Sad to see it's only achieved a 'satisfactory' rating this time round. (A grade 3 from grades 1 - 4.)

I've only got reception to go on, but think it deserves better.

Dom - you've only received a 'satisfactory' rating? That's a shame.

Satisfactory'll do!

St Aiden's has quite a small catchment area (.205 miles ) so you may not get a choice. Here's a document with all the catchments etc

Have solicited some opinion about St Aidans from someone I know whose child goes there...here's what she says:

St Aidans I believe is technically a church school, but also a local authority state school (and is inspected as both)- it has this Voluntary Controlled Status (of which i think it is the only one in London to have!)...essentially the status comes from some of the land it is built on being church land. It has I think 1 or 2 Governors from the church next door. It follows the state religious curriculum, and is not overly religious, certainly not to the extent of a fully fledged church school - they celebrate all the different religions and their celebrations...but do do quite a bit at the church next door (e.g Easter Service, Christmas carols etc). It is a great school, and by virtue of the fact it only has one class per year (30 kids) it has a tiny catchment area, I think it was 0.2km this year.

She's joined the forum too, so may have more to add!

So basically you don't have to have anything to do with churches to get into St Aidan's - all you need to do is live within spitting distance which is pretty tricky as it is always oversubscribed.

SG Primary is never oversubscribed because it is bigger and, dare I say, not as good.

The whole thing is a bit bonkers really. I might set up an atheist school where the parents have to prove they are committed atheists to send their kids there just to counter the sheer weight of Catholic and CofE schools with similar admissions policies.

@Katiejane - isn't much of the problem with SG Primary that many of the children don't speak English when they start?

@ geoff - I would expect that to be reflected in the test results and their value added score (which, I believe, takes account of the ability of the cohort when they start school), but not through the Ofsted report which assesses teaching.

SG school's Key Stage 2 test results are pretty good.

Hear hear to atheist schools! Like many, I have a bit of an issue with faith schools and their admission policies.

Heard in the playground that apparently the school the Ofsted rules say it can’t get higher than a 3 because of it’s financial situation. It has a deficit of £80K which costs it £15 k to service annually. This is a hang over from quite a few years ago and the current team there (Head, Governors) were not around when it happened. If any one wants to read the report go here http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/portal/site/Internet/menuitem.1c8478149b4a6342502b011069f034a0/?event=searchByAuthority&previous=providerCategoryName@Nursery%20and%20primary%20education|event@searchByDateAndRegion|regionID@8|currentPage@1|providerCategoryID@4096|sortOrder@1|maxResultPerPage@10&currentPage=1&authorityID=309


It also is a bit undersubscribed so looses out of some funding as it comes with the Child.

I have my boys at the school and found it to be much much better than I thought it would be ! The first one went to the pre school at St Aidans i.e. half a day for a year before reception. It was okay but he did seem to know more about Christianity than I do! Number two is in the new nursery that is attached to the school which is very good.

The is anew set of Governors and the Friends Group is pretty active so get involved as that is the best way of getting improvements for all the kids !

Although St Aidans does do a great Fireworks display at Guy Fawkes !

Maybe if we had a cake sale and sold brownies for £15 a pop...

So how many of you have kids there? Katiejane and dominic do - anyone else?

We are thinking about the nursery there for ours.

Well, about half way down.