Relocating to Devon/Cornwall

[Mrblobby40]

Hi,

We are considering moving from Guildford down to Devon/Cornwall/Dorset coast. We are desperate to be back by the sea and to get away from the surrey rat race, to have a better quality of life and to get away from the riduclous house prices. I have two girls in Year 3 and Year 5. We are looking to move when my eldest finishes year 6 so we transition her nicely in to secondary school. The girls are very close and I will potentially be taking my youngest out mid way through her middle school so I would like to get her in to the same school as her elder sister or atleast a school that feeds in to it do minimise disruption.
Can anyone advise me on good independant schools in the cornwall/devon area. I am not saying no to state schools at all but they are currently in a lovely prep in the Guildford area and they are both very athletic and quite gifted so would like to get them in to a strong sports school.

Any ideas and advice on schools and relocating to this area would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

[cressetmama]

Mr Blobby, good luck with your move! If you are not wedded to a workplace, and can choose where to live, the Tamar Valley which sits over the Devon Cornwall line is a lovely rural option. Mount House in Tavistock where DS went has the reputation of being the best in the west, and it is very good academically and sporty, strong on music. However, after common entrance you are looking at boarding schools.

If you prefer town life, Truro is the best all round city for independent schools in Cornwall. In Devon, Exeter has a good choice of day independent schools, junior and senior, mixed and single sex, depending on your preference. Devon also has grammar schools in Plymouth, Torquay and Colyton (which is BTW the number one state school in the UK!) But be aware of how long the school run can take; the roads aren't too bad or busy, but the distances can get huge and and the bus frequency often leaves a lot to be desired! Lots to consider! Good luck!

[absentmindeddooooodles]

Truro is great. Schools are fab and its a lovely atmosphere. I went to school in truro and alot of my friends lived in places on the coast. St. Agnes, perranporth, porthtowan. St agnes is beautiful. Proper little cornish beach villiage. If thats the kind of thing you are into id really suggest having a look. There are direct buses to the private and state schools from st agnes and porthtowan. Think theres one from perranporth too.

Hope the move goes well!

[Mrblobby40]

Thank you both of you for your advice and information. I am a complete newcomer to Mumsnet as you can probably tell, no clue yet on abbreviations!
Luckily my other half can be based at home and then travels to clients as and when so we are not tied to any specific place. Just need to be able to be with in 30 mins of a good train line to get to London and within reasonable distance of an airport.
We would like to be in a seaside community, not too small. Be great to be with in 30 mins of Truro so we have the best of both worlds. I also have heard that Truro High Girls School is very good, do you know it? Plus they have the prep so DD could go there too.
Mount House sounds fantastic, have never heard a bad word about it, always amazing feedback but sadly my eldest will be moving to secondary school and so there is no point on having one DD there.

Which school in Exeter is number 1 _ state? sounds very good, I should check it out. We kind of heave our heart set on Cornwall, but we must be open minded as the school situation is most important.

I really appreciate your input - thank you.

[kernowal]

I went to Truro School rather than the girls school. I've just taken a look at the THSG website & was gutted to see that their uniform is no longer brown, as I refused to go there based on the uniform colour!

They're both excellent, but don't overlook the state schools in the area, as you don't have to pay to receive a good education in that part of the world. One issue with the private schools in Truro is that they take pupils from across the whole county and it's a very wide area to maintain a social life and out of school activities across. I hated the fact that living on one side of Truro with friends on the other meant that it was a logistical nightmare to see them out of school.

I think you'll find the railway line has been washed away today...

[cressetmama]

Truro High is very good indeed, but I speak as an alumna. Excellent facilities, nice staff but a new head is imminent.

In Exeter, Maynard is the tops for clever girls, and is consistently up there with London day schools.

Regarding train travel, look at the news! all of the west country, west of Exeter, has lost mainline service with the collapse of the sea wall at Dawlish; air service is rubbish; your wife will find she drives the M4/M5 a LOT... and you do know it's green and luscious country for a reason, don't you?!!

[cressetmama]

In Exeter, you should also look at Exeter School, which is mixed, has a highly regarded junior school, reasonable fees, and a great head. Exmouth is 13 miles away, or Topsham at about 6 miles out are among many very pleasant seaside towns, but pricey.....

[IndridCold]

Second the point that if either of you are needing to travel out of the region regularly for work, then anywhere west of Exeter is a bit of a nightmare.

FYI there is a thread on AIBU about the 'joys' of living in Cornwall...

[absentmindeddooooodles]

Truro girls school is fab. As is truro school, penair and richard lander. I went to richard lander. Good all round education...the school excelled at sports.

Transport from truro is fine. Straight through to london. Yes there are issies living down here. Public transport is not great. Buses are hit and miss as are trains alot of the time. A car is a must. But to get to londin and back is not an issue ( I have a family member at uni in londonn and lived up that way when I was younger)

It can be rough in parts down here. The towns of penzance, redruth, camborne, st just, st austell. Not great at all. But go just to the outskirts of these places and they can be amazing.

The weather sometimes isnt great ( especially right now) floosing and lots of rain etc.

Jobs are hard to come by and quite low paid.

You need a bit of money to live a very comfortable idillic life down here.

But.....you say jobs are sorted. So no issue there.

[absentmindeddooooodles]

And not being presumptuous at all but obviously if you are looking at fee paying schools then it sounds as if money isnt going to be a huge huge issue?

Cornwall can be genuinley amazing. With the right oppourtunities and outlook theres no better place to live. The countryside and beaches are bloody beautiful. The people ( mostly) are friendly and welcoming.

Community spirit is fab especially in the seaside towns.

Unfortunatley we are having to consider a move up cohnteh. Its breaking my heart to think if leaving....but jobs are harsh right now :(

[averyyoungkitten]

If you are looking at the Tamar Valley area, I am told the best school in Cornwall , and that includes a prep and a senior school, is St Josephs , Launceston. I dont know it beyond that. It has the best GCSE results in Cornwall, state and private. The downside is it seems currently to only take DC to 16. They take both boys and girls.

Exeter to Truro and all points between is a mightly long way. Can you be more precise as to where OP?

[cressetmama]

St Joseph's does have a good reputation... I had forgotten about it because it is primarily girls. It is also very small indeed, which I would see as a disadvantage in a secondary school, and as the poster above mentions, a move for A level is inevitable.

[mummymeister]

we looked at moving that way a few years ago (10 or 11 come to think of it) anyway we considered the SE coast area around saltash. there are 3 really good single sex grammar schools in Plymouth for boys and girls and they take kids from Cornwall apparently too. advantage is that it is free. I do know that Plymouth is a unitary authority so it sits outside of all the devon stats as it were. don't forget also the school tom daley went to which is private and in Plymouth but cant remember the name.

[Mrblobby40]

Hi All,

Thanks so much for all your great advice:

CressetMama - I have just looked at Exeter School thanks to you and it looks very much like what we are looking for. The more I research and listen to advice from people, I am thinking we would be better off to be in Devon nearer a bigger town/city with the access for London and airports.
Cornwall as beautiful as it is I think will cause us problems with schools as I simply don't want them to board and we are then even further away from family and friends back in Surrey. I will check out Maynard as well.
Any recommendations on pretty villages on the coast then if we chose Exeter to be our school base? I looked at Topsham but would prefer to be on the beach so to speak than up the estuary. Checked out Dawlish - wow that got hit badly with the weather didn't it! Anyone know if it is a nice place for a young family to live?
MummyMeister - we looked at Saltash and it is still on the consideration list as we have family there, so that is good to know re the schools, I will check them out. Out of interest why did you not move if you don't mind me asking?
Thank you everyone for your great advice, so sorry you are having to leave 'absentmindeddooooodles' - thats tough. Good luck.

[averyyoungkitten]

Tom Daley went to Plymouth Collegeafter being bullied at one of the state comps in Plymouth ( Eggbuckland).

St Josephs is co ed right through from 3 - 16. I have heard rumours they may be getting a sixth form but I cannotgetthe confirmed. I was looking at it because my youngest DC wants to go there. I am unhappy because I would prefer a school which was 11 - 18. I do not feel it is ever very successful to have to move school just for A level . Had to do this myself and it was not the best solution frankly. I know some DC cope, but whay should they have to be forced to cope?

There is also Kelley College in Tavistock. Have heard its improving.

As for state school in Plymouth - grammar or otherwise, I wouldnt personally.

[Metebelis3]

Exeter airport is not a real airport. I fly on average every two weeks and I probably use Exeter once or twice a year (basically, if I have to go to Amsterdam more than once). All the rest of the time it's Heathrow or god forbid gatwick. The trains were already dreadful before the latest disasters - I wouldn't recommend anyone who has to do traveling for work to live in Exeter! I really wouldn't. If you are determined to move down here check out Sidmouth. Close enough to Exeter for your kids to go to school there, and by the seaside. We don't really have seaside villages - not until you get a bit up the coast (Beer and Branscombe are lovely). If I was going to move to this part of the world and didn't have to travel, I'd look at Dorset myself. But only if I didn't have to travel for my work.

[venturabay]

I second Sidmouth. It's a beautiful Regency town and has had a mini revival in the past few years. It's 20 minutes from the main line station in Honiton which now goes to Waterloo every hour. A bus link runs to Heathrow and Gatwick from Woking. It's also a much prettier line than the Paddington line and considerably less full. Public buses run from Sidmouth Triangle to the area of the Exeter schools every half an hour, for when they're older. Stephen Fry wrote a eulogy about Sidmouth - he claims it's his favourite seaside town.

I wouldn't second the Maynard however. Exeter School would win hands down out of the two. Both have junior schools. It's something of a push to say that the Maynard is up there with the London day schools - although obviously it depends which day schools you're looking at :). Class sizes at A Level are too small for certain subjects where discussion and exchange of ideas is important, some girls get hugely fed up with no boys to interact with during the day and my understanding is that too often there's that low level excluding-from-the-group type bulling which is prevalent at so many girls only schools.

You asked which was the 'top' school. Colyton Grammar is the top state/ independent again this year, for GCSE, and sixth for A Level. If you were in Sidmouth and you fancied going state, and the girls passed the test, then it's a skip and a hop to Colyton with a school bus serving Sidmouth. It takes about 15 minutes. There's no junior school obviously though there is an independent junior school in Sidmouth called St John's. If you look at the Colyton website you'll see the date that you'd have to enter your eldest for the test - it's earlier than the Exeter test. Both Exeter and the Maynard take a large number of students who didn't pass the Colyton test.

Beer and Branscombe are pretty for sure, with house prices in Beer significantly cheaper on the whole, but school journeys to Exeter are that much more challenging. Some do it, but it's quite a sweat, both for the child and the parent!

[Metebelis3]

The journey to Colyton is, however, easier.

There can be bullying at any school. I know staff and pupils at both Exeter and Maynard and neither is immune to those issues. You are right about the number of kids who don't get into Colyton who end up at one or other of those schools. Despite the fees and the privilege neither school gets as good results as Colyton. Most parents seem convinced the schools are 'better' though, even if they originally tried to get their kids in to Colyton.

I think though that the OP's biggest problem will be the travel. I would rather eat my own liver than rely on the train from Honiton and then a coach link from Woking on a regular basis. It's bad enough when the mainline from Exeter is working as it's supposed to - for most of my trips, the leg from heathrow - Exeter takes at least twice as long as the actual flight to the place in Europe I'm visiting. Obviously when you go transatlantic or to the far east the flight bit is longer - but not always massively so - for example, if you fly from NY on a fast night you can get to heathrow in 6 hours, it might then take you >4 hours to get back to Exeter.

It's really not a sensible place to live if you have to do a lot of travel. :(

[venturabay]

I agree about the relative time train: plane. What do you think of Bristol Airport? Is it too fiddly to get to?

[Metebelis3]

Ventura - it's rubbish really. It's miles away from the train station, you have to get a coach which goes all round the houses and isn't terribly frequent in the evenings, the number of flights and destinations are limited, it costs more to fly from there, and if your flight is cancelled you can be really stuffed. :(

[Metebelis3]

The really so wring thing is that for many of my trips, the train bit is more expensive than the plane bit, as well as being longer. And the train company is the sort of organisation that when something like the events of this week happens, instead of trying to help the passengers, jumps at the opportunity to do some profiteering instead (all cheap fares have been suspended for the foreseeable future).

I guess what I'm saying OP is - don't move down here. Unless you can change your working practices so you don't have to do much traveling.

[Mrblobby40]

Hi Everyone,

Thank once again for all your advice and help. Its like a minefield out there so I do appreciate yout thoughts.

Rod's job is very flexible and he does not travel every week but I would say he has to get to London once a week and then could potentially travel every other week for 2 days, possibly 3 either up north (Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield) or Amsterdam.
So Train line is important as well as easy access to main rds out of Devon.
I can work from home and then probably go to the office in Surrey once a week or every other. I can work around the girls school run so all good in that dept.

You have all made some great points, I have checked out Sidmouth and it does look lovely. Exeter school really appreals so I am going to look in to it further. The grammer school looks fantastic but I worry my DS would not get in as it is very academic and strong in Science, she is very creative and athletic and my youngest DS very athletic and so would like to them to a school where sport is an important part of the day with some decent facilities.

I will definately look in to Dorset, I hear what you are saying re the travel, so we really need to think carefully and look in to it.

Thanks again
Sam

[Metebelis3]

You can fly to Amsterdam from Exeter. I did the journey in reverse yesterday. But you can only do it in the early afternoon. So if you want to spend one full day there, you have to spend two nights and use 3 days. You can fly to Edinburgh, and you used to be able to fly to Leeds (not sure if you still can though). There's a direct train to Birmingham new street. Much easier than driving.

I think you've got the wrong idea about colyton to be honest but you seem to have set your heart on a private school.

[ohnoherewego]

Does anyone have any experience of Blundells?

[NutellaStraightFromTheJar]

I went to both Exeter school and the Maynard. Exeter wins hands down. This was a good 10 + years ago, but as a girl I was much much happier at Exeter. As an interesting side note, an extremely high proportion of the girls I knew at the Maynard developed eating disorders. I'm sure the environment was a strong contributing factor. Maybe it has all changed since then, but I certainly wouldn't send my own daughter there.
Exeter was great. Blundells is very sporty, which is great if you have a sporty child, but less so if not! If I recall correctly, they have to attend on Saturdays because of the extra sport, although this may have changed.

[cressetmama]

Blundells still has Saturday school and Saturday afternoon fixtures. A friend has 2 DDs there now, and is happy, subject to learning support issues.