdown they've been great, plus no issues with our very English accents.

Lol there's definitely no issues with English accents in Helensburgh, place is full of them

Haha we always have accent issues, I’m American and my husband grew up in the Lakes. I’ll be interested to see what accent our kids end up with 😂

Hi all, sorry to reactivate this but we have been told Hermitage would have space for our son…would you all recommend we take it? Would be in for a fun year if we can’t move my middle son to a preschool closer but if the difference in schools is so marked, it is of course worth the hassle.

Also, out of curiosity, why does John Logie have the reputation it does?

Yes I would take it in a heartbeat.

As for the reputation, I know of instances of bullying which weren't well managed. I also remember there's been a couple of children running away from the building in years gone by (can't remember if it was nursery or school). But as I said, the parents I know who have children there, love it

Would you be interested in enquiring with St Josephs too? As it has a nursery attached to the school.

Ha, Im chuckling, Dd went to two of the schools and I lived in two of the undesirable areas!
I'm in town now and Dd's almost 20 so my knowledge is way out of date but I did switch her from JLB to Colgrain at one point as JLB went downhill, it may well have improved again now.
You really have nothing to worry about area wise, no one bothers random people for the sake of it, I had no issues on Kirkmichael, just kept to myself, and actually Churchill was great with a baby, everyone in my street had young children too.
7 of us moved into the street together when the houses were first sold and we all had a connection to the then landlord who still has a presence here (Butcher!)
Other than either visiting people you've met through the nursery/school, or popping into the Spar you'd never need to go there anyway but I promise its safe.
JLB was a lovely nursery back in the day, I have fond memories of dropping Dd on her first day in her wee pink dungarees

I've an English accent too btw, just yesterday me and the Morrisons guy were laughing about it, he came early as was rushing home for the football.
I actually have an American neighbour too who loves it here and also has no bother
I'd grab the place at Hermy btw, I'm just down the road from there now.

I’ll have to talk to my husband about St. Joseph’s…we’d briefly considered a Catholic school here in England before as it was known to be very good, but he didn’t want it to be super super religious as he wants a secular education (and we wouldn’t have gotten a place as non-catholics given how oversubscribed all the schools safe anyway). I’ll have a look around their website and see how full they are.

But thanks for more info re:John Logie. Bullying is never a good sign, and if we have another option that seems widely acknowledged as better, then definitely worth pursuing. It’s only one year of double drop offs, am sure we can manage.

But thanks again for all your input! It’s so hard moving somewhere you don’t know and being so far away now it’s not like we can easily visit and get a feel for things. Really hoping we love it in Helensburgh and stick down some proper roots. Was so much easier to move when we were child free and schools not an element lol

It isn't super duper religious. There's a fair split of catholic and non catholic children I would say. Quite a few Navy children actually. Whatever you decide, I think you will like Helensburgh

St Joes isn't super religious (Cardross nearby is probably as bad and it's non-denominational!) but they do do all the sacraments and it is part of the ethos of the school so does depend how you feel about it. Someone said to me the other day that one of the years in the middle of the school is actually 50/50 in terms of catholic/non-catholic.

I think most people in your circumstances (rightly or wrongly) would take the Hermitage Primary place. Does depend what matters to you though - Hermitage is the largest primary school locally but I know that 380-400 kind of size isn't that big in other areas!

If you go with Hermitage the other option is to look at private nursery - Mulberry Bush and BASIC are both close to Hermitage.