Alex Bannister, Nationwide's group economist, says: "In the last two weeks thousands of children have started their first year at primary school. Traditionally, primary schooling is viewed as crucial in providing children with the basic building blocks of learning and thus parents put a great deal of effort into researching the performance of local schools.
“Furthermore, it is generally accepted that a factor influencing property purchase is the quality of the local primary school. Since catchments are relatively small and most parents want to limit the time that their children spend travelling to school, it would seem logical if properties that are close to a good school command a premium.
"Although school quality is a factor in determining the value of a property, there are many other attributes that matter and we have dedicated previous studies to this topic. It is therefore, essential that our results are controlled for these other value adding aspects. This research isolates the specific impact which school performance makes over and above other neighbourhood and property characteristics such as local neighbourhood type, number of bedrooms, square footage, parking, central heating, property type and region.”
