Hi.
Personally, I do not like Kings International. However, a lot of people who send their children their are really impressed and say that the school is really nurturing and cares for the individual child. This is possibly because it is a small school. However, with the growing numbers in the area, the intake in 2016 will be bigger than it has been previously. When we looked round last year, we really got the impression that it prefers arts subjects to the traditional ones like maths, so it would depend on where your child's strengths lie. I really did not like the head mistress (who showed unlabelled irrelevant graphs and wrongly used "literally" in her talk, amongst other things) but others love her so swings and roundabouts I guess. Because it is small, GCSE options are limited, as are opportunities for other activities like DofE awards. Kings has a nice cafeteria though! And what seemed to be a very passionate PTA.
Tomlinscote is supposedly good, but was outperformed at GCSEs in 2015 by Collingwood. They have a catchment area and you don't stand a chance if you don't live within it, but even if you do not everyone gets in and it goes on strict distances to the school which obviously change every year.
Collingwood is a big school and quite spread out. However, they got excellent GCSE results last year. It is aiming for status as an outstanding school. By being big, they can offer a larger range of subjects at GCSE, school clubs and other extra curricular activities (I think they had a car they had made on display when we looked around). The school buildings look very shabby and there are rather dubious patches where it looks like someone has put their fist through a wall. The whole school could do with a makeover and a lick of paint. They seemed quite nuturing in their own way, with a separate playground for year 7s. Their cafe facilities were non existent and children seemed to be forced to stand around outside to eat.