Secondary schools in Milton Keynes

[Aj981]

Hello Everyone!

Hope you all are doing well. Thanks for reading my post question.

We will be moving in Milton Keynes (returning from overseas) in mid June. My daughter is in year 8 at the moment.

My daughter is an average student, with slight inclination towards academics. Plays tennis & is keen on continuing her French language studies.

I have found these secondary schools to be good in MK, not in that order of preference yet -
Denbigh School
Oakgrove School
Shenley Brook End school
Ousdale - Newport Pagnell campus
Milton Keynes Academy

In my network, I am able to find feedback from parents whose child goes to the first 4 schools in above list.

Is anyone here whose child/children goes to Milton Keynes Academy? What is your review of the school?

Appreciate your responses. It will be great if you can also share your experience with other 4 schools. This will help me decide on an order of preference.

Thanks a lot in advance. Have a good day!

What are you looking at from a school in your definition of "good"? Do you have any requirements about where you live (the schools you've listed are fairly well spread out)
I'm surprised to see Milton Keynes Academy on your list (usually people are not so keen on it) and also surprised that you don't have Hazeley or Walton High (or Kents Hill Park, although that's a newer school that may not appeal).

You should bear in mind that for a Year 8 place, you are at the mercy of which schools have spaces, so I would suggest contacting the LEA to discover this, before you get too far down your "choosing a school" list. There's no point having a firm favourite if your daughter has no chance of getting a place there.

Thanks for your inputs on MK Academy.
About my home, I wanted to find an accomodation which will be close to atleast 2 of the schools (inside of their catchment areas).

Just checked with the LEA, the only schools with places available are - MK Academy, Herbert Leon, Stantonbury. That explains.

What are my options now, as all good schools seem to be running full?

There are very few places in MK that are within the catchment areas of 2 secondary schools.

Your options are to go on waiting lists (and there may well be movement over the summer holidays) or to appeal. In both cases you probably need to be moved first so that you have a local address, but this obviously means deciding what school(s) you are going for, moving as close as possible, and then hoping to get to the top of a list/win an appeal. Of course some people already on lists won't want to move a child in Year 8/9, but some will see this as an ideal time as it's before they get too emmeshed in GCSE work.

Worth looking at the schools with spaces as well - they are not universally hated (particularly Stantonbury which is a bit of a marmite school).

@Aj981
If you don’t need to be in Milton Keynes, you might find The Sir Thomas Fremantle School at Winslow a better bet. Not sure about vacancies but you could ask them. It’s not far from MK.

I don't know much about MK academy. Stantonbury hasn't had a good reputation for years. Sir Herbert Leon is on the Lakes Estate in Bletchley, an area with very high social deprivation. I have volunteered there occasionally and have been told that some pupils have never been to Milton Keynes, let alone London. If those are your options for Yr8 placea currently and you have flexibility in location, I agree with the above poster - look outside MK - North Bucks with Winslow or Wing (Sir Thomas Fremantle or The Cottesloe), south Northamptonshire, or Bedfordshire with its middle school system where yr 8 is the last year of middle school and yr 9 the first of high school.

Buckingham secondary school currently has yr 8 vacancies www.buckscc.gov.uk/services/education/school-admissions/changing-school-in-year/check-for-school-places/list-of-school-vacancies/

Just to flag to OP if they don't know, that Buckinghamshire has a grammar system and Buckingham secondary school is not a grammar. That means it will be missing the top 20-25% of the ability group (who will be in grammar schools).

Personally I'd steer clear of Bucks schools for this reason. (MK, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire do not have grammar systems)

Have you thought about Bedfordshire? The Upper Schools close-ish to MK are good. If you lived in Woburn Sands, you'd be Cedars catchment, I think.Or Redborne.

@redskyatnight
The OP said her DD was average. Therefore who is in a grammar school is of little consequence. Lots of Buckinghamshire non grammars hold their own against the worst MK comps anyway. Also in that area, it’s certainly not 25% in the grammars and loads come from MK making MK schools not truly comprehensive.

Winslow parents didn’t like Buckingham School. Everyone fully supports the Sir Thomas Fremantle. The only issue is no 6th form in the future. The Cotesloe would be a good shout and you should look at Leighton Buzzard.

@TizerorFizz Whether OP's DC would have qualified for a grammar school or not, it's still worth her knowing that Buckinghamshire schools are not comprehensive to aid her decision. (She may of course think they are better than the MK schools with places).

The number of children from MK getting into Bucks grammar schools is getting smaller each year; there are certainly not enough to mean that the schools in MK are not fully comprehensive.

@redskyatnight

For 2021, Aylesbury Grammar, Aylesbury High, Sir Henry Floyd, and The Royal Latin School took 179 out of Bucks pupils between them. It’s possible some were from Bedfordshire and Oxfordshire and even Northamptonshire but the majority come from MK and are in the Aylesbury schools. RLS has far fewer. In anyone’s reckoning this is equivalent to several top sets from MK! These DC will be living in the South/West of MK but the idea few come into Bucks is not backed up by stats. For an average child, the Bucks upper schools are fine but progress 8 and attainment will give a fuller picture. These schools do have a decent number of higher achieving DC too. MK is very different to Winslow and Wing.

St Paul's catholic school is good...dont have to be catholic anymore either

@TizerorFizz If you look here www.thebucksgrammarschools.org/test-data it gives you Bucks school allocations by area. Only 90 from MK got accepted into Bucks grammar schools this year. So about 6 per secondary school in MK (yes, I know they won't be evenly distributed).

90 is 50% of a school intake. It’s 3 top sets. It absolutely affects MK schools.

Im surprised they have heard all appeals. The large numbers coming into Bucks equate to a whole school every year with MK supplying 50% of them. Let alone the DC who want to come into Bucks grammars that don’t make it.

most of the 90 aren't even in what you would generally call Milton Keynes - they are in outlying villages with MK postcodes. I think the Shenleys are the only place in Milton Keynes that you can actually still get into Bucks Grammar schools. 90 children taken out of the whole MK secondary school population in a year group (bearing in mind that I bet some of these children would have been put in private schools if they hadn't passed the 11+ and a lot do go into Bedfordshire schools) is really not a big impact.

It's not like 10 years ago, when huge swathes of MK children went to Bucks grammars.

Also 90 is not 50% of a MK secondary school's intake. The secondary schools are nearly all huge!

I think they are still provisional numbers, so yes, they may change. But last year's numbers from MK (with the same point in my previous post that most of these are actually outside of what most people would generally call MK) were only 100.

Only 100 is more than 3 top sets. Given these DC are from a limited area in MK due to distance to Bucks schools, it’s a lot. Only 11 to RLS so last year it was 89 to Aylesbury schools. That is a big loss from MK snd is reflected in results.

I can't help with schools in MK @Aj981 but if you want recommendations for tennis coaches in the area, let me know

As the MK children get to Bucks grammars on distance they are mostly living nearer the Bucks border and are not spread through MK. Outlying areas are still MK children if they are in MK. Post code is irrelevant. My DM has one and she’s miles away from the MK border. 90 plus children lost from a small number of mk comps in the west of the area is a lot.

Even the Shenleys are hardly a guarantee these days. Here are the 2022 allocation maps for the three Aylesbury ones showing how far they went out of catchment.

And here is the Buckingham one.

Substantially into Beds and MK urban areas at the borders then. Except RLS where that has shrunk a lot. AHS is still getting loads from MK and Beds. It’s still 90 pupils.

A lot of the MK children getting into Bucks grammars will have Leon as their catchment school. And I'd be prepared to bet that the parents of children passing the 11+ would not be sending them to Leon if the grammar option did not exist.
That's why the "MK missing 3 top sets" argument doesn't hold water. You're assuming that those children would be in MK comprehensive schools if they didn't have the grammar as an option. Whereas, actually a lot of them would be going to private school as an alternative, or their parents only moved where they did because they thought their DC would get into grammar and would have picked to live somewhere else (Bucks proper?) if they didn't have that option.

My DC go to a MK comprehensive. At the open evening the headteacher said that there were 40 more children living in catchment of the right age, than there were places at the school. But past experience had told them that actually a lot would go private/home ed/move and that the school always took at least a few out of catchment. People do make big decisions around secondary schools.

This seems to have been derailed by the grammar debate. I have family in MK and there are some excellent schools in MK. On the east side, there are three mentioned favourably on the list above which children from my sister’s area have got into. Have a look at Monkston / Middleton / Broughton / Brooklands and the associated catchments.