Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

KenHo wrote:My son has a place in September and we live 4/5 hours north by car.

As you've said that your son will probably catch the train on leave weekends and half-terms (and I'm assuming the coach back to school after leave weekend) it is more the beginning/end of terms, when everything has to be squashed into the car, that will be a problem for you. Maybe you could be more specific about which area you live in, just in case any users of this forum live near you, or know someone else who does, even it it's only part of the way.

lonelymom wrote: and I'm assuming the coach back to school after leave weekend

I don't understand the message about a "coach"? Is there a coach laid on from somewhere?

Please bear in mind that we haven't got a clue about any of this yet. Because each trip is a fairly big journey, usually involving days off work, we want to get as much organised in advance as possible, rather than spending a year learning by our mistakes.

We live in Yorkshire, but I don't think that matters as regards lifts, The real issue is the travelling either through (by rail), or round (by car) London on a Friday afternoon. If, for example, another parent was to live in Milton Keynes, then they could collect my son one weekend and we could meet them at their home or some other convenient place. The next weekend we could drop their child off on the way past. Almost anywhere roughly north of London would do, even somewhere like Oxford. By train, we just need to find people who have older children who travel to Kings Cross, or better still get the same train but continue on it to the North, Scotland etc.

I was sort of hinting at that, maybe you could rendezvous at motorway services or something if another parent is doing the same journey but only part of the way, or, as you say, pick up from each others' houses.

The train on a Friday takes the kids to Victoria. On the return from leave weekend there is a coach which picks up the kids from Victoria and takes them back to school. Places have to be booked on the coach (I'm not sure how much it costs) but I believe the lower school children get priority on places.

There are bound to be people in similar situations to you, don't worry. It's good thinking on your part to think so far ahead and make plans. I'm sure my daughter has a friend who spends 5 hours + travelling home (must make leave weekends very tiring).

I know my parents would have struggled affording the travel to CH every couple of weeks for leave weekends. It was bad enough affording the travel for the start & end of terms. We only ever had "Long Sats" at Hertford which was basically one Saturday a term when we could go out with parents etc. As I got older I didn't mind staying at school or going out with other people for the day to save my parents the expense/long journey. I think we only ever had the odd day at Horsham as well and by then I was more than happy to do my own thing with friends etc. I definitely don't recall us ever having whole weekends away!

It costs us about £20 in petrol to get to CH and back, so leave weekends costs us about £40. Quite a lot! Luckily, my out-laws offer to do it from time to time, which is much appreciated

My mum had to get a cleaning job to raise enough money to get me back & forth from CH. We had no grandparents to help out either unfortunately.

If anyone were able to extract a list of postcodes (or at least the first 4 or 5 letters) from the school for all parents home addresses, I could easily create a Google Map of where all parents live, and thus parents could spot if anyone's close.

Parents could then contact the school (if they were in agreement) to ask to be put in contact with parents in a given postcode if they spotted someone close to them. Thus no sharing of addresses to all, but also showing roughly where people live in an easy to read format??

If someone could get hold of the data, I could do the rest.....and maybe it could be updated each year and linked from the CH website, or provided as a link?

J

jtaylor wrote:If anyone were able to extract a list of postcodes (or at least the first 4 or 5 letters) from the school for all parents home addresses, I could easily create a Google Map of where all parents live, and thus parents could spot if anyone's close.

Parents could then contact the school (if they were in agreement) to ask to be put in contact with parents in a given postcode if they spotted someone close to them. Thus no sharing of addresses to all, but also showing roughly where people live in an easy to read format??

If someone could get hold of the data, I could do the rest.....and maybe it could be updated each year and linked from the CH website, or provided as a link?

J

Brilliant idea! Sounds like it's going to be an extremely big job to organise it and get all the parents' permission to give out their postcodes, but I think it's definitely something worth doing. How/where/when does the process start?

I think it would need a parent to approach the school, and ask for a partial postcode list of parents locations.

Here's how I'd see it working:-
You have a "seeker" parent (the one who's looking to make contact) and a "sought" parent (a parent who the seeker would like to find and then get in contact with).

1. School provides a list of partial postcodes, enough to place each roughly on the map (e.g. SE25 5.. or OX12 0..) NO OTHER INFORMATION is required from the school at this point, so no breach of confidentiality,
2. I (or anyone else who fancies having a go!) imports that list into Google Earth/Google Maps as a list of locations, which can be provided as a link on a website somewhere (CH site, CH Forum, wherever)
3. The "seeker" parent checks the map (knowning that they're on there themselves), and looks to see if there is a suitable other marker on the map near by, who they may wish to contact.
4. If there's a marker on the map they wish to contact, they provide the school with the partial postcode for that location, along with their OWN contact details, and ask to be put in touch.
5. The school passes on that seeker-parent's request to be put in touch with the sought-parents at that postcode.
6. It's then up to the sought-parent to respond to the seeker's request to make contact if they wish, or ignore it if not.

If it was done as above (and it's actually VERY simple this way) then I don't believe there's any confidentiality issues, as you're never providing a parent's postcode to anyone else, you're just passing on a request to make contact which can be ignored.

This could all be done by email, and wouldn't be complex to administer or run.
The list of postcodes could be provided each year to update the map.

If someone gave me a list of postcodes, I'm hoping I'd be able to produce the simple map pretty easily....(never done it myself before, but I'm confident I could do it fairly quickly)

J

After a bit of playing, I've managed to prototype the concept.
I've just taken a list of random UK post codes, and even with just the first bit of the postcode (before the space) that's close enough to be useful and easily mapped.

http://www.chforum.info/PostcodeMapExample1.html
Click on each marker, and you see the root of the postcode.

I've set this up so that with 10 minutes of getting a list from the school, this map could be live...

J

Would you like me to ask at the school office whether a note asking if any parents would be interested could be sent out with the end of term mailings?

I think this would become too labour intensive an complex if the school had to ask each parent - hence why I'm hoping we could just get the first half of the postcode from them, but then more detail on request by individual parents?

Mr Taylor, I think this is a Very Good Idea; I only wish I understood it.. however, I Thoroughly Approve of the potential outcome, even if I am confused by the method.

Yep, I'm in favour too. If Barnes Mum is willing to approach the school and ask if it's possible to get this off the ground I think we should keep our fingers crossed for a positive outcome.

Julia Sibary and I lived not far from each other on the south coast and as Julia's Mum was on her own my dad would often take her home if he picked me up by car, or he would meet us at Liverpool Street and we would take Julia to Charing Cross where she got a different train to the one I did. (except the time he got on a Circle Line train going the wrong way, and Julia and I were going the correct way).

I think we were supposed to be met and not travel alone until Sixth form but as there were two of us our parents gave up meeting us when we were about 14. During the holidays we would get a train to London to go shopping so it all seemed a bit pointless.