Hampton High Secondary School of Teddington High

[Okaydocky]

I have a DD in year 9 at Hampton High but she has been wanting to move schools for some time. We have just been informed that she has a place in Teddington High but I’m now concerned that the disruption could cause long term damage to her education as well as friendships, not to mention ther school is a five minute walk from our home. The reason she says she wants to move is the high turn over of teaching staff and substitute teachers the school and has had for some time, which is in fact actual fact becoming quite shocking. But I hear that this is happening to many secondary schools. If anyone has any kids in either of these schools and could give me and my DD a more informed idea of what to do I’d be most grateful :-)

@Okaydocky it's called Teddington School rather than Teddington High. Both schools are run by the same trust so will do some things in a similar way. Both have relatively new heads - I believe the head at Teddington was previously a deputy head at Hampton High so your DD may know them.

The two schools are so close together that your DD may know some children there from her primary school or out-of-school clubs.

My advice would be if your daughter wants to move then let her. Now is a good time as year 9 probably haven't chosen their GCSE options yet (but will do so soon).

Teddington has consistently got better GCSE results than Hampton High in recent years, but that may reflect a more affluent cohort as much as anything else.

Teddington has a sixth form, whereas HH doesn't. The flipside to that is that HH students get priority admission to Esher College, whereas Teddington students don't.

There is a general shortage of teachers. If you were a teacher looking for a job you might favour Teddington over HH because of the better exam results, or you might not.

p.s. link to school comparison site here: https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/schools-by-type?for=secondary&geographic=la&region=318&step=default&table=schools

Thank you @bustagut You’re right that my DD knows some kids already at Teddington which could help her make the change. And thanks for all the other info which I didn’t know. I will check the comparison site too. Really helpful thanks :-)

Distance-wise the schools are not close together. As both schools serve Richmond Borough, many pupils will know each other across the two schools if they went to the same primary in the borough. In the community, Teddington is viewed favourably and lots of pupils are very happy there. Hampton High is on the up again after a little bit of a blip.

Apologies for so many typos in my OP, just noticed them! Never post when in a rush.

There’s a couple of miles in between the two schools. Teddington School is in a much more “well to do” area and I suppose the kids will similarly reflect that. Hampton is great in the sense that there is a large demographic which means my daughter has a large mix of friends and this is really important in my opinion. There are a few troubled kids there too and I’m not sure how efficient the pastoral care is, but my daughter has unfortunately witnessed a few nasty fights during class time and some troubling behaviour around the school. This doesn’t happen often thank god, and I have heard that many secondary schools are susceptible to this going on. My main worry is the seemingly very high turnover of teaching staff. She has been through too many changes with some subjects that it must affect her learning and this worries me a lot.

Teddington has a much bigger intake, 240 versus 180 at HH, so its catchment is wider. When your daughter's year group was applying for year 7 in October 2021, Teddington was "Requires Improvement". It was just a blip and it went back to "Good" in Nov 2021, but it was undersubscribed that year. It has filled up since then. Probably a few other HH students have made the move in recent years because it has been HH's turn to go through a blip (it got a good Ofsted report recently, but if you read it you'll see it refers to some recent improvements).