moving to thanet / canterbury
Posted: Tue May 29, 2012 8:51 pm
Hi everyone,
in a nutshell i live in hertfordshire but dream of a life by the sea, and ideally want to move my family there next summer when my eldest finishes y6. i'd like my DDs to go to a GS as i think the higher pace of work would suit them, and to be cheekily honest i don't want to pay for a selective private school locally!
my husband works in london but thanks to the hi-speed train he would now consider commuting from canterbury or broadstairs 3 days a week, with 1 night spent in london, 1 day working from home. so i just need to find the right school along the train line to convince him to move to the sea!!
i plan to register for the kent test in june as an OOC applicant. my Y5 DD is level 5c in numeracy and level 4b in literacy (i'm mighty thankful that the kent test doesn't have a marked literacy paper!) so i'm hoping that her maths will be good enough to get her a pass, with a few practice papers under her belt between now and then. she has done two sets of papers so far, and passed all but one of the NVR ones where she was 5% short. does anyone think i should get a tutor for a couple of months, or are we looking okay? my Y3 DD is g&t for both subjects, so i reckon she should pass the 11+ without too much stress on her shoulders.
my DDs ideally want to go to a mixed school. we visited the chatham & clarendon in march but unfortunately none of us liked it. SO disappointing!!! however it's hard to look past the shabby portacabins, cramped corridors, lack of sports hall etc, though they are hoping to do more building/renovations work again this summer... and what they did last summer was truly impressive, so i haven't ruled it out yet. in fact i have booked to go for visits at c&c, dane court and barton court at the end of june. has anyone out there got views on these three? or whether there is another school we should also be looking at? it's so hard not having the word on the street and just relying on school websites. am particularly concerned about the urban campus aspect of c&c - doesn't this waste a lot of time between lessons getting between buildings?
also, can anyone help as to which order of schools i should fill out the form in october as an OOC? i get the impression that c&c is VERY likely to have spare places... so maybe i'm okay putting them last place if they aren't my favourite? dane court is always oversubscribed so would need to be resident in thanet THIS summer for them, otherwise only very slim chance on appeal. barton court had 19 spare places as of 1st march this year, but was oversubscribed previous years...why is that?? also, wondering whether to put my local herts non-selective school as 1st place (it's way oversubscribed) as a fallback option if we decide to stay in herts after all. but i guess that would jeopordise our chance of getting a place at barton court or dane court!
it's all very confusing, but i'm desperate to make the dream happen!!
in a nutshell i live in hertfordshire but dream of a life by the sea, and ideally want to move my family there next summer when my eldest finishes y6. i'd like my DDs to go to a GS as i think the higher pace of work would suit them, and to be cheekily honest i don't want to pay for a selective private school locally!
my husband works in london but thanks to the hi-speed train he would now consider commuting from canterbury or broadstairs 3 days a week, with 1 night spent in london, 1 day working from home. so i just need to find the right school along the train line to convince him to move to the sea!!
i plan to register for the kent test in june as an OOC applicant. my Y5 DD is level 5c in numeracy and level 4b in literacy (i'm mighty thankful that the kent test doesn't have a marked literacy paper!) so i'm hoping that her maths will be good enough to get her a pass, with a few practice papers under her belt between now and then. she has done two sets of papers so far, and passed all but one of the NVR ones where she was 5% short. does anyone think i should get a tutor for a couple of months, or are we looking okay? my Y3 DD is g&t for both subjects, so i reckon she should pass the 11+ without too much stress on her shoulders.
my DDs ideally want to go to a mixed school. we visited the chatham & clarendon in march but unfortunately none of us liked it. SO disappointing!!! however it's hard to look past the shabby portacabins, cramped corridors, lack of sports hall etc, though they are hoping to do more building/renovations work again this summer... and what they did last summer was truly impressive, so i haven't ruled it out yet. in fact i have booked to go for visits at c&c, dane court and barton court at the end of june. has anyone out there got views on these three? or whether there is another school we should also be looking at? it's so hard not having the word on the street and just relying on school websites. am particularly concerned about the urban campus aspect of c&c - doesn't this waste a lot of time between lessons getting between buildings?
also, can anyone help as to which order of schools i should fill out the form in october as an OOC? i get the impression that c&c is VERY likely to have spare places... so maybe i'm okay putting them last place if they aren't my favourite? dane court is always oversubscribed so would need to be resident in thanet THIS summer for them, otherwise only very slim chance on appeal. barton court had 19 spare places as of 1st march this year, but was oversubscribed previous years...why is that?? also, wondering whether to put my local herts non-selective school as 1st place (it's way oversubscribed) as a fallback option if we decide to stay in herts after all. but i guess that would jeopordise our chance of getting a place at barton court or dane court!
it's all very confusing, but i'm desperate to make the dream happen!!