Primary School???

My family and I are moving from CA to London very soon. I have a little girl who will be turning 5 in September, which means she should be starting school this fall. Does anyone have any thoughts on public vs. private schools? Are the public schools (US public) schools good? Any advice on good schools to go to in Central London. This all happened VERY suddenly (we found out today that we are probably moving in the next 6-8 weeks).


Thanks

Ofsted is the ratings agency in the http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxcare_providers/list]UK [url]http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/oxcare_providers/list[/url] So you can check the schools in the area of your cachement yourself - obviously nice to have personal information - but this is a good start. If you know your post code you can find out about the primary schools in your area specifically.

Good Luck!

It depends on the area (not sure how central London measures up - it will depend on which parts of central London you're looking at), but state schools aren't necessarily much worse than private (in the UK, public = private, so I tend to use state vs. private instead of public vs. private so it doesn't confuse anyone ). I attended state primary and secondary schools and both schools were ranked top of the county for performance and exam results. We looked into sending me to private school in tBristol (for secondary school), but decided it wasn't worth the hassle of entrance exams, high fees and commuting 30 miles per day when there was a perfectly good state school 3 miles away. I ended up finishing school with higher exam results than my friends who went to private schools and I went on to get two masters degrees at university.

much depends upon where you live.  There are some excellent state primary schools but beware they are very difficult to get into as they are over subscribed.  If you are being transferred then I would recommend getting the company to pay school fees for a private British school or one of the international schools in the greater London area.  My sons go to a private school and although it is a drain on finances we have never once thought it was the wrong decision or a waste of money.