Hi ladies,
I was just wondering how many of you would allow your kids to travel to the school your DD or DS fell in love with, instead of choosing local grammar.
My DD visited TGS and after that she doesn’t like any local schools that are about 2-3 miles away from home ( by straight line, a bit further by roads) which are Wilmington grammar, Townley grammar and Dartford grammar. I am based in Wilmington and the train from Swanley to Tonbridge would take around 30-35 mins with one change at Sevenoaks. So the whole way from home( i will need to drop DD to the station) to school would take a bit over an hour.
Would be very useful to find out from parents, of those children, who are travelling about an hour from home to school, if that makes them very tired? Do they have enough of time and strength to do their homework?

TIA

Our son travels by train, 10 min walk to station, 26 min train (no changes), 17 min walk the other end. It's fine, the school is excellent and he loves it, but if he'd qualified for a similarly excellent school closer to home, would definitely have gone for that. Secondary school is more demanding than primary so they do get tired. And he can stay for after school activities without any problem but it's harder to get home in time for activities in our own town. He could do homework on the train but despite encouragement they generally just seem to play on their phones. Trains are expensive too; it cost about £1200 in total last year.

The journey you're proposing sounds worse; you'd have to drive her to the station (and pick up?) and two trains gives so much opportunity for missed connections. Just having to change will make it more tiring too. If it was me, I would definitely steer her to DGGS, which is also much sought after. Does she have friends going there?

Sorrel, thanks a lot for sharing your sons experience with traveling.

At the moment my daughter is so excited that she says she can manage the route, however she can change her mind in her very first week and it would be late to do something. And i agree, there would be too many changes in one trip - getting to station, one train to Sevenoaks, than change for another train and about 12 mins walk to school.

Too much to think of...

That i

Do the journey there and back at the time she will have to leave in the morning with a heavy bag every day of half term and see what she thinks of it.

Ten year olds are not qualified to make these decisions. She is not going to understand what it is really going to be like twice a day, five days a week for seven years. DG

You also need to consider after school clubs and sports matches. If she is doing something after school, which you will want her to be doing to get the most out of school life, then she has to start that journey at 5pm having left home at probably 7am. She is going to be exhausted.

As others have said secondary school is a huge step up from primary and is tiring enough without having a huge journey. My son has a 30 second walk to the bus stop then a 35 minute bus journey to the school gate and he was on his knees with tiredness until Easter of year 7. It also put him off trying after school clubs as getting home was so much harder.