Travel to Queen Mary’s High School, Walsall

[RoonilWazlib]

We are in the Halesowen area of the West Midlands - anyone have any experience of travelling to QMHS from this area?

[JustOutside]

That sounds like a tough commute.

By car, it's about 15 miles, and you'd probably be using M5-M6 in rush hour. I'd imagine the journey time would be very variable, and probably longer than an hour in the morning.

By train, you'd need to get to somewhere like Smethwick first, and from there there are occasional direct trains to Walsall, though most would require a change at Birmingham.

There is a bus every 15 minutes from Halesowen to Walsall (Diamond Bus 4H), but the journey takes more than an hour.

At Walsall, the bus stops and train station are a fairly short walk from QMHS (between 5 and 9 minutes).

[RoonilWazlib]

Thank you so much for your reply.
Feeling a bit regretful now that we put QMHS as our first choice - we were planning to move to the Walsall area but our house search hasn’t proven very successful.
Does anyone know if we don’t accept our first place school choice, will we automatically get our second or will it be pot luck as to which spaces are left in available schools in the area?

[hermanmunster]

Thank you so much for your reply.
Feeling a bit regretful now that we put QMHS as our first choice - we were planning to move to the Walsall area but our house search hasn’t proven very successful.
Does anyone know if we don’t accept our first place school choice, will we automatically get our second or will it be pot luck as to which spaces are left in available schools in the area?

If you don't accept your first school ( and please don't do this straight off, or in fact at all, until you have an alternate school) then basically you would get a space wherever has spaces locally

In some areas you can go on the waiting list for lower listed schools on your CAF - this may be worth discussing with the LEA if there somewhere nearer that would be OK for you and easier to get to

If this is a long term plan then put the house on the market and look to rent somewhere in Walsall with a view to buying when you see somewhere suitable - as you would be chain free it may make the process easier

[crazycrofter]

You still have plenty of time, if you really want to move. We did similar, but in an opposite direction. We were living in Walsall, but we accepted KEHS in south Birmingham, because we were planning to move there. In the end the move didn't happen until the December of year 7, so dd had to do a long bus journey for the first term (probably around an hour if I remember) but it was worth it in the long run.