Secondary Schools in Earley & Wokingham

[Gillysan]

Hi All,

I hope you can help me with some information regarding secondary non-grammer schools in the Early/ Wokingham area.
We are looking to move into this area, and wanted to know; what is the area like? is it suitable for families with kids? what are the secondary schools like?
From the online research I have done, the secondary schools that come are;

1. Maiden Erlegh secondary school
2. The Piggots
3. The Bulmersher secondary school

Does anyone have any feedback on these please?
I would really appreicate any information you can provide!

Thank you!

We are planning to move to the area around Maiden Erlegh school, we heard good things about the area. Only challenge for us is to find & buy a good house in our budget.

If you are looking at Maiden Erlegh you will need to be very close by to be confident of getting in. It is heavily over-subscribed. Last child offered place for September 2024 lives 0.844 miles from the school. I know the area, but don't live there. I would recommend you look at how places have been allocated on Wokingham Borough's website.

All the schools you've listed are good, but more centred towards Earley/Woodley. As a PP has said, Maiden Erleigh is heavily oversubscribed, so you would have to speak to the admissions team at the council about space.

If you're looking to move more to Wokingham, you'd struggle to fall into the catchment for any of those schools -a Wokingham address would more likely to fall into:

1. Forest School, Winnersh (boys, but going co-ed this September I think)
2. The Holt School (Girls)
3. St Crispins (co-ed) - probably the biggest Secondary in Wokingham

Maiden Erlegh (Earley) (as opposed to Maiden Erlegh (Reading)) streams heavily. If your child is very academic they will likely enjoy it, if they are less academic they might do better at Bulmershe as this adopts a more comprehensive approach. These are the two state secondaries in Earley.

In Woodley/Twyford there is Piggot which is very well though of and also Waingels College (also good).

In Wokingham town you have St Crispins (East of town), Embrook (west), Holt for girls and Forest (Winnersh) for boys, although as pp has said Forest is going co-ed from September.

In the south of Wokingham there is Bohunt Wokingham which covers Finchampstead, Barkham, Arborfield and Swallowfield. This is another good school with good results. It's quite a new school (first GCSE cohort 2 years ago) and in a growing area of housing development. The facilities are great and everything is still new and feels dynamic.

Wokingham area is lucky in that all of it's schools are good, although there is a lot of demand for places as they are building new homes at a rate that local services find hard to keep up with.

Last child offered place for September 2024 lives 0.844 miles from the school.

Hi there, from where did you get this info from ? I searched everywhere on the site from I couldn't find this data. I want to see this exact data for the last 3 years to get a rough idea. Please could you help me find this data ?

Hello, it's all here: Key dates and statistics (wokingham.gov.uk)

this is useful, thank you for posting 🙏

Hi we are planning to move to white knights Road RG6 7BD. The postcode falls within Reading council But only 500 meters from maiden Erlegh secondary school-Earley which is managed by Wokingham council. Can my child get an admission in Maiden Erlegh Earley ? Thanks