Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School - any information?

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I am planning to apply for a place for my ds at CVMS but don't know many people who have applied in the past and have never actually met anyone whose DS was offered a place.

We are practising Catholics but wouldn't score too many other "points" for the religious application form. We are not local to the school and so I'm wondering how difficult it really is to get into. Does anyone have any experience they could share?

Thanks in anticipation!

Nobody at all?

We have discounted the Vaughan now because ds was baptised two weeks after his first birthday, and under the new agreed admissions arrangements that makes us not catholic enough. So we're not even going to bother looking, tbh.

I do know quite a few people with kids there, mainly in slightly older years, though a couple in Y8 or 9. Received wisdom is that you need a lot of points both on your own catholicity and that of your ds, ie child needs to be an altar server or reader, and you need to do at least two activities in the church, eg. reader, catechist, SVP, yadda yadda. Ironically we'd meet those criteria, but because we held off on ds's baptism until my grandma was well enough to join us, we're disqualified. again. I can't be doing with all that competitive catholicity, tbh.

Was it you who had a child planning to join my ds's current primary school in Y6? Have you joined? [curious] If you want to discuss secondary schools plans offboard, do CAT me.

Hello Frogs, well remembered, I was looking for places for both my dc but at said school.
We were offered a place for ds, but have decided to keep him at his current school until he transfers to secondary next year. There was no place for DD so she has now moved to a different catholic primary slightly further north.

Re CVMS, we would get some points for church activities etc but not "full marks" in order to guarantee a place. I've never met anyone in my Parish who has applied and as I have heard so many people from north london saying that they won't bother with CVMS that I've started to wonder, perversely, whether its actually worth a shot.

a friend's son has just started y7 there, travelling from SW2 - horribly long commute for an 11 year old

It's VERY Catholic (pupils have to have their bible on them at all times), and I think Catholicism easily trumps distance in the admissions stakes

• what's the punishment if you don't have your bible on you?!

devils with pitchforks, probably

Hi Celia2, I had a look on the website and the points still seem to apply. There was some talk of changing it to distance criteria but in the end they reverted back to the previous years format.
Unless there's something else I've missed?