Best part of ED school wise

[Alec John Moore]

Queenie23, Sorry if I came across as a bit snidey in my last post. Your comment about decent schools seemed, to me, to imply that they are all, equally available to everyone. As I'm sure you are aware, the process parents go through when considering the secodary school transfer dilemma is somewhat fraught. You are right that there are lots of decent schools in London and I have been impressed by most of the ones I visited. However, the choice is not sraightforward.

Alec

[sallyfran]

I am not a parent of a secondary age child, but I do work in education, and as a near neighbour of Harris Boys I was invited to tour the building on its first anniversary, accompanied by the Head and Deputy. I know that many parents would prefer co-ed and I would agree, but I would urge parents not to rule it out of the reckoning. The facilities are amazing and the staff we met seemed full of passion for the place and for achieving good results for the boys. We met an especially inspiring music teacher who has got a choir and a jazz band going (and lots of classical instrumental tuition), the art was brilliant and they seemed to appreciate the importance of getting the academic subjects right too. Just my two penn'orth on the strength of what I saw.

[westof]

Just noticed a tiny paragraph buried at the bottom of this article in yesterday's Evening Standard...

"An investigation by exam boards into claims of cheating at Kingsdale Foundation School in Dulwich is looking at vocational qualifications, after initially focusing on AS-levels and GCSEs so that results can be given out on time, said a source. It has been alleged pupils were given too much help with exams. Head Steve Morrison said awarding bodies were satisfied the integrity of GCSEs and AS-levels was not impaired"

Good news so far (for the GCSE & AS-level students at least).

[eliza]

Yes, this is fantastic news for the hard working kids, teachers and management at Kingsdale. The storm isn't over yet but it's now clear that the most serious allegations have been dismissed by the exam boards.

[Renata Hamvas]

Hi New mother, it sounds like that your friends children would be entering primary mid-school. The thing to consider with this is that many primary classes are currently full, particularly infant classes so moving close to a particular primary school would not neccessarily mean that they could secure two places there, as this may be reliant on two children leaving the school. If they think stay in a home for a while, I agree with posters above, that perhaps they should be looking at secondary school admissions criteria and catchments.

I believe Charter goes on safest walking distance and takes the closest pupils and it's not done on a band by band basis. Harris boys/girls and Haberdashers' Askes go on band/as the crow flies. For the later school, however, they would need to be looking in south Nunhead/Telegraph Hill to have a good chance, unless their eldest child is very talented in music. Kingsdale allocation is done predominantly on a random allocation (lottery) basis. The government is changing the regulations so that local authorities aren't able allocate places by lottery, but Southwark doesn't do this anyhow, and the regs are not applicable for individual school lotteries. Random allocation of places at popular schools, by the fact that anyone can apply with equal chance means that numbers of applicants can be very large.

Snowboarder and Grotty, I don't know if this will help, but, all the local primaries are Fine! Yes, you may not necessarily get a place at your number 1 choice primary, but everyone who applied on time was offered a place at a local primary this year. Using your 6 choices and applying on time is important. There is also alot of movement on waiting lists once the initial allocations are made. Southwark primary schools over the last four years have gone from 150th in the national league tables (the bottom 10) to the top 25 percent of all local authorities, outperforming both national averages and the achievements of our statistical neighbours. These results put Southwark in the top ten of the most improved boroughs in England (for both primary and secondary). Be also aware that it's a long time until secondary application time and schools can change alot in that time as a whole cohort will have passed through and also their admissions policy may be totally different in a decades time.

Renata