Walking to school alone - advice please

I don't think they could do much if you sent your child off walking to school but they could refuse to release a younger child who wasn't picked up.

My DD walked from mid-year-5 but long before that was running up the hill ahead of us so nobody saw us at the gate. She struggled with walking over the road by the lollipop lady on her own but for some reason if we crossed lower down the hill she was away on her own.

Main-ish 🙄

I’m baffled by the school having any right to say how and with whom your child does or does not get to school. What sort of nonsense is that? Is that a UK thing?

my DD is now 10, but has been walking or cycling to school since she was just 9. 1.5km in an urban area, 2 mannish roads to cross, but pedestrian lights at each.

Those are some very good points about tracking but I did find it come in very useful one of the first times my DD walked to school alone. I walked it with her the first week before I had to go back to work, and hoped she would have learnt the way well enough by then but she took a wrong turning and got lost. She called me and I was able to see from the tracker where she was and direct her the correct way to go.
Also useful when DS started going for little walks alone this summer and got lost in the forest.

My year 4 dd goes from the grass near school, through the gate and to the door herself now - no idea how the school would ever know if she had walked herself all the way from home??

The only thing that I would question is who is locking up the house??

totally fine to walk if so close and you just she is reasonably responsible. My 10yo DD could do the same, but she doesn't want to (a bit of a scardey cat)... basically it depends

Id expect a 9 year old to get herself dressed brush teeth and make some breakfast. Id worry if they were able to do this basic stuff at that age. School bags money etc can be sorted out the night before.

I'd be interested to know where the flashers would be hiding on a residental street around parents walking their own children home at the same time and how me not being there would ultimately stop the flasher. Would the flasher cease to do the same if my child was in yr6 or yr7 compared with yr5?

Description of the OP DD's route:
It's 2 streets away, no main roads. Takes less than 5 mins to get to school. Theres a pelican crossing to cross the road, which she knows how to use.

I'm going to stick my neck out here and say, in the morning on the school run, parents would gravitate to crossing the road at the same point, thus meaning the five minute route isn't going to be particularly quiet.

(Going back to my points about risk assessing individual routes and bizarre blanket ideas of how age alone is the defining thing about whether a child is 'safe' or not.)

It's totally fine.

I don't get the rules about not being allowed to walk to school alone. I mean what happens? Sorry you walked to school alone that's not allowed walk back home alone and come with an adult?

Stupid.

In Europe totally normal for kids as young as 6 to walk to school alone. At 9 nobody bats an eyelid

Gogogo12345 · Today 13:15
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Oh wow . Just shows how times change. I went to school walking to bus stop and catching bus at 7. So did my mother although she had the school bd from 5 and public one from 7. My DD1 walked the 5 mins to primary from year 4 . All perfectly safe. As for schools not " releasing" a year 5 to walk home . Well that's bloody ridiculous.”

So did I in the late 60s. My introduction to flashers.

I imagine that there will be plenty of other kids and parents walking that way so hardly walking as a solitary figure by herself

I walked to school from year 3. Now that very same school I went to doesn't let children leave alone until they are in year 5 at the youngest.

Haven’t read the thread.

my DS is an early July 9 year old and he is walking to school and sometimes from school on his own. It’s fine.

Oh wow . Just shows how times change. I went to school walking to bus stop and catching bus at 7. So did my mother although she had the school bd from 5 and public one from 7. My DD1 walked the 5 mins to primary from year 4 . All perfectly safe. As for schools not " releasing" a year 5 to walk home . Well that's bloody ridiculous.

No way. It's not just walking to school...it's being at home alone, locking up, and getting to school all assuming absolutely nothing goes wrong.

9yo should be capable of doing those things?

Yes but that tracking device will have saved them from the man abducting them in front of all the other kids and parents on the two streets from the OP's house until school....

We are in the land of the ridicilously unlikely.

Your realistic worse case scenario is the child is still at home playing computer games...

Given that walking to school improves behaviour, especially for kids with ADHD in the context of massive concerns about the uptick in poor behaviour including violence particular from ADHD kids, its a funny old world.

So - no way. At age nine specifically? So when then?

btw what the op suggests is very much not illegal in the UK or a lot of pps would have been breaking the law.

No way. It's not just walking to school...it's being at home alone, locking up, and getting to school all assuming absolutely nothing goes wrong. And there's a routine, she'll be seen walking to school alone every day using the same route at the same time. I live in another country and we've had police charge parents for letting their children do this.

My year 5 walks to school with a friend. It’s a further journey than yours, quiet roads. She doesn’t have a phone. She’s an August baby so just 9.

MartinCrieffsLemon · Yesterday 21:42

The school will ring if she doesn't turn up

Bit late then.

Does anyone want to drag up the data on other forms of risks that a child might face on their way to school?

Funny thing - kids are in so much more danger when IN school, yet nobody considers them "too young" for it.

Remember that 'cultural difference' where roads in the UK were somehow much worse than in Europe??

Thats not what the data above is showing...

9 year old child left for hours in the evening whilst parents go to the pub. Not ok.
9 year old child left for 45 mins with phone whilst parents nips to the shops. Perfectly fine.
Can we see the differences here? Cos there's a lot of posters who can't.

Whats fascinating is the number of posters who say its 'more dangerous', but can't actually show any data that supports this idea.

Here's some stats straight off the bat here:

This release provides the number of personal injury road traffic casualties in Great Britain that were reported by the police to the Department for Transport in 2022 using the STATS19 reporting system.
Since 1979, there has been a general downward trend in the number of people killed on roads in Great Britain with a flatter trend in the decade since 2010. In 2022, road casualties showed signs of a return to pre-pandemic trends, increasing compared to 2020 and 2021 when casualty numbers were low, largely as a result of periods of lockdown leading to a reduction in road traffic.
The headline figures for 2022 are:

• 1,711 fatalities, a decline of 2% compared to 2019
• 29,742 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties, a decline of 3% compared to 2019
• 135,480 casualties of all severities, a decline of 12% compared to 2019

• 328 billion vehicle miles travelled in 2022, a return to travel levels seen in 2019 prior to the COVID-19 pandemic
• 5 road fatalities per billion vehicle miles travelled in 2022, up 2% compared to 2019

• the road user type with the biggest estimated percentage change for 2022 compared to 2019 for fatalities was pedestrians, which showed a decline of 18%
• in 2022, 76% of fatalities and 62% of casualties of all severities were male
• in international comparisons for 2022, Great Britain ranked 5 out of 38 countries with available data for lowest number of road fatalities per million population

So the risk isn't from loads more speeding cars around the place since I was a kid. (Which is talked about in the thread). There are more cars but there are also a lot more safety features in cars to protect passengers and pedestrians.

Does anyone want to drag up the data on other forms of risks that a child might face on their way to school?

My point being this idea that its 'more dangerous', often does not survive contact with water...

I'd let her walk it if she was happy to. It'll be good for her independence! If I or she were worried, I'd get her a brick phone to travel with.