eurotramp

Yeah right...you telling me. I have seen south Oxhey lovely...
I gave up looking at houses, we will wait and see, renting is not the end of the world. I like some areas of Rickmansworth, Oxhey Hall and some parts around north Ruislip but all are to expensive. We dont want to move to far away from Haydon school aswel, we had a bloody hard time to get our daughter on it..
Because we only moved here a couple of month ago, all secondary schools were full with waiting list for year 7...the only school left was northwood school and that great school in harefield.
She was on waiting list for other schools, place 39 for Haydon....they are the best school around apart from the private ones.
The admission officer put our case forward at a governors meeting and they gave her place Hubby was 12 years in the army and they thought that it was not our fault that we were outside the country for so long.... plus she is a top student..I'm sure that helped

Sorry I talk to much

AtlantaJohn

No its very interesting. I hear the same thing from all my friends.

I went to Watford Grammar School and these days pretty much everyone I went to school with has moved out of the area and a lot moved abroad. No one can get their kids into the school (WGS) any more unless they live on Cassioberry estate so most have to either pay for private or move. I actually think the area is very similar to the US these days. You have to be rich and pay for schools, dentists etc or poor/lazy and get everything for free. Otherwise the facilites for the average working person family (60-100 a year) have deterioated big time.

As a matter of interest if you compare a Motesorri school for example I think its cheaper in the US these days?

eurotramp

Oh dear..you think that 60-100k is average? Thats scary...Watford Grammar School told me "no chance in hell" to get my daughter in..same with Rickmansworth School ..but we are very happy and grateful to Haydon....they have very good GCSE results (%) for non selective school.

LEA average - - 48%

John Penrose School 22%
Northwood School 55%
Haydon School 80%
* Northwood College 98%
* St Helen's School 99%
Watford Grammar School for Girls 98%
Rickmansworth School 82%

The first two schools are the ones that have still places...
Its easy for a selective school to have good results...

So far we never had a problem with schools, because they always went to international schools...

I dont know any Montessori schools..

AtlantaJohn

I think that's average for this area yes, maybe a bit more. Average working couple for this area commuting into London. I know a bunch of people in that range who are steadily going broke (housing, schools etc) and dying of debt, my old company had a list a mile long of people wanting to transfer to the US offices for that reason. It will be interesting to see what happens if the rates go up a lot.

Out of interest is there still an international school in the area (Bushey) I ask because a few friends here (Atlanta) send there kids to the international school and really like it. It is 17k a year here in $$$s.

Aslo just saw a friend last night from Northwood and he asked do you guys still pay US prices for gas in the UK!!!

eurotramp

Hubby is British..that means no more tax free shopping, no more tax free petrol, no more expatriation allowance and no more private schooling, which NATO payed for....plus we have to pay all taxes now..except income tax.
We also still have our very cheap and very good private international health insurance, which comes very handy over here...
Still only on the bottom end of your average income
We could have gone to Germany or US...they al have NATO...but we wanted to settle down...unfortunate at one of the most expensive parts of the world...bugger

Don't know about any international school..but the private schools are about 10k a year...more then we ever paid for any international...in Belgium 9000 Euro and Holland 12000 Euro a year...plus you didn't have to spend thousands on uniforms...private school uniforms are very expensive