SHHS vs NLCS

[itiswhatitis2]

Hello, DD got offers from both and we are now trying to make a decision. Main confounding factor for us is that SHHS is a 5 min walk while NLCS a 5 min walk + 40 min coach. NLCS has of course a better academic track record but is it different enough to warrant the extra 1:30 commute time that could be used to do other things, if not just resting?? Wouldnt any reasonably bright girl do equally well on both academically anyway (maybe it just happens that NLCS has a larger portion of even brighter girls)?

So much sense spoken. There are so many unknowables about a school and whether your child will flourish that you might as well make decisions on the knowables of which the commute is a massive one. Especially if it's a 5 minute walk vs a bus ride.

I'm flabbergasted by the person asking whether it's worth going to NLS with a view to doing the 11+ for St Pauls later on. I have a friend who's always moving her children to marginally better schools until the end up in the top tier one and I can't see how it can compensate for the upheaval.

(But then we're people that sent our children to local primary despite it being Requires Improvement. And it absolutely hasn't done them any harm).

Yeah, the 'we'll move next door to whatever school is BEST' line is puzzling. Do none of these people have commutes/friends/family/preferences for different areas/worries about the vast hassle and expense of moving house that they want to factor in (not you, OP, you sound quite sensible). Apparently not. Much more important that this school got 99% A stars while this one only got 96%.

Honestly, this board at the moment (understandably as it's offers time) is full of parents contemplating insane commutes for their children and weighing up tiny differences between excellent schools. As someone who lives 10 minutes away from dcs' school and has seen the whole family benefit hugely from this (and other families suffer from long commutes), I can't urge you more strongly to go for SHHS. As someone said, it's not exactly crapsville. Some of the cleverest, most successful, nicest people I know went there.

What EdwinaMarlow said, every word. SHHS is a great school and everyone I know who has girls there (and who works there!) is very happy with it. NLCS is obviously also fantastic, but there is a lot of sense being spoken upthread about the unknowables.

All of this is is dependent on each individual family's circumstance. At the point we made the decision to put our 4 yr old on the school coach to NLCS, it made life far easier. My morning involved opening the door at 7:30 for DD1's coach buddy to walk her to the end of our road to the coach stop. Then, get DS1 and new baby (DD2) into the car for a 45 minute slog through traffic to his school in Hampstead. Circle around for ages for a pay and display, grab DS1 and DD2 and run! The same school run to SHHS would have meant two schools at opposite ends of Hampstead, long slog through more traffic between the schools, two rounds of circling for pay and display and hauling a miserable newborn through all of it. Twice a day.
When DD2 started at nursery, I had a carpool rota that looked like a decision tree and my useful working day was 3 hrs long in between traffic jams.
Through it all, DD1 skipped merrily out the door with her coach buddy and happily off the coach at 5pm with more energy than I could muster having spent most of most of my afternoon trapped in the car with a restrained, wailing baby . And the number of parking fines was eyewatering!

@expat96 good and sensible comments