Every morning, Alice and Freddie Adcock wake up at 6.15am. After dressing and eating breakfast, the pair are collected from their west London home by the 7.15am bus, which takes them to Bracknell, Berkshire, where they start work at 8.20am. After a busy day, they catch the bus back to west London, arriving home at 5.30pm, tired but ready to relax.
Alice and Freddie are aged nine and seven. They’ve been commuting for the past 18 months: their bus takes them to Lambrook School, a private prep of 500-odd boys and girls. And they’re not alone. Growing numbers of blazer-wearing “commuter kids” are making similar journeys.
Why? With fewer parents willing to enter the competitive circus around getting their children into London day schools, but not wanting to, or able to, leave the capital, prep schools within an hour’s drive have started laying on minibuses to get children in and out of school.
Schools and house prices have always had a competitive relationship. According to Knight Frank estate agency, the average value of a home within a mile of one of the 50 best-performing schools in the country is 16.6% higher than in the surrounding local authority. Now, though, things have got a little more niche.
The latest battle is over houses in prime south and west London postcodes near the minibus stops. Increasing numbers of families are taking advantage of the prep schools’ shuttle services, which make the trip into the capital twice a day to pick up and drop off their pupils.
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Although competition for family houses in school-bus zones has yet to reach the frenzied levels seen in the catchment areas for primaries rated outstanding by Ofsted, Robin Chatwin, head of Savills estate agency’s southwest London office, says agents are starting to brush up on their bus stops.
Prep schools in the home counties are waking up to the fact that there’s a pool of prospective parents who need little encouragement to sign up — especially if you can lay on transport. Jonathan Perry, the headmaster of Lambrook, estimates that, since the minibus service started 18 months ago, 45% of inquiries about places have come from London families.
Andrew Monk, deputy head of Woodcote House, in Windlesham, Surrey, who launched a bus service last April, agrees. “We were finding that we were getting a lot of inquiries from London families who wanted their children to start at 11, rather than seven or eight, but were struggling to find schools in southwest London,” he says. These parents liked the idea of the country prep school with games every day, but didn’t necessarily want to move out to get it.
Several other schools within an hour’s drive of London offer similar services. Papplewick, in Ascot, runs two daily buses; Feltonfleet, in Cobham, has a daily bus with varying return times; Notre Dame, also in Cobham, offers a total of nine buses for pupils, including three from London, and is launching two more in September; and Caldicott School, in Farnham, has three buses picking up from three locations, catering for about 90 boys a day.
Most charge a nominal fee of £400-£500 a term (Woodcote House’s service is free, though it plans to start charging), and most are fairly flexible about allowing pupils to take the bus on an ad hoc basis.
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For Sarah and Rupert Adcock, Alice and Freddie’s parents, the minibus has given them a solution. “We both work full-time, so the idea of an hour’s commute every day isn’t appealing to either of us,” says Sarah, 42. “When we found Lambrook, we felt like we’d struck gold — it’s like walking into Hogwarts, with acres of space, which allows more freedom.”
The couple, who have two other children, Oliver, 4, and Henry, 3, and run an international recruitment agency, have found that using the bus makes for a more harmonious family life. “When they get home, they’ve done their homework and their sport. I can get one-to-one time with them without having to take one to tennis, the other to swimming, and have a battle over homework.”
It has also taken off the immediate pressure to move. “We love London,” Sarah says. “I think we’ll stay put.”
To find the best schools near where you live, visit thesundaytimes.co.uk/ parentpower