Orleans Park, Grey Court , Richard Reynolds Secondary school

[CPF]

We are planning to move to the area this year before Sep , currently living in Chiswick. We need to apply for secondary school Sep 2024. Are any parents here that can share your experiences with Orleans Park, RR and Grey court? All these schools have very similar results. We visited the schools last year and like all of them. Just looking for any personal experience . Thanks!!

Well, most of them will go immediately home as everywhere, but those who travel 111 are going to Hounslow main road and mock around. Heard it from a parent who observed it and decided to opt for another school for her gentle daughter. And we are spoilt here - we have a choice of good and only great and good schools :)

I think they'll get fewer kids from the 111 bus route over time. Most of them are younger siblings of children who joined the school when it was located on the temporary site in Hampton. The school's more recent catchments don't stretch to that end of Hampton.

Yes , correct. Her daughter has an older bro in the school

My DD had an amazing time at GreyCourt (she left last summer) and I thought it was a truly excellent school. Their sports provision is outstanding. She was a sports scholar on their scholarship programme which, although no financial benefit, provides 3 extra sessions of sport each week , including strength and conditioning. In the 5 years she was there she represented the school at basketball, football, cricket, athletics etc etc and only left for sixth form to go to a specialist sports academy.

They also have extensive music and drama provision. While my DD isn’t musical she was in the panto in y7 and was backstage in y8 which she enjoyed so much she did this for the next few years and learnt about lighting/sound etc.

And the academics are great - they set the DC for almost all subjects from y7 (based on SATS and CATS that the school do), which I liked because it meant they had opportunity to mix with loads of other children rather than staying in their one form. My DD got all 8s and 9s in the 10 GCSEs she took and there were others doing even better so if your DC is academic then they will have every opportunity to do well. But the school also has an extensive BTEC offering including health and social care and creative media with DC able to do a mixture of GCSEs and BTECs.

My DD has some lovely friends (boys and girls) from GC and really did love her time there.

We got in by just 13 metres in Sept 2018 and the catchment was around 3kms. But as a PP said, only about 10 years before then GC was a failing school which could only fill about 50 of its 240 places so schools do change. GC had the charismatic Maggie Bailey as Head who turned the school around and then current Head Chris Rhodes (who had been deputy) took over when she left.

@YouDeserveSomeCake my DD is currently in year 5 so I guess results for the schools should remain the same. I also have another girl currently in year 1. As per locrating Grey court is the one with the best results , then Orleans Park then SRR. I haven't looked into Turing but results in locrating are very similar to SRR. Thanks for the usuful information!! I just had a look at St Paul's and it seems a very good option just a little bit further west. Good to know about Teddigton , I didn't consider it as it had a bad reputation in the past but I can see its results have improved a lot !

@Nowfeeltheneedtopost thanks for sharing your experience with GC. I was very impressed with the headteacher when I went to visit the school last year, he seems very enthusiastic and caring. I didn't know the school had a bad reputation in the past. It is amazing how the school has improved. The grounds are very impressive , my only concern is that it is a very big school. We are currently in one form school so it feels a big change.

@CPF please do not use Locrating as a resource to check distances/ catchment or school performance. They are far from accurate. School admission is not based always on the radius, a circle and for Waldergrave, Turing and SRR locrating map shows irrelevant data

Here is the government page where you can check school performance
SRR has slightly lower GCSE results than Orleans, Grey Court or Turing

https://www.gov.uk/school-performance-tables

And here are results from 2022 " at a glance". 2023 is also circulated on the internet

@YouDeserveSomeCake ohh that a big surprise!!! I thought locrating was based on gov website but easier to navigate !!! Thanks for letting me know!

I know a mum who applied basing on Lo crating and the council gave her place in Gumley school for girls that wasn't even on her list. And she was convinced that she is in catchment.

Always look at last 2 years of catchment

Many primary schools in the Surrey side of the borough are single form entry and feed into Grey Court, so the school is used to dealing with small to large. I think the Middlesex side has larger primaries

In Richmond borough most of the schoolsl years have around 90 kids. 3 classes per year

Is there a table like that available showing the 2023 data? As I can only find the table for 2022, as you posted above.

The schools change position from year to year, so it's never sensible to make decisions based on a single year's data. The biggest 'variable' factor is the demographic of the cohort. Orleans Park, Waldegrave and Grey Court are most stable because their catchments have shrunk and become expensive. Turing House is heading in that direction. Teddington used to be in that position, but is recovering from some wilderness years (OP and GC have had wilderness years in the past too). SRR is random allocation but selects for regular church-attendance which requires parental discipline. Christs is a combo of house price and church attendance. Hampton High, Twickenham School, RTS and RPA have less affluent catchments and generally less stable cohorts.

We are on the waiting list for St Catherine’s in Bromley for yr 7 entry. This is still our first choice and hoping we might still have a chance of getting in.

Can anyone please give me any advice on waiting list places into St Catherine’s, and if we should expect to receive an offer.

Does anyone know if girls at the bottom of the waiting list eventually receive an offer?

I suspect we are at the bottom of the waiting list as we haven’t yet heard anything. I know there might still be some movement, but most offers have now been accepted. Thanks!

@Ronich best to start your own thread - as the schools on this thread are no where near Bromley... you will get more people who know that area if you put Bromley in your title. Good luck.

I think this may be true for the borough as whole, but not for Ham and Petersham, the closest to Grey Court, where there are 3 single form entry schools. It comes from 2 original boroughs being amalgamated, each with a different history. Perhaps this pattern has got blurred as some schools south of the river have expanded

Thanks! I thought I did a new post didn’t realise it was attached to this thread. Thanks for the heads up!

"Add post" adds to the current thread. You need to go to the top of the page and choose "Add a new thread" from the drop-down menu.

In Middlesex part of Richmond where I live schools are small as 30 kids per year e.g. St Mary's Hampton or medium and they have 90 kids like in Hampton Hill, Teddington, Hampton, Twickenham.
Petersham, Ham are on the other side of the river in Surrey.

I guess it depends on how built up the areas were when the schools were built, then.
OP, you were worried about your DC going from a 1-form entry to a very large secondary: but this seems to be something that as Richmond secondaries will have experience of.

All Richmond not as Richmond!

Surrey near Greycourt....do you mean Kingston? Which is in London and has been for years - it is very near Greycourt and lots of children from very big primaries like Latchmere and Fern hill go to Greycourt. So it has a mix of children who are used to small and big primaries.

And Richmond is a London borough too!

Click Edit post to make corrections and dont shout at yourself for minor mistakes. 😅Copperas be kind to Copperas 😃😘

There are two "sides" to Richmond Borough, split by the Thanes, the Richmond side and the Twickenham side, aka the Surrey side and the Middlesex side (though those are references to names of old county boundaries that were abolished when the area was absorbed into Greater London). The local authority sometimes refer to them as the East side and the West side (but some people can never remember which is which 😁)