Do your homework: The best value areas near to the UK’s top-performing schools
THERE are many factors that come into play when trying to find the perfect house, and location is always one of them – not least when it comes to school catchment areas.
But sometimes the premium you pay to get near a school might not be worth it – perhaps the school doesn’t really perform as well as you think it does, or maybe the cost of living that bit closer to it is substantially higher than the local average.
So how can you work out where to get the most bang for your buck when trying to find the best value property for your children’s education? City A.M. crunched the Land Registry’s figures for houses bought so far this year and averaged it across postcode districts to find the average cost of a property within the catchment radius of every school in the country.
One chart shows best value schools, which are those where 80 per cent of pupils get five or more A-Cs and the cost of the house is less than the average for that local authority.
This excludes selective schools, including fee-paying and grammars, which can distort the data. Independent schools do not list their selection procedures with the Department for Education, so they are also omitted.