11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi,

We are in the diffficult position of choosing between Woodford and CCHS

One of the major problems is the travel.
Could anyone please discuss the travel - what is it like?
Is Chelmsford worth 3 times the travel time of Woodford?

Is it possible by train, ( I suppose central line to Stratford + then British rail) and is the journey easy?

Thank you

Decisiontime639 wrote:Hi,

We are in the diffficult position of choosing between Woodford and CCHS

One of the major problems is the travel.
Could anyone please discuss the travel - what is it like?
Is Chelmsford worth 3 times the travel time of Woodford?

Is it possible by train, ( I suppose central line to Stratford + then British rail) and is the journey easy?

Thank you

Greater Anglia isn't the most reliable company on the planet, but lots of school children do use it to get to CCHS / KEGS / Anglo European / the Southend schools and the Colchester ones, too. Much better for being able to socialise with school friends at the end of the day, take advantage of after school clubs etc, than always having to dash away because it's a coach at 3.45 or you are stuck.

There are 198 school days per year over 5 years.
Work out the total difference in travel time over 5 years - convert to hours - then divide by 6.
That’s the number of equivalent school days spent travelling. You can then divide by 5 to get school weeks.

Our possible grammar choice is 50 minutes and a good comp 25 minutes travel time
So that’s 25mins x 2 journeys per day x 198 x 5 years = 49500mins
Divide by 60mins then 6 hours = 137.5 days (that’s 69% of a school year).
Divide by 5 = 27.5 weeks (just over 2 school terms)
Looking at it this way the grammar doesn’t obviously look worth the extra time for us.
It’s a big dilemma....

How do your numbers look?

Decisiontime639 wrote:Hi,

We are in the diffficult position of choosing between Woodford and CCHS

One of the major problems is the travel.
Could anyone please discuss the travel - what is it like?
Is Chelmsford worth 3 times the travel time of Woodford?

Is it possible by train, ( I suppose central line to Stratford + then British rail) and is the journey easy?

Thank you

My son travels to KEGS by train from east London area. The journey is straight forward and trains are more or less realiable. He was late once for school last year because of a delay and so were loads of other kids. The school accepts lates due to train delays. He has made many train friends and is more confident and self reliant and stays for loads of after school clubs.

We love the school and he is thriving and he loves his clubs. So for us, it's definitely worked.

THanks for advice, everyone

Is it really that difficult to choose between two schools one of which is three times the daily travel of the other?

Would you choose a job that was three times as far away as another job if the two jobs were in most other aspects the same?

Perhaps you could do the journey a few times tomorrow and the next day and see how you feel about it after that? DG