Twickenham Tops London's Property Premium for Choice Schools

12.44.05pm UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 31st May 2006

Twickenham enjoys the dubious distinction of being the area of London where house buyers pay the highest premiums on house prices to be within the catchment area of the school of their choice. Waldegrave commands a premium of 57% on a 3-bed house, close to Drayton Manor in Ealing, far ahead of any other London secondary, while Orleans Infants commands a premium of 47%.

Vincent Cable, MP, said that "these figures are reflected in the steady procession of disappointed parents at my advice surgery who can't get their off spring into Waldegrave, in particular. There is clearly a strong wish by many parents for a single sex school. Unfortunately there is no obvious easy solution - if the school were to chose children rather than have them chosen by distance, the school would be even more selective and if there were a lottery for places we would be encouraging a massive can school run from every corner of the borough. The only answer is to make the other secondaries, locally, more popular, but this is difficult when they are penalised by a central government funding formula for schools which treats this borough very meanly and makes no distinction between the very popular schools and those that are struggling."