Twynham School, Christchurch - catchment question

[wadadlis]

Hi,

We are considering relocating to Christchurch from London and have been told Twynham is the best local school.

I have seen the catchment map on the school website - between the rivers - but noted that they say that they also take students from the Tuckton/Southbourne area - which is where we want to live!

How do they decide who to take, does anyone know?? Is it shortest distance to the school (gate/centre of buildings/edge of playing fields??) or some other criteria?

The local estate agent didn't seem to know and the school office obviously won't be open now. Can anyone tell me the answer please?

We moved to Christchurch a few years ago - it's a lovely area.

The admissions policies for all Dorset schools can be found on the County Council website here - scroll down to page 47 for Twynham.

"Where there are too few places available to satisfy all preferences places will be allocated according to the following priority order:-
i.) children who are in the care of a local authority. This criterion specifically relates to children with either a care order (full or interim) or who are accommodated under Section 22 of the Children Act 1989.
ii.) children living within the school?s catchment area and who will have a sibling(s) attending the school at the time of admission

iii.) children living within the school?s catchment area
iv.) children living outside the school?s catchment area who have a sibling(s) attending the school at the time of admission
v.) children living outside the school?s catchment area and who were attending one of the preferred school?s recognised maintained feeder schools during the previous year
vi.) all other children living outside the school?s catchment area

1. If too few places are available to satisfy preferences expressed within any of the priority order categories above, places will be allocated on the basis of the child?s closeness to the preferred school (defined by straight line measurement using the LA Geographical Information based system which identifies an Easting and Northing for the home address and the school building and calculates the distance between the two locations)."

So yes, it looks like it's done by shortest distance to the school building but your DC will have an advantage if they are attending one of Twynham's feeder primary schools when you apply. I'm not sure which primaries these are though I'm afraid.

You can also see here though that the numbers admitted in each category vary from year to year. In 2010, 40 students were admitted from out of catchment, whereas in 2009 it was only 7 (all of whom attended feeder schools). This also tells you that a lot of first preference applications are refused by Twynham every year and there is really no guarantee that your DCs will get in if you're not in catchment even if you live relatively close to the school. The 7 non-catchment admissions in 2009 all attended feeder schools and lived within 1.09 miles of the school, for example.

Afaik, Tuckton and Southbourne are actually in the catchment for Porchester and Avonbourne schools which are single sex and don't have the best reputation. Highcliffe School is the other side of Christchurch from Twynham but also has a good reputation and it is a nice (if a little boring for teenage DCs perhaps) area to live in. The Grange is the other secondary in Christchurch and is the only one of the three I would definitely try to avoid - although I think it's improving a little.

This is really helpful, thank you. Will look at the feeder primaries in detail for Twynham.

The other school I noticed was St Peter's, a RC School - which is fine as he and his Dad are practising RCs. ( I attend mass under duress but can jump through the hoops as and when needed. ) It looks good on the website, do you have any insider knowledge on that one as regards reputation in the area, please?