Amersham Bucks

[HuntyGirl]

DH and I are looking for a new house in this area. I work in London so will be good for the commute.

Through my research, I see that there is Old Amersham and Amersham on the Hill/New Amersham. Old Amersham is more expensive but New Amersham is more convenient for travel into London etc. We are therefore looking at New Amersham for commutability.

My question is, is Amersham broken down further into smaller areas other than these two? Or is it literally only these two distinct areas? I would be grateful for any guidance on areas to avoid or what is better generally from those who know/have experience. Thanks!

My question is, is Amersham broken down further into smaller areas other than these two? Or is it literally only these two distinct areas? I would be grateful for any guidance on areas to avoid or what is better generally from those who know/have experience.

Not really. There's more of a variety of housing in new Amersham, some areas are a mix of social housing and others have more expensive houses (around Highland Road and towards Chesham Bois).

There's not as much housing in Old Amersham and quite a bit is townhouses along the high street which can be noisy (it has a lot of pubs, good for a pub crawl, not so good for residents).

If you want to commute, the houses around the Highland Road/Batchelors Way area are a short, flat walk to the station (there's a back entrance).

@YippieKayakOtherBuckets There is quite a lot of building still to be completed in mid and north Bucks. Chiltern and South Bucks won’t have much but some is going to happen in Wycombe. Grammars have always taken DC from out of Bucks in the past. They can do so again in larger numbers. There is hardly a shortage of candidates. Or even (gasp) lower the pass mark and cut down on reviews. I doubt any grammar won’t want to be full. They need the money as their pp money is negligible.

@TizerorFizz They could of course increase their PP funding by actually taking a few more PP students over and above the desultory existing numbers!

I don’t think many people have grasped how precipitous the fall in the birth rate has been since 2017. All schools will have to reduce PAN and grammars won’t be immune. Catchments are likely to have to be redrawn, especially in response to the sort of new development you mention. All of this is to say it would be foolish to pay a significant premium to be on the edge of an existing catchment, especially for a child who doesn’t exist yet .

I would never live on the edge of a catchment. I do know birth rate is falling but dc will just travel further to the schools. As they always did. I’m not sure it’s sustainable though.

You're right, it's not - the regional schools commissioner will intervene if the councils don't. Otherwise half of Berks and north London will be on the roads every day ferrying their children to south Bucks - even more than they already do!

Surely Bucks grammar schools would just admit more children in this case, though? There's no shortage of demand and some of the better secondary moderns are also over-subscribed, so you just have a lower raw score cut off.

There has been tinkering with catchments in south Bucks since forever – for example I remember a time when those living in Gerrards Cross briefly fell in between catchment areas. As you can imagine the locals there were quick to complain!

There are certainly plenty of local children who could attend the grammars, and Birmingham has shown that it is possible to have much more
equitable access for disadvantaged pupils.

Sadly I can absolutely guarantee that there would be significant resistance from an awful lot of local parents, with plenty of talk of ‘lowering standards’ and ‘dumbing down’ and likely lawyering-up.

They do lower scores for fsm/ppchdeeb up to a certain percentage. Where I was a governor 20 years ago now (!) we had one or two dc get to a grammar out of 55 each year. We did get a few appeals in but these were never fsm dc. Usually both parents working and lower middle class. It’s not necessarily true to think there’s lots of bright fsm dc waiting in the wings.

It’s the grammars who set up the tests. It’s what they want. Bucks just facilitates it. Occasionally the mark was lowered to 120 years ago but not recently. They could do this but as @thing47 says, there’s no shortage of DC getting the 121. Most dc travel quite long distances in mid and north Bucks already so taking dc from a bit further won’t be a deal but all the grammars are academies and none are under the control of Bucks.

Fsm/pp - not sure how other letters got in!

The odd thing about grammars is that many parents love them, but latterly most governments seem to hate them.

The current govt talks a good game about grammars, but it has been the comps in underprivileged areas that have received the extra cash, and of course the govt has also given the universities a free hand to prioritise admissions from these same schools. London schools like the Michaela dominate Oxbridge in the way public schools once did. DCGS meanwhile, which once rivalled some of the best fee-paying schools, is in an appalling state of disrepair.

We’ve kept our youngest there as the work ethic of the children plus a historic culture of high achievement still (just about) does the job - however we switched the older one out to a comp sixth form, as he was fed up of the filthy & broken-down buildings, and wants to try for Oxford.

5,4,3,2,1…

London schools like the Michaela dominate Oxbridge in the way public schools once did.

This - this is satire, right?

Is it?

Brampton Manor in East London wasn’t too shabby last year :0

Michaela or a Bucks grammar? I know what I would want - every time. Of course a few dedicated parents choosing Michaela isn’t the same as the thousands of DC in 13 Bucks grammars. Oxbridge has high percentage of grammar dc in the state school numbers I believe. As there’s way more of them they don’t always get the headlines. Also two of the top 5 are in Singapore! A handful of schools isn’t the full picture.

@Ponyclubgirl What comp? By definition Bucks doesn’t have any. Other counties do but not Bucks. So do any Bucks secondaries get dc to Oxford? No. They don’t. As you might expect.

What comp? I thought you were the expert…have a google and work it out for yourself.

and while I don’t want to sound harsh, I think the admissions tutors have switched their focus to inner-city comps precisely because comfortably-off parents wouldn’t choose them. These days they want kids who are resilient enough to achieve even in a harsh setting. Which Oxbridge, behind the golden stone, most certainly is.

There are, by definition, no comps in Bucks. I don’t need to google anything! There are all ability schools but we all know the top range of ability is missing.

Who said his school is in Bucks?

Looking back to the OP - bottom line is, Bucks is very pretty, commutable, maternity has the same issues as most other places, & schools are still very sought-after, tho’ facing more competition from elsewhere in the state sector than they once did. Welcome to pm me about sixth form, and good luck with the move.

We were talking about Bucks!! That’s fairly obvious. If the op wanted a comp she wouldn’t have looked at Amersham or Chesham.

Michaela has been having a lot of negative publicity recently. I don't know if its actually true or its based on the government dislike of grammars. i want an opinon from a michaela parennt on what actually goes on

Michaela isn't a grammar. It is a comprehensive (although there is undoubtedly an element of self-selection in its intake of parents who are happy to support its methods).

For what it's worth and for accuracy’s sake, based on 2022 admissions and taken from that bastion of inner-city comprehensive education The Spectator (https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-oxbridge-files-which-schools-get-the-most-pupils-in-2/) there are two London state schools in the top ten of Oxbridge admissions: the previously-cited Brampton Manor (#1) and Harris Westminster (#10). Both are highly selective for sixth form and shouldn’t be considered ‘comps’, although the 11-16 phase of BM is comprehensive.

There are three other state schools in the top ten: Hills Road (#3) Brighton Hove & Sussex (#6), and Peter Symonds (#7). None are in London and certainly none could be described as an inner-city comp - not with a straight face, anyway. I think the closest thing I can find to an inner-city comp in the top 60 is the Cherwell School in Oxford, which is probably not what comes to mind with that particular phrase.

The key point is that grammars are facing growing competition from high-performing comprehensives, which means that bagging the perfect house in the perfect catchment is no longer the killer ticket it once was. Which, if I were moving to Amersham on a budget, would be a relief to hear. When my children were small, I remember it being a constant source of stress and worry.

Admissions tutors at most Oxbridge colleges will fall over themselves to open the door if you are from a deprived area: summer schools, target schools masterclasses, access courses, etc. Belonging to an under-represented minority isn't unhelpful in this respect either.

Schools like Peter Symonds and Hills Road draw from a very wide and mixed catchment. They are not grammars in disguise.

Interestingly btw, the writer David Olusoga once wrote that he was amazed, at his non-selective state school, that the minority children in the upper sets came from all kinds of backgrounds, but the white children self-sorted into rich = headed for the top, poor = staying at the bottom. No doubt reinforced by some staff, who likely read stupidity into the wrong accent.

I think what we're beginning to see is a demographic change driven by incoming populations who, though not wealthy or trained to know how to hold a fork the right way, expect their children to become as successful as anyone else. This was the ethic that drove the old (pre-comprehensive) grammars, and it is a formidable force. Bring it on.

@earlyr1ser The grammars in Bucks have little competition from high performing comps. There are none in Bucks and MK ones are not very high performing and one is a basket case. Hence dc wanting Bucks grammars. Schools near the boundary in Herts, Beds, Oxon and N’hsnts are perfectly good schools but they are not grammars and the grammars will remain popular. Chiltern area is more expensive for housing. Aylesbury is significantly cheaper and has three grammars. There’s no need to move to an expensive catchment here because everyone is in catchment whether you pay £250,000 or £2,500,000. It’s just that the lowest priced homes are towards north Bucks.