Starting Primary School in 2016: top London state school catchment areas

Are you applying for primary school places to start Reception in September 2016? At many oversubscribed London state primary schools, catchment areas have been shrinking in recent years, although there is some relief in select councils. In Richmond, the newly opened Thomson House free school and the expansion of Sheen Mount School have eased the pressure. Other parts of London were not so lucky. Certainly in Kensington and Fulham getting into an outstanding state primary school is a big challenge! The popular strategy of renting next to your desired school becomes a challenge with catchment areas of 0.05 miles, as in the case of Fox Primary School!

If you have subscribed to my newsletter, you will have access to the most recent version of the free London Schools Guide (see top right for sign-up form), which contains links to all Starting Primary School Admissions Booklets of the London boroughs which list catchment areas and admissions criteria for all state primary schools. If you are still undecided on where in London you want to live when you apply or you are considering where to move in London, here is a little overview of admissions criteria for the top London state primary schools that will give you a good idea. The common theme is probably that you need to be an avid church goer if you want to get into one of the sought after voluntary aided schools, or you need to live within 200-300 meters of your chosen community primary, if not less. This rule seems to apply in most areas. But let’s get started with the overview of catchment areas:

Camden
Outstanding state primary schools in Camden are massively oversubscribed. The new free school Abacus Primary in Belsize Park will provide some relief, but it may not be enough. Like Barnet, Camden is yet to publish the 2016 brochure, so we will take the stats from the 2015 for now and update the post as soon as the new information is published. The popular Christopher Hatton Primary near Holborn had a catchment area of 0.3 miles, a welcome increase from the 0.03 miles the year before! Eleanor Palmer Primary’s catchment area, often discussed in the press, was still a tiny 0.1 miles! Fleet Primary at 0.27 miles and Torriano Infants at 0.18 miles have also shrunk, so overall catchment areas in Camden are very small across the board, be prepared!

Kensington and Chelsea
Back in Central London, there is no respite for people hoping to get into an outstanding state primary school. Bousfield Primary School could only extend offers to families living within 0.19 miles from the school! It was even tougher to get into Fox Primary, with the furthest pupil admitted living 0.057 miles from the school within the priority area (if you think it is impossible even to live so close to a school, I even know a lucky family who lives within this distance of Fox Primary! According to the statistics, 22 places were allocated within this distance!). Thomas Jones Primary near Ladbroke Grove is just mildly better with the furthest distance at 0.0995 of a mile from the school. At the highly successful Oratory RC Primary School in Chelsea, only Baptised Catholic children from practising Catholic families whose families attended Mass regularly and who are resident within the Oratory Parish were able to gain a place. What a shame, I love the Oratory RC uniform – the first time I saw pupils from the school on the streets of Chelsea and South Kensington I thought “I wonder which fancy prep school that is!”. Only the Garden House School comes close in terms of style! And at the increasingly popular Colville Primary School, the catchment area has shrunk to 0.45 miles, still not as impossible as others, but likely to shrink further in coming years, following its “outstanding” Ofsted rating and strong test results.

Hammersmith and Fulham

The catchment area of the popular All Saints Church of England primary school luckily widened a bit this year, with open places allocated up to a distance of 0.31 of a mile (vs 0.09 mile in 2014). The popular bilingual French Lycee programme at L’ecole Marie d’Orliac was heavily oversubscribed again, but smartly switched to an admission system via lottery to prevent parents from moving into Clancarty Road to gain a place. The newly opened West London Free School Primary in Hammersmith had a catchment area of 0.49 miles in its third year. New King’s Primary, which has been undersubscribed for many years, has converted into an academy under the lead of Thomas’s London Day Schools, and has now become oversubscribed, with only families living within 0.76 of a mile allocated a place.

Islington
Further East, catchment areas are no wider, with the most popular schools’ catchment areas in Islington shrinking slightly at most schools compared to the year before:
Canonbury 0.38 of a mile (not so bad!)
Grafton 0.21 of a mile
Thornhill 0.34 of a mile
William Tyndale 0.24 of a mile
Yerbury Primary School 0.27 of a mile (slightly better than in 2014)
Keep in mind please that these distances just show you retrospectively what the cut-off distance for admission was in 2015, they are a good indicator but distances do vary from year to year depending on the number of siblings, birth rates, and changes to class sizes or competing schools. There is no guarantee you will gain admission if you live closer than the distances shown!

Westminster
In Westminster Council, the King Solomon Academy (one of the few state primary school in London I’ve found so far using the Singapore Maths curriculum – where are the others??) was able to offer places to parents living in a radius of up to 0.18 of a mile from the school only, since there were 46 (out of 60) siblings this year! Hampden Gurney CE Primary School, one of the the top performing schools by test results, only accepted applicants who are avid and practicing members of the Church of England, as always.

Lewisham
Grinling Gibbons is London’s top performing state primary school if you look at SATS results. Its catchment area in 2015 was a tiny 217 metres.

Bromley
Burnt Ash Primary in Bromley with a last offer distance of 1.24 miles looks like a piece of cake in comparison, as does Clare House with 0.32 miles. Offer distance at the popular Pickhurst Infant Academy helpfully increased to 1.3 miles (up from 0.47 of a mile), while a tough one to get into in 2015 was the Valley Primary with an offer distance of 0.27 miles!

Haringey
Further up North in Muswell Hill and Crouch End, an area known for many outstanding state primary schools, catchment areas remained fairly constant, some shrank and some got wider. Here are last distances offered for Muswell Hill’s most popular state primary schools:

Coldfall 0.35  (0.38 in 2014)
Coleridge 0.34 (0.3211 in 2014)
Muswell Hill 0.30 (0.2374 in 2014)
Rhodes Avenue 0.33 (0.3557 in 2014)
Tetherdown 0.45 (0.3565 in 2014)

Barnet
The council of Barnet is still updating final information for the 2016 brochure. Here are the stats for the previous year: In the popular Hampstead Garden Suburb, Brookland Infant School with 90 Reception places had a catchment area of 0.30 and the equally outstanding Garden Suburb Infant School a catchment area of 0.83, so at least you know it is not absolutely impossible to get a place at a top state school near Golders Green. Martin Primary, another school close to East Finchley tube station had a catchment area of 0.98 miles. The high performing Courtland Primary near Mill Hill had a tiny catchment of 0.19 only.

Harrow
Newton Farm Junior School made negative headlines with a scandal about potential test result manipulation, but it still had a tiny catchment area of  0.267 miles only. High performing Whitchurch Junior School looks better with a cut-off distance of 0.68 miles, as does Cannon Lane Primary School at 0.69 miles.

Richmond
Not only does Richmond Borough have many outstanding primary schools with the widest catchment areas, they also publish extremely helpful maps of successful and unsuccessful applications for each oversubscribed school called primary school allocation maps. The following table gives the ‘cut-off’ distance from home to school of the last child offered a place for the most popular non-faith Richmond Borough community primary schools. If you look at the cut-off distances below, you will understand while I usually advise newcomers to London to move to Richmond if they want less stress about state school admissions. Keep in mind that Richmond is big, though, so 500 metres can be less than you think.

School                  Distance in metres
Barnes Primary  232
East Sheen Primary  802 – hooray
Marshgate Primary 778
Sheen Mount Primary 734
Thomson House 551
The Vineyard Primary 990

Wandsworth
Belleville Primary School – applicants living up to a distance of 474 metres.
Brandlehow Primary School – this is another hidden gem of an outstanding, high performing school with a cut-off distance of 556 metres.
Honeywell Infant School – is too well-known unfortunately, only applicants living up to a distance of 189 metres got lucky
Wix School – Bilingual class of the Wix Primary School offered in cooperation with the French Lycee – 7 siblings admitted, others up to 177 metres – this is a big improvement from ZERO in 2014!

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