Warrington schools

[3pickles]

Hello.

We are looking to relocate to Warrington and the following schools have space for our son. Would really welcome some feedback from anyone with recent experiences of the children please.

Birchwood High
Bridgewater High
Cardinal Newman Catholic High
Great Sankey High
Lymm High
Padgate Academy

Depends on what your budget for a house is!

South Warrington is much more expensive than North Warrington.

It also depends on your child and what they are like / need.

Would like a school that is calm, supportive and a positive environment with good pastoral care. So really looking for some feedback from anyone who has children in the schools above.

I have contacted them to find out and arrange visits etc.

That really depends on who you talk to tbh. I've heard numerous very conflicting comments for some of those schools.
Great Sankey, Lymm and Bridgewater are BIG schools.
Lymm and Bridgewater have the best reputations academically.
https://snobe.co.uk/best-secondary-schools/warrington-cheshire
They don't score as well on these rating though.

Honestly go and see them and see the local areas. They are not all for everyone because of the nature of their catchment areas.

I have a friend really happy with Great Sankey. Her son needed similar. He needed an environment to get the best out of him not just all academics as he wasn’t top set material and has now headed onto college. Her DD there now

Thank you. That is really useful to know. Your friend must be very proud of her son. ☺️ The right environment can make all the difference.

Lymm or Bridgewater both are lovely areas to live in too

Thank you. Do you have any experience of the secondary or primary schools in that area?

Where are you planning to live. Trekking across the town to a school will be hard, traffic can be hell especially across the centre

Really it depends on schools to be honest. Our priority is settling the children into calm supportive schools. We have one secondary and two in primary.

We have visited Lymm and Stockton heath but don’t really know anything about any of the schools or other areas.

Firstly, I would live near the school of choice (or be happy with the school when you choose to live).
Birchwood is great value for money and particularly great for jumping on/off the M62. The further south of Warrington you go, the further you are from the motorway and the higher the house prices.

Birchwood is nestled in a nature reserve - the green spaces and environment are incredible for an ordinary town within a new town. We do pay higher Parish charges than anywhere in Warrington, but it is absolutely worth it. The town is designed to be safely walkable without having to cross many roads. You could avoid all roads if you wanted to (and had the time!)

I can vouch for Birchwood High School (2 children). Their pastoral team is brilliant, most of the teachers are great, and if you live in Birchwood, it is walkable/cyclable. But as with all schools, it depends on the child. They support children with learning disabilities and manage behaviour issues well. They have lots of extracurricular activities, good GCSE options, and some of the pastoral and SEND staff have gone above and beyond for my family - they have made so many reasonable adjustments for us.

But it is a mainstream school, so there is a limit to what they can reasonably accommodate, and we've reached the end of the road in terms of that, sadly.

So it really depends on your child and their needs. They can accommodate SEND and SEMH well, and it's a lovely place to live.

Thank you so much that is really useful. Pastoral care and nice place to live are certainly at the top of our list! ☺️

Are there any primary schools in Birchwood that your children have attended?

Mine went to Gorse Covert Primary, and no complaints there. People rave about Locking Stumps Primary, though, so worth looking at it.

Birchwood is a funny set-up if you are used to 'old' towns, as I was - no high street, each of the three areas has a pub, primary school and a 'local' shop, and then the shopping centre has a big Aldi, Asda, hairdresser, fast food etc to service the rest.

Used to it now and can really appreciate the benefits of the design - less 'through' traffic, quieter residential streets and comes into its own on sunny days. And yet there's a massive business park here, proper countryside in nearby Risely and Croft, Warrington town itself is a junction up the M62 for all the megastores, Manchester is 15 mins in the other direction, Liverpool is a similar distance the other way - so you're connected to everything you could want or need, without being 'in the middle' of it.

Super, I will have a look into those thank you.

Birchwood sounds like a lovely place to raise a family. What is the public transport like? My husband can not drive due to health so would need access to trains/buses for access to Manchester/Liverpool for work.

You should consider chapelford in great sankey. You can get trains to Manchester and Liverpool from the station

Visit the areas north of the ship canal. South Warrington is VERY different to North Warrington.

North Warrington has much high levels of deprivation and it's socially chalk and cheese compared to the affluent south.

You get very different social groups as a result.

This isn't to say North Warrington is 'bad'. It's actually one of the better places for education when you consider the socioeconomics. I think it's still a great place to live.

South Warrington is much more middle class. The villages can be cliquey. It's fine for kids in primary but can be harder to integrate if you go into a older yr at secondary.

I think almost all the schools in south Warrington have very good reputations. Primary and Secondary alike. But I also know some people who just haven't 'fitted in' and had problems associated with that. It's either really good or it goes completely the other way.

Thank you, I will take a look. Do you have any experience of the primary/secondary schools in that area?

Pretty much cross off Lymm and Bridgewater if transport is a big deal to your husband. The areas around are commuter belt with very no reliable public transport. Notoriously so. You would have to live somewhere distance from the schools and your kids trek across town on a lengthy journey to get to school. That also makes it harder socially as they will be isolated from friends.

There are good schools in North Warrington. And there are good areas. They are just different in character.