We start here a series of articles on primary schools in the Clapham Junction area, to run over the summer.
We count 57 state primary schools in Wandsworth. There are three different types of schools listed:
- Community schools (C), where Wandsworth Council is responsible for the arrangements for admitting children.
- Foundation schools (F), where the school governors are responsible for admitting children.
- Voluntary aided schools (V), where the school governors are responsible for admitting children. There are nine Church of England schools, nine Catholic schools and one Muslim school.
The council funds and maintains all three types of school in broadly the same way.
In the area of Northcote/Shaftesbury wards we consider 10 primary schools: the two very popular and excellent Honeywell and Belleville Primary School in Northcote ward, Wix Primary School, Shaftesbury Park Primary School and John Burns Primary School in Shaftesbury. Close to those wards you have also in the East side High View (Plough road) and in the very South, Alderbrook. The rest of the schools are faith schools with special rules for admission (Catholic school or Church of England).
All the successful schools are highly requested. According to the Timesonline this June, “a house in the catchment area of Honeywell or Belleville primary schools is the holy grail of every parent who can’t stretch to Thomas’s or Broomwood Hall prep schools”.
It can also explain why a house in between the commons is worth 50% more than elsewhere in the area.
Not surprising, the popular schools of Belleville and Honeywell are over-subscribed and have applied small catchments zones (living distance from the school).
(Source: chooseprimaryschool2010.pdf)
* Wix Primary school shares its premises with the Ecole de Wix, a school maintained by the French Government (thus with fees and specific criteria in term of nationality).
Wix provides a bilingual class with 28 pupils, split 14/14 between the two premises.
Wix English school has a Reception class of up to 30 pupils.
Catchment zone is indicated for the successful bilingual, and then for the English school.
In order to visualise the situation, we put them on a map. Belleville and Honeywell, the two schools at the top of the league, have their catchments zone represented in light purple. We added the location of Belleville extension in the Vines’ site:
Primary school inspection reports and plans for Wandsworth are available on the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) web site.
The league table for primary schools is available at the DCSF website.
When considering the 5 schools around (we drop faith schools) around Forthbridge road, we get the following data:
You can visualise 2 excellent schools for Northcote Ward in 2009, with 3 average (although John Burns is performing much better than Wandsworth average) schools for Shaftesbury.
Next week: The need to extend Belleville school
