Moving to Horsley/Effingham/Bookham

[Snowflake05]

Hi all fellow parents

There was a similar thread a few months back but replies were made private and I am desperate for some advice. Help!

We are planning a move to the above areas for Howard of Effingham catchment and can’t decide between Horsely/Effingham/Bookham.

• What are the better/worse areas?
• Does anybody have up to date insight on the feeder schools? I am confused as for example Oakfield in Fetcham as well as The Royal Kent in Oxshott are listed as feeder schools in The Howard’s admission paper for 2019, but then they are located outside the catchment area…
• We will need to commute to London and I wanted to know the reality about parking a car, and generally which stations are better for the commute to Waterloo. My dream is to have the station walking distance which I understand might be possible in Horsley, less so in Bookham.
• Does HoE provide a school bus from any of these areas/what is its route?
• We love beautiful walks and quick walk to village amenities like shops, cafes and playgrounds. I expect that we might have to chose one or the other, but are there any particularly good areas to target for either?
• Any hidden gems for amenities or things to do with the kids that it would be good to know?

Any insight/advice would be very much appreciated.
Thank you.

Afaik Surrey schools do not have fixed catchments but use distance to determine admissions priority order. There have been a few instances in recent years where primary pupils at schools located between secondaries (often rural areas) , beyond historic admissions distance , have been given higher priority at a nominated secondary school in order to guarantee that an accessible place is available.

Thank you Liz, that's helpful. It makes sense, but we have to start somewhere and apart from the good secondary school we have no idea on the villages. Any other thoughts on the area?

It looks from the HoE website that there are a number of catchment maps so perhaps you looked at one rather than the whole set?

I've got friends in East Horsley who are very happy there and say there's still a good community feel. I don't really know anything about Bookham and Effingham, sorry.

I'm not a parent but I am a commuter from the area, and Horsley and Effingham Junction stations give you more options for routes into London - they're both on the line into Waterloo but split at Effingham to go via Epsom or Cobham. At Epsom you can change to have options into Victoria and London Bridge.

I would choose Horsley if I had kids because it's got the parade of shops, the station and travel options, lovely countryside and good proximity to Guildford. I think the 479 bus runs from East Horsley (past the Thatchers hotel) so there are options for school travel to Effingham, but it's not an HoE bus (and just recently the bus company went bust and it was rescued by another company!)