Schools on the London Underground

The things you learn. Today, I discovered via the weekly school email that an organisation called London Challenge monitors the achievement and attainment of all schools in London. "To celebrate the 2006 GCSE results of many London schools, they worked with Transport for London to rename all the tube stations with the "successful" [their terminology] schools".

I can't see very much additional information about how "London Challenge" selected the schools or how it chose where to put them on the map at the relevant page of the Department of Education and Skills website, but I can let you have a PDF of the actual underground map, which is attached to this post. My daughters' school is on it, replacing Clapham North at the southern end of the Northern (aka misery) line, nine in from the end. (Nonsuch High School for Girls.)

Download LondonChallengeTubemap.pdf

Comments

[Susan Balée]

Why is the Northern called the misery line? Sounds like there's a funny tale therein.

Also, are these new names just honorary, or are the tube maps going to be changed???

[Norm alias Uriah Robinson]

Maxine, Cathy must be very brainy. When I worked in New Malden I remember what an extremely good reputation Nonsuch High School had achieved.

[Maxine]

Susan: the misery line is so named because of its predeliction for cancelling trains without notice, and failing to tell passengers waiting on a branch which branch is the next train coming. When I lived near Camden town tube, where there are two branches of the M. L. on adjoining platforms, you had to wait at the bottom of the escalators and "listen out" -- when you heard a train coming, you had to do a mad dash to the left or right, with several hundred other people all doing the same thing down narrow, smelly tunnels. The things we Brits put up with.

No, the tube maps won't be changed -- there is quite a fashion for tube map "mash ups", eg there is a nice one I posted about ages ago where they replaced the station names with literary authors or books associated with those areas. If you go to the London Underground Blog (see blogroll) you'll probably find lots more if they are still there (there are copyright issues-- the schools map seems to be "official" but many of these mashups are not. I know London Underground and some of the US transit systems have clamped down on them.)

Uriah/Norm: thanks -- yes she's quite brainy. She did well to get into Nonsuch (and her sister). "In my day" you would not have thought anything of it, as 50 per cent of schools were like it. But these days, schools like Nonsuch are thin on the ground, so yes, we are lucky that both girls got in there and are getting what I would call a "decent" education.