Kingston Grammar vs LEH: air polution and other things

[Leo12345]

Hello!

We are trying to chose between LEH and Kingston Grammar where my DD got offers. Kingston Grammar will be £220 less monthly.

Is air in Kingston Grammar really polluted or it is insignificant?
There is a very busy cross-road just next door.

We live 12 min by bus and 23 min by foot from Kingston Grammar which is a significant advantage, as to LEH it is either 45 mins by two buses or 50 mins by foot+bus or school bus which is quicker, but which arrives in school 30 mins before the lessons start and departs 30 mins after they finish, so you also waste this 1 hour.

LEH is higher academically but our DD always gets the highest marks and really does not need to be pushed. I am afraid that LEH, because of its high academicity, gives children less freedom and allows less creativity and if it is so, this would be the worst thing for us, as we value much creativity and freedom.

On the other hand: boys is it for good or for bad? Do older girls in Kingston Grammar fight for being popular with boys and this kind of things?

Also wanted to ask: is LEH very posh and a lot of children from rich families (as we are not and perhaps will not feel very well)?

Will appreciate any feedback, thanks in advance!

roseredvelvet oops sorry about mixing your name up. I was typing it from memory!

Good luck with your decisions everyone.

I can understand pollution concerns.

I doubt schools will let a musical DC miss sport because of hand injury concerns! Lacrosse is probably a higher injury risk than hockey.

Choose the school with the easiest commute, other factors being equal. A long commute is exhausting and wasted time. Field hock is safer than lacrosse. In the States, lacrosse players routinely wear helmets.
Air pollution is a total non factor for me, butI have spent most of my working life in a car dealership.

I meant hockey. In the States, girls do play ice hockey. It is very dangerous, and ruinously expensive.

@cakeisalwaystheanswer, thanks for the A-level info, we were choosing base of GCSEs mostly, now I see in the A-level tables LEH is place 16, Surbiton High place 47, Kingston Grammar is not there.

By the way, Surbiton High had very good A-level results and very good destinations only in last year (2017); previous years it was much worse. As the head left and also many good teachers left and some of the good managing staff left, I don't know where this school will find itself (hope I am wrong).

OK, if anybody is interested in pollution, I found a list of polluted London schools (though this list includes only NO₂ whilst there are other substances):

www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/27/check-if-your-london-nursery-school-or-college-is-exposed-to-toxic-air

Generally I read that more than 10,000 cars a day at a street and less than 100 m from street is counted as out of norms.

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Now it is easy to estimate how many cars pass on a street during the day.

Take average car length 3m + distance of two cars between subsequent cars, so you have around 10m. Use 15 m to be safe. If the street speed limit is 30 miles, it is ~ 15 m/sec.

Suppose it is a busy street with constant traffic.

So you have 15 m and 15 m/sec speed, which means 1 car every second, which is 3600 cars in hour and 36,000 in 10 hours.

(If there are traffic lights, assume half the time cars are waiting with speed 0, so the average speed will be not 30 mph, but 15 mph).

Now multiply by number of lanes on your street and you will get an estimated number of cars a day passing by.

(Other way of estimation is just count cars for some 10 mins)

There is a LOT of "educational doping" (as I call it) at A Level and hence I wouldn't use them as a comparison. GCSE would be the more meaningful imo. Moreover, in truth, the differences between these schools are minimal from an educational perspective and much more about fit, interests, ethos, logistics of travel etc

You can't get a government table for GCSEs because of the exclusion of IGCSEs and GCSEs matter to no-one after Y11. I wouldn't trust any of the other league tables because so many schools exclude their results or supply their own figures. There may be some movement of pupils at A level but it's a minority and any educational doping should cancel out as they all do it. These are the government tables which include state and Indy schools and are the only ones I would trust.

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk/schools-by-type?step=default&table=schools&phase=16to18&for=16to18&orderby=ks5.0.TALLPPE_ALEV_1618&orderdir=asc&datatype=integer&sortpolicy=inversepolicy