Hi All,

Is there any easy way to travel to Colchester Schools from near Shenfield?

csse doesn't show any option.

Train and number ?65 bus.

Shenfield to the Chelmsford schools would be somewhat easier. Or Shenfield to Prittlewell for SHSB if a boy.

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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx

Train from Shenfield to Colchester North/Colchester Town. Neither of these stations are close to Lexden Road which is where both Colchester grammars are located (the Girls High is off a side road). So bus or walk (20-40 minutes). There might be a coach, but it will limit your child on staying late/getting to school earlier.

Children do it, one of my daughter’s classmates is in Dagenham. Some things to think about:

-cancelled trains due to weather, incident or works and how your child would subsequently get home.
-after school clubs/activities that start earlier or end later. School trips from CCHSG have sometimes started at 6.30 am for example. There have been school plays that finished closer to 8pm.
-having enough time to do homework especially as they move up the school and the load gets heavier.
-parents evenings, PTA events, prizegivings etc that require parental attendance too.
-how tiring the journey can be - in Year 7 in particular a couple of girls regularly fell asleep in lessons.
-friendships - a lot of effort needs to be put in from parents to allow girls to meet up etc.
-missing school due to poor weather.

Can ANY school be worth this? These are children - surely it would be better to move closer to the school and the parents (adults!) have a long commute!?

We're in catchment for WHSG and SHSG with good schools as our other options so perhaps I'm being naive but I can't imagine making my daughter do such a long journey twice a day, every day, for the sake of slightly better GCSE grades.

Once when I suggested this, the answer was that they had no intention of doing that, travel for one child being cheaper than two adults .

Another good one is that moving would make the parent's journey too onerous...

Obviously, I am not suggesting that either of these would be the OP's response .

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Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx

It seems for many parents the boasting rights that come with a grammar come before their own child’s welfare. I am regularly astonished, even now, by the journeys some parents are willing to put their children through from 11 years old.

DD gets back from school by 4 o’clock, she has time in the evenings for a social life, hobbies, home work and down time. With all the extra pressure from a grammar I think its just as important to have that time to wind down and hang out.

I think my daughter is in the same year as colchmum as there is a Dagenham girl in her class too (said girl is a nightmare and falls asleep in class regularly) but it's hard to say as they thankfully did a form group reshuffle for this year group!

From what I can gather from my daughter about the hideous commutes some of her classmates do it's really not conducive to a happy time at school. My daughter walks and struggles with managing work and school by the end of term due to fatigue, commuting from much further south than Chelmsford and I would be thinking a house move was in order but the parents won't do it. We've trekked our daughter round the county and also into Suffolk to maintain friendships. Thankfully we have family scattered round who can help and she seems to be friends with people not much more than half hour away but still...think about the after school clubs, parents evenings, information evenings, the early morning start and midnight pickup for ypres...

The school is a good school but it's not worth what some of these parents put their kids through.

Thanks all for the information and views.

Child's overall welfare is definitely more important than this. Parents do have to consider all of this before making a decision. I am sure all parents do what is best for their children.

Waiting for a results now, fingers crossed.

Seems out of question unless CSSE start a bus service

There looks like a Yellow school bus service 525 from Chelmsford Station / Miami Roundabout area to the Colchester schools. So I guess it's doable, if you can get the child to Chelmsford Station.