Clarkston/ East Ren school advice please

[TheStorminNorman]

We want to buy a house and make sure that it is definitely in the catchment area for our school. Are the ER schools still as oversubscribed? Will it matter if our child is about 3 when we move into catchment?

Everyone talks about St Joseph's. Are the other schools as good (must be RC)? What are the breakfast clubs and after care clubs like?

If you want to make sure a house is in catchment you can phone the council and ask. They will be able to look it up for you.

East Ren schools always have a lot of pressure on places and be careful to read the catchment criteria carefully as particularly the RC schools have different criteria.

There are several RC schools. OLM is the one I've heard talked about most.

There are loads of wraparound care clubs. We used CASS and MACS and I've heard good things about OSCare.

You can search to see which catchment the house is in on this link:
https://www.eastrenfrewshire.gov.uk/catchment-area-maps
Bear in mind that the whole belief that East Renfrewshire schools being "good schools" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Houses are often overpriced for this reason when there are perfectly good schools five minutes away in Glasgow. If you're supportive of your child's education then they will do well, unless they have a specific issue which means they might struggle.
Lots of the ER schools are oversubscribed so they have large class sizes. I'd rather my children were in a smaller school (especially for primary) where the staff really know them.
This is not meant to sound critical. I'm just wary of you being upset at the thought that the house you like isn't in the right catchment.

We are at an ER school, although non denominational - is your priority secondary school? Also RC schools are just faith schools I would say, there are a large mix of different religions at these schools so I'm unsure how closely they follow the Catholic belief system - at the one closest to us there is around a 60/40 mix of Catholic and Muslim pupils, so it depends how important the religious aspect is to you.