Travel from Bristol to Gloucester Grammar Schools

[sayItAsItIs]

Hi All
My DD is starting Denmark Road High School (formerly High School for Girls) in Gloucester. We live in Bristol so we are considering travelling arrangements. Our last resort is to use Bristol Parkway train station, however if we can get enough parents to arrange for a private minibus from Bristol to Gloucester, it'll be ideal. To prevent train delays and etc.
Are any parents here whose kids travel from Bristol to Gloucester grammar? and what is the experience like?
Our DD starts this September. Any thoughts will help. cheers

I think posters have struck a nerve with the op
My sympathies are with her 11 year facing that shit sounding journey day in/day out

Who was being holier than thou?

Of course you are op. Because you’re clearly more worried about the school your child goes to rather than her health and well-being inrelations to a hideous commute.

How far do you commute to work each day? Is it an hour minimum at 11 years old?! My mind honestly boggles.

What a lucky little girl you have OP, she can look forward to a minimum of 8 hours commuting per week! And you’re absolutely right, we’re all ‘keyboard warriors’ for pointing out that a child, most children would struggle with that! for you!

Keyboard warrior?! Odd response. It’s too far and you know it.

“Perfect households” not pertaining to perfection, just agog at the absurdity of sending an 11 year old child to a school in central Gloucester when the child lives in Bristol !!!!
I can’t comprehend that there will be potentially a minibus of girls making this trip !! She’ll be on serious public transport commuting with a ton of strangers..... it sounds so unsafe, I can’t believe an 11 year old would be OK with that ????

My dd is similar age. She would hate this. Miserable. She ambles to school with her pals. It’s a 1.5 mile walk. I would choose a less impressive but local school or if that I was that set on the school move house.

I don't know anything about OP's situation but I traveled almost an hour to and from secondary school every day just because it was the nearest school. It was pretty normal.
Next year my dc will be at least 45 to an hour to and from school through a city. Again it is pretty normal where I am. Traveling with friends is fine, you can catch up on reading, do some homework etc.

I was bussed a similar distance as a child to school. With no mates in my year on the bus. Couldn't do sports fixtures or plays or concerts, and never got to pop round to a mate's for tea etc as my parents were always too tired to drive such a long way there and back to pick my up, after they'd already done their long commutes.
Please OP, rethink this.

Rightly or wrongly, it is a fact that lots of children travel in to the Gloucester grammars from Cheltenham, Bristol, Swindon, Tewkesbury, Worcester etc because the schools are super selective and there are no catchment areas (at the moment) so the OP is just doing what many others already do, it’s not at all unusual here.

Even commuting from Cheltenham would take longer than some here would be happy with - as I mentioned, my own son will be setting off over an hour before school starts from within the city because the bus has a meandering route. It would take me a good 20-30 minutes to drive him the two miles because of traffic build up.

I wonder if people living in bigger cities than ours would find this unusual? I grew up in London and took the tube and a bus to secondary, it was no big deal and most of my peers did the same. Same for children living rurally.

Lots of children do not travel to the Gloucester grammars from Bristol, it's highly unusual. Which is why there aren't school buses from Bristol!

Crazy. Poor child. This time next year she will have had enough. As someone said on here, grammar schools are just schools. They get good results because they select children who are good at exams. Those children would do just as well at "ordinary" schools.

As with any decision you weigh up the pros and cons. For most of us any minor advantage in being at a school with only top set kids is utterly negated by that commute which is twice a day every day and will affect sports friendships etc. It’s an odd decision imo

Which is why there aren't school buses from Bristol!

I did wonder that if this is apparently so common!

I had a commute of maybe 50 minutes each way to my grammar school (including waiting around at each end) but that was all on a school bus, and there was a double decker full of us just from my smallish town. It doesn’t sound the same at all in this case. Public transport, long walk, no other kids.

It's an indictment of Bristol schools that people are prepared to travel so far. We moved out of Bristol to north somerset for better schools. My 11 year olds are quite confident and independent but I wouldn't put them on that train journey every day. Been on that jou myself so many toimes when trains are late or cancelled meaning need to find an alt route , drunks on train home etc. Its a tough gig for a child

From what I gather there are around 30 to 40 kids from the Bristol and South Glos area who go to Gloucester/Cheltenham grammars. Split between the train (mostly Pates kids, they share a couple of taxis at the other end), and one school bus, which goes to Gloucester then also goes to Pates. This is an interesting discussion as it’s something I’m wondering about for my younger DC (local school in special measures). Plus I work that way so the after school club situation is less of a problem.

my own son will be setting off over an hour before school starts from within the city because the bus has a meandering route. It would take me a good 20-30 minutes to drive him the two miles because of traffic build up.

Is there a public bus he can get part of the way and walk the rest? Or just walk the whole way? Would only take 40 minutes, rather than over an hour.

Whether or not the OP should be allowed to apply in the first place is a whole other thread. It's tough enough for those of us who live in the county to get places at these schools for our DC - even more so when people apply from miles away

Yes, this. We're in Glos. The non grammar schools are pretty awful (because that's what happens when there's a grammar system) and our kids have to compete with everyone in a 30 mile radius to get in to their local school, or be pushed to a struggling comp so some kid from another city can go to grammar instead.

Grammar systems are shit. But us in Glos have no choice, and we don't even have the expected chance of getting the good side of it, just an increased chance of the shitty end of the stick.

My dd is only 3. I hope by the time she's 11 the comps are better and the grammars have local catchments.

We live near Gloucester and I know of a number of friends kids who go to Denmark Road. It's a good school but really not that good and definitely not worth travelling that kind of distance, especially for an 11 year old. She will struggle to be part of any kind of social scene too. IMO parents in our area get really hung up on getting their child into grammar school - often at the expense of the child re too much pressure and really long days

Anna you’d think so but walking would be 54m according to google maps and a bus would involve going into town and then back out so not much faster. Gloucester has a strange bus route system.

It's an indictment of Bristol schools that people are prepared to travel so far. We moved out of Bristol to north somerset for better schools.
Bristol schools are improving and more parents are choosing Bristol schools. The myth that Bristol schools aren't very good doesn't really help dcs who end up facing this type of commute. In most Bristol schools top set pupils achieve very good results.
However if the OP lives close to Parkway station then it's possible that they live in South Gloucestershire rather than Bristol LEA.
We live in Bristol and did consider a school outside Bristol in BANES. But this was relegated to 3rd preference after a walk to the bus stop (there is an official school bus) on a dark morning in October before we applied. We were offered a place at our first choice Bristol comprehensive school and we didn't regret the decision as dd was fully able to join in all activities at school and obtained good GCSE results.
The way the OP worded her post "my dd has been offered a place therefore they were considering travel arrangements" suggested to me that they hadn't really thought this through before applying. Perhaps if it had stated finalising travel arrangements, there would have been fewer negative comments.
I hope it works out for her and her dd.

It isn't so much the length of the journey but the type. DD has a 45 minute journey but on a dedicated school bus - safe and she spends it chatting with her friends or reading a book.

Totally different to commuting on public transport and negotiating what sounds like an unsafe road. And how on earth with she be able to manage after school clubs - plus all her friends will probably live miles away.

Perhaps rather than being insulted OP needs to seriously think about why there's almost unanimous agreement here?

I travelled a 60 mile round trip on the train from age 12-15 plus a 20 min walk at each end. I really wouldn’t recommend it. The sale of our house fell through just before I started and it took 3 years to sell again.

I live in Bristol now and both DC are at outstanding schools with great results. No way would I inflict this on them.