Senior schools near Brighton.

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We are planning to move to Brighton/Hove (or there abouts!) for work but are (for once) planning ahead and want to move to the catchment area for a great local senior school for our son. Any suggestions please? Stitched in Bournemouth.

Brighton & Hove doesn't use a catchment area system, it uses a lottery system. You have to put your selected three schools on the form and wait and see what you get allocated.

here you go

Have a look at this

Aah! so it makes no difference where I live then? Do they have entrance tests?

Brighton and Hove most certainly does have catchment areas. The lottery only comes in to force in cases of oversubsciption. From the link above:

You will see that after pupils with exceptional reasons and siblings have been offered places at a school, the next priority is children living within the catchment area. We shall do our best to offer every child a place at a school in their catchment area if they want it, but this may not be possible in every case. If a school is oversubscribed with applicants within the catchment area, a random allocation process will be used to decide which children should be offered the available places.

The popular schools are Dorothy Stringer and Varndeen which serve the area around Preston Park, though I have no idea if they are great schools. There are no entrance tests. If you want to live around, rather than in, Brighton, you also need to check out East Sussex.

Thankyou. Now all I have to do is find a house we can afford! It's sooo expensive over that way!

Blatchington mill is also a good school in Hove

There most definetely are cachement areas! The lottery only kicks in if a school is oversubscribed and those in the cachement area get first dibs.
Dorothy Stringer and Varndean are in the same cachement - so if you live in the area you will get one of those if you apply for year 7 entry. Dorothy Stringer has pulled ahead of Varndean in terms of GCSE results in recent years and especially in A - A* percentages. My Dc go to Varndean (we moved here mid year ) and are happy but Dorothy Stringer is considered better by most primary parents - so gets oversubscribed and goes to lottery for year 7 entry.

Blatchington Mill and Hove Park are in the same cachement. BM is considered the better school. Some other schools such as Aldridge Academy and Patcham have a single school cachement so you would be allocated it if you live there although you can apply to other B&H schools, lots of Patcham children go to Varndean.

If you are a practicising christian you could apply to Cardinal Newman RC - very good results, no specific cachement - you even get free bus travel.

There are lots of old threads about senior schools on the Brighton Local topic area. Most of the schools stop at GCSE so DC move on to Sixth form college for A level. It is also good to post there for any more specific school questions.

Some parents rent in the PP area to get the primary of their choice and then move out and buy in cheaper areas once in. The cachement area for Varndean/Dorothy Stringer is huge - so check it out on the council's website.

Good luck - it is lovely living here.

Thankyou all so much for the advice. See you on the beach!!