One way or another, a good education costs money. Whether through astronomical school fees in the private sector or soaring house prices close to the best schools the state can offer, you are going to have to make a hefty investment in order to give your children the best possible start in life.

Today, The Sunday Times publishes its list of the 500 top secondary schools (both state and private) in Britain online at www.timesonline.co.uk/parentpower. Private schools dominate the table, scooping the top 15 places and taking 347 out of the 500.

To send your daughter to the school that heads the overall table, the all-girls North London Collegiate, in Middlesex, would cost an eye-watering £70,000 over seven years. St Paul’s heads the boys’ table, where annual fees are more than £14,000.

But our top 500 list also includes several comprehensives, schools that are free — but near which houses cost tens of thousands of pounds more than identical ones further away, simply because pupils are admitted according to how close a family lives to the school gates. Recent research by academics at the London School of Economics revealed that even to move into the catchment area of a good primary school in London and the southeast would add an average of £61,000 to the price of a house.

Just how close the link is between school and property price is now being debated in Brighton, where a furious row is raging over plans to redraw catchment boundaries. Parents protested earlier this month about changes that would see houses formerly in the admissions area for two of the city’s best comprehensives, Varndean and Dorothy Stringer, excluded from 2008.

Andrew and Emma Saunders bought their detached four-bedroom house in Patcham in 2002 because they wanted to send their two children, Harrison, 6, and Oscar, 4, to good secondary schools.

“Last week, our children could have got in to a good secondary school; this week they can’t,” says Andrew, an actuarial analyst. “Local estate agents have also said that house prices will be affected by as much as £100,000, by losing the catchment-area premium.”

Sean Bidwell, owner of Bidwells estate agency in Patcham, says it is too early to assess the financial impact because the exact boundary lines have not yet been agreed. But he confirmed that “these boundary changes will affect house prices in Patcham”.

Four-bed detached houses in the current catchment areas for the two good schools cost £550,000; three-bed semi-detached ones on the boundary cost £300,000, and are up to 10% more expensive than those outside, he says.

Despite their popularity, the two Brighton schools don’t even figure in our top 500 list; for those comprehensives that do, the house price premium is just as marked.

The 10% premium also affects families living near Watford Grammar School for Girls, one of the most successful comprehensives in the Sunday Times list (ranked 208th overall). Mark Tanzer, sales manager of estate agency Watford Estates, says that three-bedroom terraced houses within the postcode-defined catchment area in west Watford are £20,000- £25,000 dearer than those outside — £275,000 rather than £250,000.

This is despite the fact that only 55% of the school’s places are designated as community places for children living in its catchment area. Children compete for the rest of the vacancies, with one in 10 allocated on the basis of musical aptitude and others on performance in a tough academic exam.

It is a price many are willing to pay. In the catchment area of Dame Alice Owen’s School, in Potters Bar (205th overall), John Reynolds, manager of Andrew Ward estate agency, also talks of a 10% property premium — a percentage of the 200 places are allocated to children who live close to the school. A three-bed house costs about £350,000, but Reynolds says that some parents buy on an ex-council estate nearby. “A lot of people buy one of these cheaper ex-council houses to get an address close to the school, but probably have a big house somewhere else,” he says.

So which makes the most financial sense: buying near a good state school or forking out for private school fees? A recent report from the Halifax bank claimed that to privately educate a child from the age of three to 18, you can expect to spend £326,000 — the figures are based on attendance at an average-priced, pre-prep school, followed by a prep school, and finally boarding in a senior school.

Martin Stephen, high master of St Paul’s, sent one of his sons to a comprehensive. He believes it is possible for parents to end up paying more to move into the catchment area of a good state school than they would if they paid for a private education.

“A friend worked out what their house move cost in terms of house price premium, commuting to work, and so on. He worked out it cost £18,000 a year over the period the child was in school,” says Stephen.

If your house price holds up, it may be a price worth paying. After all, you will recoup the outlay when you sell. But if the comprehensive’s reputation and exam results start to dip, or if admission rules change, then opting for a state school may turn out to be an expensive mistake.

As parents in Brighton may soon discover for themselves.

That good schools are key in deciding where to live was taken into account by the Academy of Urbanism, which recently awarded its first ever Urbanism Awards. The Academy received more than 750 nominations from the public for Britain’s best urban location.

Ludlow, in Shropshire, won the Great Town award. David Rudlin, who wrote the report for the awards, says that education was a key deciding factor in assessing a positive urban environment: “Education more than anything else is the thing that really matters when choosing a place to live.”



Additional reporting by Lucy Denyer

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