Having just seen another thread where people automatically recommend East Ren (along with East Dun) as the best place to live around Glasgow I think we could do with pointing out that it isn’t always as good as people make out.
I’ve lived in various places in East Ren over the last 20 years and although my DC (bar 1) have finished education now, if I’m honest if I was younger I’m unsure if I would choose to live here again.
Here are the reasons why.
The price for houses here is astronomical in comparison to what you can get in other good areas of Scotland.
Take Stamperland for example, this is considered ‘entry level’ for East Ren. The houses are old 2 bedroom terraces with (like similar properties) many noise issues and high-density living conditions.
In other areas around Glasgow they would be lucky to achieve £100k, yet here they often go for close to £250k.
3 Bedroom semis in areas like Clarkston, Giffnock and Orchard Park have been selling for close to £400k.
Again over double what they sell for in other ‘good’ areas and towns around the city.
This is great if you’re lucky enough to be older and have built up equity, but for young couples starting out putting themselves so much into debt for houses that from a quality perspective are blatantly not worth the prices they are paying for them it is not such a good situation.
The expense of property has also trapped many families in houses that are now far too small for them, there’s two 3 bedroom houses in my street that have over 8 people living in them, yet they are unable to afford a larger property here and feel they need to stay because of the main reason people move here which brings me nicely onto my next point.
Yes, the schools achieve good results, that is undisputed.
But that only tells part of the story here.
First take the primary schools, over my time here the size of these schools has risen exponentially.
This makes getting out-of-hours care difficult and extremely expensive.
Practically it also means if you need to drive to one of the larger schools it takes up a larger part of your day than it should, not to mention the poor driving and selfish behaviour encountered when doing so.
There are primary schools (OLM/Mearns) which have around 850-1000 pupils.
This may not be an issue for some but personally I have saw this can be overwhelming for many young kids, especially less confident/shy ones.
It is very easy for primary kids to get lost in such a large system and although the class sizes are no larger than other schools, the practicalities of running such a large operation mean that sometimes they will miss out on support/experiences.
Now the High Schools.
The Scottish league tables are basically in order of the most affluent areas in the country.
As most are aware there are many factors that predict how well a child will do (parental support, parental education, household income, space to study, nutrition etc…), with the school only being one of them.
Now the majority of schools here are good but it is a myth that there is genuinely anything special about them.
With the background most of the kids have they would be more than likely do well at the majority of schools in the country.
But culturally I’m not sure that ER Schools give kids the best start in life and encourage them to build independence/resilience.
I don’t have any data on it but it seems like an awful lot of ER Kids crash very quickly when they go to University, despite doing amazingly well in the school environment.
From a social perspective it honestly seems as if some of the kids have been brought up in another planet (before any comments I’m aware all teenagers are to an extent), there is such a lack in variety of social backgrounds that many of them have no idea about the reality of the city they live in.
Before East Ren became overpopulated the intakes they accepted from Glasgow/placing requests led to a good social mix which just isn’t there anymore, suppose it would be up to each family to think whether that is a good or bad thing but personally I think being unaware of the real world does not raise balanced/empathetic young people.
The teachers themselves are no better (and arguably have it easier) than teachers elsewhere, again because of the sheer size of the schools there are often less opportunities to take part in extracurricular activities, which in my eyes are as important as the education.
The local athletics clubs in the southside are very vocal about the lack of support they get from these schools for example.
There (like all schools) are bullying issues, barely a week goes by without hearing about incidents or reading about kids being pulled out of school on one of the local Facebook forums.
Again because of the school’s size and culture they seem to have issues in tackling this and are accused by parents of brushing the problem under the carpet.
There is a culture of entitlement that many have within the area and this seems to have been passed on the a lot of the kids, I’ve seen this get a lot worse over the last couple of decades, also I’m aware that society has unfortunately moved toward this but it seems especially prevalent here.
Other accusations from parents are that the schools are basically exam factories, with kids who aren’t quite as academic feeling isolated and not getting the support they need to achieve positive destinations.
There is also more disparity in the quality of the schools than the league tables would lead you to believe, most are broadly similar but one of them allegedly achieves many more what used to be called ‘Straight A’ results than then others, this is also the school I’ve heard most accusations of letting down the non-academic kids about.
All these points are subjective, the schools might be right for some but not for others.
There is a concentrated population density here, which again has got a lot worse over the years and is expected to grow.
This puts a lot of pressure on activities/services you need as a young family.
Not only for things like Dentists/GPs but also things like Guides/Scouts/Sports Clubs as many of these have fairly long waiting lists in comparison to other areas.
The roads also leave a lot to be desired, the driving standard is poor and many of the roads especially around schools have too much traffic on them, in many parts of ER it isn’t safe to let kids out without supervision because of it.
Newton Mearns for example has went from being a large village to quite a large town, but hasn’t had the development to match it.
It appears rural but doesn’t have access to the countryside in the same way as somewhere like Milngavie has.
It is also sold as being a Glasgow suburb but the transport links are actually quite poor, the rail stations are away from the population centres and the bus takes about an hour to get to the city.
I know I’ve done a fair bit of East Ren bashing there, the honest truth is it’s still a good place to live, apart from burglary the crime levels are low and in comparison to other areas there’s a lot going on, the transport into Glasgow is good.
I just don’t think it should be portrayed as something it’s not, there’s good things and bad things everywhere and it is isn’t all good.
Oh - and if you do choose to move there be prepared for rollling your eyes about how competitive/controlling many of the parents are, but I’ll save that for another time.