dipanwita

HI

Any suggestion where to buy a home (2 bedroom) near London so that I can send my daughter to the Top IB schools or Secondary school .Sorry if the terms are not correct. I am from US and I would like to use it as a vaction home until she is ready to be there.Please suggest .I don't need city, pub only good schools and the usual family stuff.

Also if you can suggest the name of the good schools that would be appreciated too.

If you know the process of where to start .

Alec

If you and your daughter are both US citizens, she cannot attend a state school unless she gets a dependant visa and the parent gets a work visa. She can attend a fee-paying private school and there is a special child student visa for it. This of course doesn't apply if she has a UK or EU citizenship.

Also it's generally not advised to buy a property in the current depressed market. Except in the most highly sought after and expensive area in Central London, house price is falling everywhere and is set to continue for a good few years yet, unless you can snap one up below market price in an auction, say.

dipanwita

I have the citizenship from India but my daughter is a US citizen by birth.

Any idea in the top schools there about the place.

Alec

That doesn't help. UK has been tightening the visa rules for non-EU citizens and there are huge barriers to what you are proposing to do.
Ther are a lot of good schools but you can only send your daughter to private, fee-paying schools, where the fees are up to £30,000 a year for boarding and £18,000 for day pupils. You are unlikely to find London private schools charging less than £10,000 a year, and standards vary.

nona1

I'm assuming you have plenty of money to buy a house/pay private school fees.

But that's not your issue. It's going to be hard for you to move here with your daughter. Visas are the primary problem, you are jumping the gun a bit worrying about which school,when you may not be able to come here at all.

However, our boarding schools are full of pupils from overseas, here without their families. If the whole point of this is for your daughter to have a UK education, this might be the easiest way.

Or were you looking for a state (free) school place? I don't think that children without certain visas are excluded from schooling as suggested, but life as an illegal immigrant isn't fun.

Here is a useful basic guide to UK schooling http://www.afsi.org.uk/images/storie...ents-final.pdf including information on OFSTED reports etc that will help you select your 'best' school. (The guide is wrong in saying all children must go to school, all children must be educated, but home education is perfectly legal. But the rest of it looks pretty sound).

On selecting 'the best', well, it's hard for us to say. It depends how you classify 'best' and what your requirements are. Some parents are looking just at academic achievement, others are looking for other things as well. A good state school will be better than a poor private school. Facilities may be better in one school, but the teachers better in another.


What I will say is that getting places in the good London state schools is a cutthroat business (many London state schools are not so great). Houses in the 'catchment area' go for a premium price, demand outstrips the number of places, people do all sorts of dubious things to get their kids in such as lying about addresses and so on. Local estate agents can be a good source of info about local schools and where you need to live to get into the best ones.

Dukey1

Real estate prices in London are falling? You mean to less than zillions of Pounds?

nona1

Just had a thought. You asked for IB schools. Does this mean you are looking for the International Baccalaureate specifically? It's not the standard system in the UK, although there are schools that offer it (both state and private), so I would have thought if that is most important to you then research which schools are part of that program as it instantly cuts down your choices to a small number. Then research those individual schools.

Grammar schools are another option. they are state schools but have quite hard entry exams to get in - the 11+ - and only take top performers. They generally have excellent academic results.

Academic results aren't everything though. Finding a school that's the right fit for the child is more important. A friend took one of her sons out of a grammar school and put him in a much more ordinary school, where he went from being unhappy and feeling restricted, to absolutely thriving and having the chance to concentrate much more on his own interests. He's now halfway through a highly techy degree.

Oh yes, a lot of state schools now have started specialising in certain areas, for example science or technology or sport. They still cover the full curriculum but tend to have more advanced facilities/teaching in their specialisms.

sofarsogood

try this for a list of fee paying IB schools

http://www.best-schools.co.uk/league...b-schools.aspx

BKP

There are 198 schools in Great Britain that offer the IB Diploma program.

http://www.ibo.org/country/GB/index.cfm

Are you hoping to buy a house in catchment so that your child could then attend the local free state school? As others mentioned above, it takes more than just owning a property to be able to attend school.

I believe (but obviously could be wrong) that most IB schools are private, fee-paying schools. Many are boarding schools as well. Is that an option?

Heimdall

The top independent A Level schools:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education...lts-table.html

Alec

For an American child to attend a state (maintained) school, she needs to be living with her family (parents) who are in UK long-term, such as family migration (marriage to a UK citizen etc), work on points-based system or otherwise exempt (e.g. humanitarian protection, diplomatic posting, armed forces). To attend a private school, she needs a child student visa. So unless her parent(s) can obtain a visa in one of above categories, private education is the only way.

sassy_cat

I recommend Kings College in Wimbledon. They do accept girls aged 16 plus.

Bear in mind that the top schools (state and private) usually have entrance exams. So just living in the catchment area (and having the money for fees) doesn't guarantee you a place.

nytraveler

I would think your first step is to

1) sort out the visa issue

2) determine the entrance requirements for these schools (depending on where your daughter has been going to school she might not have taken the necessary courses - or be ready to take an exam as required for entrance)

Not sure if you are in the US - but my understanding is that the curriculum is very different (and that students who are going to sit certain exams know some required work in advance - not true at all in the US).

flanneruk

The "best" IB and A level results come from a small number of schools that recruit in a fiercely meritocratic way - which requires a proper primary education to do well in.

I live in a microtown with a substantial number of neighbours who've moved here to be able to send their children to Britain's best performing schools whike living at home.

Apart from the ability topay the fees, schools like Wesrminster or St Paul's in London, or Magdalen College, Oxford High or Wycombe Abbey in the Thames Valley require pupils to have had outstanding education for the previous five years and to have outperformed their competitors in the enrance process.

In practice, very very few day pupils in these schools really come from abroad, unless the've been through an elite British (or ocasionally Singaporean) primary-level education for most of their life before applying.

It's easy to pay for an education at a third-rate boarding school. Entry to the "best" schools is determined only, assuming you can afford the fess, by your child's performance in the selection system. Doing well needs a great deal more than buying a house in the right place.

nytraveler

Sorry - didn't mean to imply that these exams were easiser since topics were known in advance. My understanding is that since they are known - there is a much greater level of knowledge required on those topics - and the work expected would likely be university level work in the US.

annhig

I found this article in the Guardian from 2 years ago that says that there were [then] 147 state schools offering it, but I can't find any list of them. i know that Sevenoaks School offers the IB and it fits the bill of being a good school near london. however, it's private, not state.

i have an interest in this as our DD did the IB at a state school, but it's in Cornwall. [Truro College].

gertie3751

I used to teach at a state school in Essex that does IB. My kids went there and did very well.
This is 20 years ago and things may have changed, but if you lived in the catchment area (whether as a house owner or renter) your kids had the right to attend this school. There were no entrance exams, neither did you have to attend a certain primary school. If you lived outside the catchment area you had to apply as someone from outside and have an interview, but it was based on 'international experience' rather than money, high qualifications or where you were coming from.

PatrickLondon

But gertie, immigration rules have changed in all sorts of ways (the immigration authorities now take it upon themselves to rule how universities are to monitor their students' attendance, progress and assessment of English capabilities, for example), so it may be very difficult to get someone from overseas into a state school if that's their sole purpose in coming to Britain.

Alec

Immigration rules regarding a non-EEA child attending a state school is as I have described in my latest post. Parents need a long-stay visa, not visitor status.