Any tips about schools and where to live?Moving in June

Hello VonReybyton

To increase visibility on your post, please note that a new thread has been created from the latter on the England Forum.

Regards
Kenjee
Expat.com Team

First of all, consider that in the UK there is a serious problem with young people and alcohol, with some frightening statistics. My first worry, in your shoes, would be the people mixing with the teenager girl, and in second place with the little one. The good news is that all the schools in the UK are evaluated periodically by OFSTED, the results are published and you can look up each school here:
http://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/ (you can search by distance from your home postcode). I crossed that search with google maps (which tells you where are the schools) and zoopla.com (website to find a house to rent/buy), and infos from the council website. The bad news is that you'll see schools classified as Inadequate, that anyway are left open and working, hence the kids living  in the catching area of that school will be sent to that school... which for me is so absurd! So, unless you decide for a religious or a private school, the kids will be sent to the catching area school. This is why it's important to choose a good area with good schools. In general, religious schools are better than public/community schools, and the best ones are the catholic ones (better than the Church of England ones): the difference is that huge that many people baptise their kids only because this way they will have more chances to be accepted into catholic schools (since catholic schools give priority to baptised kids in their waiting lists): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed … hools.html
All the kids between 3 and 4 yo have 18 hours per week free in a nursery (paid by the Council); from the next term after their 4th birthday they're allowed to Reception classes (which are part of a Primary School) if you want to send them, and from the next term after their 5th birthday they start school (compulsory, unless you opt for home schooling). Most working parents send their kids to Reception because paying fees for the extra hours in a nursery it's quite expensive.
For good areas to find a home, there was a website, upmystreet, where you could have lots of details of the kind of people living in the area delimited by a postcode, but it's closed now. I've tried findahood.com/locations but it's a lot less detailed. If you want my suggestion, get the house in a nice area and close to good schools, and double check with the school is there are places available before signing for the house. Use the council website to check statistics about the different neighborhoods, some will have maps too!
I hope this helps a bit, good luck!

Hi,
we recently moved to the UK with a 14 year old girl,who is now very happy (after 5 months) - we live in Bath and the children go to a private (paying) school.  We first chose the area and the school that we thought would be ideal for us to live in - and once we had confirmation from the school that our children had a place in the school, we started looking for houses.  You can always find short stay accommodation on airbnb - which gives you the time to find something more permanent.
We would not consider the state schools - they cannot guarantee you a place for the children before you arrive, and that creates loads of stress.
If you can afford it, consider the international schools - they offer the International Baccalaureate Diploma, as well as the US High School Diploma, SATs and APs alongside the typical English A-levels, and they have amazing facilities and links with European schools.