Moving to Bromley: Secondary School help pls

[MrsWhirling]

Hi, we are moving to the Borough of Bromley soon. DD is nearly 8 so want to buy near a suitable secondary school. I would be very grateful if anyone with experience of the area and schools could give me some advice, before I start looking at houses. Many thanks x

I bought in the catchment of Langley Park School.. (I hope - I will find out in 3 years time!) It depends on where you commute to, what budget, do you need primary school etc.

Bullers Wood very good for girls, Chislehurst and Bickley nice areas.

One grammar school for girls, Newstead woods. Excellent but suits some not all, obv. Stuff competition to get in.

Langley good to v good. Bullers wood pretty good. Both girls only. In the north of the borough, Harris crystal palace pretty good. Hayes ok in most subjects but not all. Langley boys open to girls in 6th form.

Apparently Charles Darwin in biggin hill improving. Used to be low aspiration.

Meadowquark - how difficult was it to find something in the Langley catchment?

Newstead - super-selective and I don't think its results are as good as they should be, bearing that in mind.
Bullers Wood - agree with Parabelle, and a better mix of properties in the area, some a lot less expensive than the Langley catchment. You could live within walking distance of Bromley South - 15 mins fast train to Victoria.
There are plans under discussion to build a Bullers Wood for Boys free school.
Beckenham is a bit of a black hole for secondaries.
Hayes co-ed is v good. Ravensbourne co-ed is doing v well these days.
There are only a few I'd have reservations about. Those on the border with Bexley tend to be less successful academically because they lose bright kids to the Bexley grammars.

Well, we don't have £800,000 so perhaps I'm being a. It optimistic about Langley!

Bullers Wood (girls) is very good, as is Darrick Wood (coed). You have to live quite close to them to get into the schools.

Beaverwood, which is now known as Chislehurst School for Girls, (or Chislehurst Girls School?) is fast improving. It's very near the border with Bexley, so is popular with Bexley people who didn't get into the grammars, as some of the secondary moderns are not very good.

Ravensbourne is "up and coming", as well.

Langley Girls in Beckenham is very good, but again, you have to live quite close by.

If you are CofE, you might get a place at Bishops Justice (coed).

Coopers doesn't have a good reputation, and I know a teacher there who believes there is a big problem with discipline, and the SMT not backing teachers up.

The Priory and Charles Darwin are not very popular.

If your DD is quite bright, there is Newstead. However, a lot of people don't like the new head, and there is some uncertainty about what is going on there, as she is currently away for "personal reasons".

MrsWhirling well I will be honest, I didn't have anywhere close to 800k, so I bought an unsightly 1960s townhouse in the borough of Croydon for approx. 300k. Mine is 0.855miles from Langley school. The proximity of national offer day has been 0.9-1.1 miles so far, I pray that this will get me in.

Wow, really great advice ladies thank you! We are going to use this weekend to look around the borough in a bit more detail.

Sounds good meadowquark, I'm sure you'll be fine x

Camel - Ravensbourne has had an 'outstanding' sixth form for some time and, if you look at recent trends at GCSE, it's definitely on the way up. Local Primary Heads are v positive about it. More so than Ravenswood, which has had a spot of bother recently over staff fiddling results and HT retiring sooner than expected so more boys are making R'bourne their first choice. Catchment shrinking.

Don't know about Beaverwood - except it's changed its name to Chislehurst School for Girls. It may be popular with refugees from Bexley Sec Mods but, as I said above, it suffers from Grammar School blight in that it's short of the brighter Bromley girls who pass the Bexley test and cross the border in the other direction.

I know people with girls at Beaverwood who are very happy with it.

It wouldn't be my top choice though.

It depends on where you want to live, though, MrsWhirling. But if you only have one DD, I would go for Bullers Wood. Or, if you prefer coed, Darrick Wood.

There are nice places to live near both of those schools. The houses round Bullers wood will set you back considerably more than £800k, but there are houses a bit further away, but still close enough for a place that are nowhere near as much.

Darrick Wood is near Petts Wood and Orpington, and there is lots of choice of housing round there, too.

Camel - well I disagree with you about Bishop Justus... but there we go. Different strokes.

I don't mind where we live as we are moving for the schools. I work in London so good travel is preferable, but not as important as school. I have DD8 and DS3. We are happy where we live now, nice house/neighbours but terrible secondary schools unfortunetly.

Any views on Harris Beckenham?

Umm, why do you call Hayes amazing? Frankly, some of their results in the recent past have been, er, shall we say disappointing? Yes, some do well there but so they should. I am not convinced about their languages policy, their maths and science teaching, their general SEN provision. Perhaps the head is amazing but it seems to be a touch patchy elsewhere. That said, perhaps it is improving in the lower years.