At What Cost would you .......

Eleven Plus (11+) in Birmingham, Walsall, Wolverhampton and Wrekin

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At What Lengths

At What Cost would you .......

Post by At What Lengths »

As a parent, I am as equally concerned about the quality of education that my sons get. However, the dilema that both my wife and I faced , and perhaps many other parents of this forum, was how far would I let my son travel to a quality school. We were faced with the situation last year when choosing secondary schools for my oldest lad when making the five selections on the LEA form. We had two KEGS as 1 and 2 and than 3 schools within the local choices, which included the catchment school as last choice. But I hear many parents who had schools on their forms which were all over B'ham and very far from their home. The kids would have to travel over an hour to get to the school. Fortunately, we got the school of our 1st choice, but if we hadn't, we weren't prepared for our son to travel to the other end of B'ham for his schooling.

Our primary concern was not only the long distance and day, but more importantly, his safety and well being on the buses. Not every route map has a green bus on it and we could have been stuck with using public transport.

A good example that I can cite, and having seen this myself is Camphill school. Many children from this school use the local buses on the main high street in Kings Heath, and at a particular bus stop children from 3 or 4 different schools from the area converge there to catch the buses. I have seen KEGS kids being picked on from kids from these 3 or 4 schools that are near by. It is almost a reicepe for trouble....
solimum
Posts: 1420
Joined: Wed May 09, 2007 3:09 pm
Location: Solihull, West Midlands

distance

Post by solimum »

We are around an hour from Camp Hill by either public bus/train or the "green bus" (which starts very early!). Our local comp is excellent so all 3 of our children have gone there 11-16. I went as far as to send off for the KE brochures but we decided not to go down the 11+ route: although a few of their Junior school friends did go either to various KEs or various private schools, most of the cohort have stayed together at the local school and have done very well. It's a 5 minute drive or 40 min walk away, easy for going back to friends, after-school activities, concerts etc etc. Second son is now at Camp Hill for 6th form (and really enjoys it - especially now he can sometimes borrow my car and drive there!) but I still think we made the right decision for him (and for the whole family) at 11. There are still plenty of bright well-motivated children outside the grammar schools!

(PS you may wonder what I'm doing on this website....I wish I knew myself!)
jah

Post by jah »

Also think how you're going to feel every time you drive there for a parents' evening. I struggled through the rush hour traffic to get to Camp Hill Girls for their open day, and was very cross by the time I got there.

So we put KE Handsworth first - it's only a 10 min drive - though bus takes 15/20 in morning, and sometimes rather longer in the evening. Using the bus my daughter has to leave the house 1hour before she is due in school, and gets home 80 mins after end of school day (at least 25 mins is spent waiting for bus to come from KE Aston, and the walk home from the bus-stop takes longer than walking to the stop in the morning - bags feel heavier at the end of the day).

This is about the limit I would countenance, as it starts to impact on the time available for homework, meals, outside activities, and those other things such as hair washing and room tidying!!!
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