Would you allow an 11yo to pick up 8yo from school?

This happens a lot at our school because the secondary school is right next door.

It definitely depends on the kids though. My daughter at 8 would have been safer on her own than with her 11 year old brother.

Lots of families do this at our school.
If your kids are sensible and won't fight then it's fine.

Our school wouldn't allow it. They are not allowed to leave alone before year 5, and before that they must be picked up by someone older than 18.

If that was not the case, I might consider letting my 13yo pick up my 8yo but it's a very safe, short route.

Not sure I would have at 11.

I would practise them doing the route together when tired and checking that they can behave

Not allowed by dc school. Once I asked 15 yo sister to go ahead and let school know I was 2 mins behind (walking on crutches, and had got delayed) and they wouldn’t even let my dd in the gate even though da saw her and called out “that’s my sister!”

You have to be 18 and authorised by school

Yes, I have a 10 year old (11 in July) and an 8 year old (9 in September) and my eldest goes to collect his brother from the classroom and they walk to meet me a third of the way home and we walk the rest of the way together.

In the morning we all walk 2/3 of the way then I leave and they get themselves to school.

They've been doing this journey for years with me and then last year I had to start driving so I would let them walk the much shorter distance.

It works well, they get some independence and I still get my daily walk. If my eldest has something on then it makes no difference, I'll just walk a bit further and collect the youngest from his classroom.

If we lived closer I would let them both do it alone, they are both capable but it's quite far and a lot for them every day.

Technically they set their own guidance.
Rules are enforceable and that one absolutely isn’t.

they just hope it’s a rule parents don’t challenge.

My daughter walked my son back and forth to school when she was in p7 and he was in p3 - so 10 and 7 I think. But she’s super responsible and has been walking to school herself for a long while and he is a good listener. I also bumped up their pocket money in appreciation so they had an incentive to behave. Was quite an adjustment for me to walk my son in the next year when she was in high school - didn’t miss that part of the day at all!

if the little one is irresponsible though then absolutely not. Too much pressure on the older one and would be devastating if something happened. Maybe work towards this more slowly (meet them partway, follow a bit behind, etc)

I think a lot of primary schools allow Y5 and Y6 to walk home. A previous primary school my child was in allowed Y4s to walk home as well. But I guess each school sets their own rule.

That sounds really fair, OP. There's a ton of growing up the 8 year old will do in two years!

I'm absolutely not saying you're not entitled to your opinion - but you are stating it as a fact, and it's really not. The NSPCC is actually quite clear about this. As they point out, children vary. They are always going to recommend leaving a child with another responsible person, because their job is to make sure people don't think 'woo hoo, I can leave the baby at home for three hours while I go down the pub and it's ok, NSPCC said so!'

But if there were a real concern, I think in a country that is as risk-averse as the UK, there would be fixed rules. And there aren't, for the very good reasons the NSPCC gives.

I would say no for a combination of circumstances mostly the 8yr olds behaviour and the length of the walk home
A sensible 8yr old fine or a shorter walk with a more silly 8yr old
I would also factor that.some days they can come out of school like little whirlwinds (mostly wind and rain affected!!) And that's too much for an 11yr old
Plus it would stop your 11yr old joining any after school clubs that run or hanging out with friends etc as they need to pick up.

I teach 8 year olds. I wouldn’t trust any of them alone for an extended period of time. The nspcc guidelines agree with me.
How long would you say it was ok for??
And I’m entitled to my opinion - 8 is too young to leave at home unsupervised.

DS school allow then to walk home from Year 5 so I would say its ok from then. Otherwise someone over 16 has to collect. We recently had a reminder about it from school highlighting it is a safeguarding risk so is a blanket rule across the school.

But most 8 year olds are old enough.

I don't see how you can be so dogmatic about it. It varies by child, of course, and by situation. But it's just silly to make absolute statements when 8 is well within the normal range of ages when you do trust your child at home alone.

The old chestnut on threads like these is: would any official body be concerned by the idea of a child left alone? If someone rang social services to say a 16-year-old was home alone for an hour, they would probably be ticked off for timewasting. If someone rang to say that there was an unattended two-year-old, everyone would be horrified. But 8 is the sort of age where you're most likely to get 'erm, and?' because many 8 year olds would be absolutely fine.

Of course if there are complicating circumstances, that is different.

Yes, and we will be doing.

But, only because I'd actually trust the 8yo to walk home alone (has more road sense and a better sense of direction than DC1) but school won't allow it. They will allow a secondary age sibling to collect though.

8 is not old enough to leave home alone.
My 11 year old was just fine at that age but I wouldn’t have left her in charge of an 8 year old, it’s not fair. The consequences are potentially far too serious.

Utter madness that a school wouldn't let say a 16 year old collect a younger sibling from school.

My 9 year old walks home by himself from primary school, let alone with an older sibling to look out for them.

that is not the same.

Older primary kids can be given permission to walk home alone. That is not the same as an older child taking responsibility for the younger one.

So in the OPs case, if the 8 year old is OK to walk home alone, then there is no problem with the 2 of them walking together.

Some do try and say they don’t allow children to leave alone or only allow in Y6 or the last term of Y6.

they don’t actually have the authority to blanket rule (and it’s actually stupid to do so - my twin daughters were ready to walk home alone at totally different ages!) but many parents don’t realise that.

In this scenario, no. Would I personally allow it if we were a 3 minute walk away in the village? Yes. Mine walked around the village together at that age. Not a 20 minute walk/10 minute cycle on busy roads though, no way.

Our primary doesn’t allow siblings under 16 to collect anyway.

I’m surprised at the amount of schools that won’t allow this. My Dd walks home from school with classmates, ie nobody picks them up. They’re 10, not 8 but do all these primaries apply the same rules to all ages?

This.
The school won’t allow it.