Which are the best local schools?

Many of us will be sending our children back to school next week, but for parents of children who are due to start a new school in September 2011, now is also the time to start thinking ahead about which schools to apply to.

Local schools will be holding open days and evenings over the coming weeks and applications for some school places should be submitted by the end of October.  From September, it will be possible to apply online on Bristol City Council’s website.

Choosing and applying for primary schools can be a fraught process.  Ideally, you would be assured that your child will get a first class education at your local primary school, whichever one that happens to be.   

Despite repeated government promises on that score, however, in reality, many parents, dissatisfied with their local primary, will be trying to get their children into ‘better’ schools further away. We’ve all heard the stories of parents who are prepared to move house or lie about their address, or suddenly take up a certain religion, just to get their children into a good school.

For families living in the greater Bedminster area, local primaries include: Cheddar Grove Primary School; South Street School and Compass Point; Luckwell Primary School; Parson Street Primary School; Southville Primary; Holy Cross RC School; Victoria Park Primary School and St Mary Redcliffe Church of England Primary School.

As you read that list, you may find yourself mentally checking them off something like this: “Great school; ok; not bad; not that one!”  

But the reputation of many of these schools rests as much on hearsay as anything else and so it’s well worth checking their performance data (available here on BedminsterPeople) and Ofsted reports to see if their reputation is deserved.

You might be surprised at the actual performance of a school, which could be much better or worse than local wisdom would suggest, and will vary over the years.  For example, St Mary Redcliffe Primary school, which has long been spoken highly of, is currently in special measures following its latest Ofsted inspection.

Having negotiated the nightmare of getting your children into primary school, it seems to be no time at all before you have to start thinking about secondary schools and the whole process starts over again.

For many years, there has been a trend for Bristol parents to send their children outside the city boundaries for their secondary education; in recent years, Bristol City Council has spent a lot of time and money trying to reverse that trend.

The local state secondary schools are Bedminster Down and Ashton Park; St Mary Redcliffe and Temple is a voluntary aided Church of England school and as such exercises a tight selection policy on a points basis.  

Following the funding that has been poured into Ashton Park, it is increasingly seen as a desirable choice of secondary school, although it helps to live on the right side of the St John’s Lane divide if you wish to send your child there.

And Bedminster Down, a technology specialist school, achieved an impressive improvement in its GCSE results this year, with 62 per cent of its students getting five or more GCSEs at grades A-C or their equivalent.

A number of local families opt to send their children to schools in North Somerset, such as Nailsea, Backwell and St Katherine’s, traditionally seen as being better than Bristol’s state schools, but the distance and travel involved mean a level of commitment that will need careful consideration.  

There is a dedicated bus service to St Katherine’s, and local children attending the secondary schools in Nailsea and Backwell can catch trains from Bedminster, but travel arrangements for after-school clubs and socialising with school friends might be more difficult to organise!