Moving to Oxfordshire

[gillrobertson]

Hi All, we want to move house to Oxfordshire to be closer to our family.

The move won't be until the summer of 2017 as we don't want to disrupt the education of our eldest child. Our youngest will be coming up to secondary school anyway so he will already be changing schools.

Having looked at Lord Williams's School we're worried about how they'll fit in at such a large establishment when they've both been attending small schools in West Sussex.

Does anyone have any experience of integrating their children in a new, much larger school, or of Lord William's School in particular?

There are certainly plenty of schools to choose from in the area! www.termdates.com/south-east/oxfordshire/

We have not settled on a specific area yet so at this stage we're open to any school in the area.

Thank you, Gill.

Though it's a huge school, Lord Williams is a very local school. The catchment is quite small so look carefully at where you're moving to if you want to go there.

As it's split over 2 sites (Years 7-9 are at the other side of town from years 10-13), it doesn't seem like such a big school when you're actually there. And not having the older years at lower school is good for the younger ones, they can find their feet without having big year 11s or sixth formers intimidating them. As of Sept 2017, lower school will have just over 1000 pupils on site and upper school 1150 ish, how does that compare with where they are now?
There are plans to merge the two sites in the future but it certainly won't happen in the next few years.

Overall it is a very good school, the teachers care a lot about the students and the pastoral support is good. There are plenty of oppportunities for sports, drama/dance and music and lunch time clubs. High achievers do well and get top grades, with both middle and lower ability students being well catered for. I think they stream straight away in yr7 for maths, I'm not sure about english or science.

Thame is a lovely town to live in but getting overpriced in my opinion. You get much more house for your money if you head north or east in to Oxfordshire.

There is also Icknield Community College in Watlington. A much smaller school, no sixth form, and not as good on paper, but less than half the size and quite nurturing.