11 Plus Exams Forum

We are seriously considering moving out of London to Ashford. The high speed link and ridiculously cheap housing (compared to here) will benefit our family immensely. With free train travel it makes complete sense.
I know there is a grammer school in Ashford but I havent visited any yet and i dont particularly want to limit our options to just one school. Is it the norm for children to travel out of Ashford to Maidstone or elsewhere? I dont want to make my daughters life a misery by not having friends to travel with or who live nearby so i wondered if it was unusual or not.
The train line at Maidstone isnt as good as Ashford and house prices are not as good value either.

Anyone??
I'm not limited to maidstone schools but just want to see if other children travel out of ashford to other grammers in the neighbouring areas and how they cope
Thanks

Hi,

Children from Ashford travel out to grammar schools in Maidstone, Canterbury and Folkestone, I even know of one who goes to Tonbridge and I'm sure there are probably more! I don't think any of the journeys are too bad and the children cope fine once they're into a routine and chances are your daughter won't be alone if you do go down that route.

KentMum

thanks kentmum. Thats good to know. Geographically, Canterbury looks closest and Maidstone the furthest. I suppose these are questions i can also ask at the schools when we visit

I know of boys currently travelling from Ashford to Tonbridge but if the admissions criteria to Judd change as per the current consultation ( there is a recent thread on this) then the numbers are likely to be far fewer. I would examine the admissions criteria for the schools that you are interested in to see whether their catchments go out far enough and/or whether there is a limited number of places for children living over a certain distance from the school and how highly you have to score in the 11+ to access those places. You could also ring the schools and ask how far their admissions normally extend in practice.

As is often said on this forum, do think about the distance that is realistic for your DD to travel bearing in mind after school clubs, after school and Saturday fixtures, early morning departures for school trips etc etc

thanks twinkle
That is what I am interested in. I want her to have some friends who are local so was looking to see if there was a popular school girls went travelled from Ashford to. Even if she qualified for a super selective in Tonbridge, i wouldnt send her there unless it was a popular choice for many others who she could travel and spend time with outside of school.
There only seems to be one grammer school in Ashford so i thought there must be more options than that.

I suspect that the numbers of girls travelling to Tonbridge from Ashford are likely to be very small in any one year group. Have you thought of moving to Tonbridge?

twinkle - yes we have had a look around there too but our main reason for moving to ashford is the high speed train (34 minutes i think) and more house for our money. Tonbridge doesnt seem to offer us much more than where we are already in chislehurst.
She may actually really like Highworth GS in Ashford so it may be a moot point but i just want a back up plan.

Hi somewhat of an old post but just in case this is still helpful to you.

My son went to a school near Ashford and girls left there and went on to Tonbridge, previous years girls had gone to Folkestone as well as of course Highworth.

As has been pointed out by others Canterbury schools are somewhat harder to get into often because they have a restricted catchment area. We live in a village between Ashford and Canterbury and despite getting the higher points to get into Simon Langton Boys we didn't get a place several years ago because boys living closer were offered places. The train station in Canterbury that Ashford goes into is also the one the opposite side of town to where all the schools are located so relying on the no.1 bus is really the only option. There is often a bottleneck in Canterbury from the Ashford end and about a year ago there were complaints from girls because the bus was not getting to the school in time, Stagecoach were looking at changing the time it left but not sure what happened. In previous years I know girls in Wye which is closer to Canterbury were not given places at SL girls.

As you get to put down a number of schools it is always worth trying those further afield but check the admission criteria because there is no point putting down a school where your DD would never get a place.

Good Luck

thanks womanofkent! it might be an old post but still relevant as this move is not until the end of next year. Therefore, i am still interested in it all.