Transport from Erith to St Olave' s Grammar School

[daddyof3]

Please, please, help!
My son has passed stage 1 of the St Olave's SET test. We are very happy but really worried.

Mornings are already a bit rushed. Should we allow our son to take the stage 2 test? If he actually passes how would he travel to St Olave's Grammar School from Erith.

Is there a school bus / coach from the Erith area that goes to St Olave's?

I have already tried the company travel2school but they need more students to run their service.

Really confused.

[diviti]

I am in the similar situation. My son has cleared his 1st stage St olaves and giving his
2nd stage in November. We live in New Eltham. We went in St olaves open day and he really liked that school.St olaves is his first choice.He is working hard to clear the second
Stage. I am not confident sending 11 years old alone by public transport.What are the other options?Is there any other private coach that goes to St olaves.

[cornucopia]

We live in Eltham and my son is at St Olave's. Not sure about Erith, but from New Eltham it's easy. Children of 11 do travel on public transport there without any problems and to be honest at secondary level you would expect them to be capable of this normally. By bus, they get a bus to Chislehurst war memorial, then change there. You see lots of kids changing there. My son leaves Eltham at about 7.35 to get to St Olave's by 8.40 . The other option is the train; some local kids get the train in to Hither Green and change to go out to Orpington.

I'm not sure it would be worth the long journey from Erith , unless you can find a good train route. It's just not going to be worth sending him on an arduous journey and wasting so much time, just to go to Olave's - he'll have lots of homework, and may end up with little free time in the evenings. My son is in the sixth form at Olave's and, while he's happy there, his friends who attended other schools in earlier years have been a bit disappointed and several have said that they thought the teaching was better at their previous schools - though of course, that depends entirely on your subject teachers. I think the great results will be mostly due to the strict selection criteria rather than brilliant teaching. In addition, a lot of the sixth formers are angry because the school throws students out after AS-levels if they don't get at least a B in every subject they want to take to A2. The kids have said that if the school was even pretending to care about them as individuals, it woudn't do this, but would tolerate a less-than-impeccable result if the student was settled in the school and didn't want to have to move for yr 13. Another student I know who got perfectly good A-levels said she never felt valued there, because she wasn't a straight A* student.
Your son's academic achievement will only be influenced to a certain extent by which school he goes to. The fact that he's got this far suggests that he's very clever, so if you and he decide to go somewhere closer, no doubt he'll still do well. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/ed ... ching.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and BBC Radio 4 interview with Professor Plomin this week: http://bbc.in/1ZKMW0i" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Another option which friends have said they think is better, is to go to a nearby secondary school for years 7-11, then switch to Olave's for sixth form for the intensive help in getting into the university of your choice. May be worth considering. Good luck - it's not an easy decision.

[angelface]

DS also passed stage 1 and we live in Dartford. I contacted Travel2school and they never even got back to me!
I know bus 477 goes from Dartford to Orpington and I think by age 11 DS will be ok to get the bus there and back home.
would love to be part of a coach school service as the journey to school would be much quicker. Also know of 3 others that would interested in the coach service if their DS are offered a place, they too are in Dartford.

[mum2003]

My DS is in year 11 and we are in bexleyheath. He gets a train to welling and then bus 51 outside welling station.

[daddyof3]

I am touched by the detailed posts I have received on this topic. Thank you so much.Thanks so much conucopia, I really enjoyed reading the newspaper articles, very interesting findings. We have decided not to go for stage 2 Olaves and pick a local grammar school. We fear that attending St Olaves would be too stressful for ds. He would love to take part in after school activities, we feel that the journey home would take too long.

We believe ds would do well where ever he goes as long as he continues to work hard. I spoke to a lady at travel2school and she said that parents should fill out the enquiry form if they were interested in the coach service. She said she needed at least 12 students to make the service viable.

Looking for a secondary school is such an important decision and I know that there are many parents concerned about travel/distance.