Schooling your children in London: the English system, Ofsted, and how to actually choose

The English system in clear terms

Forget mapping French classes one-to-one; the English school clock runs differently. Children join Reception, the first school year, in the September of the school year in which they turn 5 — so most start at age 4. Then come Years 1 to 6 (primary school, roughly CP to 6e), and Years 7 to 11 (secondary school), ending with the GCSE exams around age 16. Students who continue enter sixth form (Years 12–13) for A-levels — the rough equivalent of the bac, but with only 3–4 chosen subjects.

The curriculum is organised in key stages (KS1 to KS4) with national assessments at the end of primary (the “SATs” in Year 6) — useful to know because school performance data is published against these stages. School is compulsory from the term after a child turns 5 up to their 18th birthday in England (16 for leaving school, then education or training). The year has three terms with half-term breaks, and — a real budget item for working parents — six weeks of summer holiday, shorter than the French grandes vacances.

One cultural shift to anticipate: uniforms are near-universal, school lunches are normal (rather than a cantine municipale), and the school day typically runs about 8:45–15:30 with wraparound care (breakfast and after-school clubs) bought separately.

Types of school — and what each changes for you

Almost everything you’ll visit falls into four families:

• State schools (free): this includes classic council-maintained schools and academies / free schools, which are state-funded but run by independent trusts. For you as a parent the day-to-day difference is small; the practical difference is that academies set their own admission criteria (still applied through the same system).
• Faith schools (mostly free): state schools with a religious character — very common in London (Church of England, Catholic…). Many prioritise practising families (with attendance letters from clergy) in their admission criteria. Non-religious families can apply, but read the criteria honestly before counting on a place.
• Grammar schools (free, selective): state secondaries recruiting by the 11+ exam. Rare in inner London, concentrated in a few outer boroughs and neighbouring counties. High pressure, long preparation — see the FAQ.
• Independent (private) schools (paying): from small preps to famous public schools. London day fees commonly run £20,000–£30,000+ per child per year, and since 2025 fees carry 20% VAT. Selection is by the school’s own assessments and registration — sometimes years ahead for the famous names.

Plus the specifically French lane — the lycée français and bilingual schools — which deserves its own section below.

Ofsted: reading an inspection like an informed parent

Ofsted is the independent schools inspectorate. Every state school is inspected periodically and the reports are public on reports.ofsted.gov.uk. For years, each school carried one famous overall label — Outstanding, Good, Requires improvement, Inadequate — and that label is still how estate agents and parents talk.

Here is what changed, and it matters: the single overall grade has been abolished. Since late 2024 no school receives one overall judgement, and since 10 November 2025 inspections run on a new framework that produces a report card grading nine areas separately — safeguarding, inclusion, curriculum and teaching, achievement, attendance and behaviour, personal development and wellbeing, leadership and governance, plus early years and post-16 where they apply. Each area sits on a five-point scale: Exceptional, Strong standard, Expected standard, Needs attention, Urgent improvement. Safeguarding is the exception and stays binary, Met or Not met.

The trap this creates for you in 2026 and 2027 is specific, and worth understanding before you compare anything. A school that has not yet been reinspected under the new framework still displays its old single-word grade, with no expiry date on it. So two London schools side by side may show a 2019 “Outstanding” and a 2026 report card, and Ofsted itself says the new grades cannot be compared with the old ones. You are not reading one ranking with a gap; you are reading two different systems that happen to share a website. Check the inspection date before you read anything else.

So today’s honest reading method is:

• Check the inspection date first. A glowing label from 2016 tells you about a school that may have changed head twice since. Formerly “Outstanding” schools went uninspected for years — treat old labels as folklore.
• Read the areas, not a headline. A school can teach superbly and still be graded down on one specific area — and vice versa. The narrative text tells you more than any grade: how reading is taught, how behaviour is managed, what leadership is fixing.
• Look for the trend. Two reports a few years apart tell you if the school is improving or sliding — more predictive than any single snapshot.
• Don’t over-weight it. Ofsted inspects compliance and quality frameworks; it does not measure whether YOUR child — arriving from France, bilingual-to-be — will be happy there. That’s what visits are for.

How to choose: a method that works from France

Do it in this order, and the noise drops dramatically:

1. Shortlist neighbourhoods first (budget, commute, family life). Schools filter neighbourhoods, not the reverse — you can’t apply meaningfully without knowing where you’ll live.
2. Map the real options within reach. For each candidate neighbourhood, list the primaries within ~800 m or the secondaries within the realistic distance. The council’s website and the school-finder on GOV.UK do this well.
3. Read the data with the right metric — and know the best one is missing right now. On the official performance service, use the Year 6 (KS2) results for primaries. For secondaries the honest answer has changed: Progress 8 does not exist for the 2025 or 2026 results. Those year groups missed their KS2 tests during the pandemic, so there is no baseline to measure progress from, and the Department decided against a substitute. What you see instead is Attainment 8, the share reaching grade 4+ and 5+ in English and maths, and destinations — all of which reflect intake as much as teaching. The Progress 8 scores still on the site date from 2023 and 2024: read them as history, not as a current verdict. Progress 8 returns with the 2027 results.
4. Check last year’s “last distance offered”. Most councils publish, for each school, how far away the last admitted child lived. That single number turns “catchment anxiety” into arithmetic: if the school’s cut-off was 400 m and your flat is at 900 m, it’s not your school — however good the report.
5. Visit — or video-call. Schools run open days in the autumn; most will arrange a call or visit for an arriving international family any time. Judge what data can’t: warmth, behaviour in corridors, how they talk about children who arrive without English.
6. Then lock the address knowing which schools it realistically reaches — and only then sign the rental.

Catchment: the address decides (almost) everything

Popular myth says every school has an official “catchment zone”. Reality: for most London schools there is no fixed zone — there are oversubscription criteria, applied in order when demand exceeds places. Typically: children in care first, then siblings of current pupils, sometimes faith or staff criteria, and finally — the criterion that settles most cases — straight-line distance from home to school.

Consequences worth internalising:

• The “catchment” moves every year with demand: the last-distance-offered can shrink when a school’s reputation rises or a new development fills with families.
• Renting counts fully. You don’t need to own — your rental address is your address. But councils verify (council tax records, GP registration…) and can withdraw a place obtained with a token address.
• Siblings change the game later: once one child is in, brothers and sisters usually get priority — the hard entry is the first one.

Applying: the official calendar — and arriving mid-year

Two very different situations, two routes:

1. You arrive in time for the normal rounds. Applications go through the council where you live (in London, the shared eAdmissions portal covers the boroughs), ranking up to six schools. The two dates that matter: 31 October for secondary entry (Year 7 the following September) and 15 January for primary entry (Reception the following September). Offers land on 1 March (secondary) and 16 April (primary). Missing the deadline doesn’t exclude you, but late applications are processed after everyone else — real places get scarcer.

2. You arrive mid-year (the common case for relocating families). This is the in-year admission: you apply as soon as you have your address, through the council or sometimes directly to the school, for a start within weeks. The trade-off is honesty itself: popular schools are often full mid-year, so you may start at a school with places while sitting on waiting lists (ranked by the same distance criteria — moving close helps twice). If no place can be found, the council has a legal duty to secure one. The council must normally answer within 15 school days, so if a fortnight passes in silence, chase it.

One piece of good news that reverses the usual advice, and one warning that comes with it. Inner London is emptying of school-age children: roughly ninety schools closed or merged between 2019 and 2025, and boroughs such as Hackney now sit on more than twenty per cent vacant reception places against a healthy five. So the received wisdom that “you will never get a place in London mid-year” is increasingly wrong at primary level — in-year places are more findable than they were, and pressure is genuinely easing. The warning is the other side of the same coin: a school with many empty seats is a school a borough may consult on closing or merging within a couple of years. Before you commit, search your borough’s school organisation or statutory consultations pages for the school’s name. It takes five minutes and it is not something an Ofsted report will ever tell you.

The French and bilingual options in London

London has one of the densest French educational offers outside France:

• The AEFE network — several French-curriculum schools, from the historic Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle (South Kensington, with primary annexes) to the Collège Français Bilingue de Londres (Kentish Town) and the Lycée International de Londres Winston Churchill (Wembley). French programme, bac at the end, continuity guaranteed if you return to France. Fees are typically in the £8,000–£20,000 range per year depending on school and level — significantly below British independents — and the strong ones carry waiting lists, so apply as early as your plans firm up. One VAT detail worth planning around: nursery and petite section are exempt because they sit below compulsory school age, so VAT only bites from moyenne section or Reception upwards. Entering a year earlier can cost materially less than the headline suggests. (Note too that École Jeannine Manuel London now trades as Jeannine Manuel School — same school, new name and web address.)
• Bilingual schools — a handful of private bilingual primaries, and one famous outlier: l’École de Wix in Clapham, a state (free) French-English bilingual stream run jointly with the Lycée — tiny, oversubscribed, address-driven like everything else.
• Staying French on the side — many families choose an English state school for immersion and keep written French alive with CNED at home or a Saturday FLAM association. This combination (free + bilingual child) is the quiet favourite of long-term movers.

How to decide the lane: if your stay is 2–3 years then back to France, French curriculum continuity has real value. If your horizon is open-ended, an English school converts your children into genuine bilinguals within a year or two — and costs nothing.

What it really costs

• State school: tuition-free, but budget the real extras — uniform, school lunches (free in Reception–Year 2 nationally, and check current borough/London schemes beyond that), trips, and above all wraparound care if you both work: breakfast + after-school clubs commonly add a few hundred pounds per month per child. Six-week summer holidays mean holiday camps too.
• French AEFE schools: roughly £8,000–£20,000/year per child depending on school and level, plus registration fees. French government bourses scolaires exist for eligible French families — worth checking with the consulate.
• British independents: commonly £20,000–£30,000+/year per child for London day schools, plus 20% VAT since January 2025 — a two-child private plan is now a £50,000–£70,000 after-tax line. Registration often 1–2 years ahead. Two nuances worth knowing: most day schools absorbed part of the shock by trimming their pre-VAT fee, so the increase parents actually paid landed nearer 15% than 20%; and the tax is still being litigated — after the Court of Appeal dismissed a challenge in February 2026, the Supreme Court hears the case on 1 and 2 December 2026. Nothing is suspended meanwhile, and no school will quote you a fee that assumes the tax disappears.
• Uniform, from September 2026: schools may now require at most three branded items in total across uniform and PE kit, with a fourth allowed only if it is a tie. Branded bags and shoes count towards the limit. If a school’s list still reads longer than that, ask — it cuts a real line off your arrival budget.
• Under-3s: a separate subject with its own shock value — full-time London nurseries commonly run £1,500–£2,000 per month, softened by the expanding funded-hours schemes for working parents. Factor it into the salary conversation, not as an afterthought.

Your plan — neighbourhood and school as one decision

The method in one line: shortlist neighbourhoods → map real school options and last-distances → read the recent Ofsted areas and the attainment data → visit → then sign the lease. It’s exactly the decision Veia’s neighbourhood engine is built for — schools weighed against rent, commute and family life for YOUR household — and your roadmap then dates each admission step, per child, in the right route (normal round or in-year).