How far do your children commute to secondary please?

15 miles, about 30 miles on a school bus

Just over 13 miles, DD gets a bus which takes about 40 minutes then a 5-10 minute walk.

DC are ten miles away at an out of catchment school. Thirty five minutes on the dedicated school bus £750 a year per Dc. This year has been great as DS1 has been driving them all.
It is a huge rural catchment, friends can be a lot further away in catchment and take over an hour on two buses.

As others have said, context makes a massive difference. 7 miles to the catchment school in a rural area where there's a free school bus is nothing (and in dd's case, there's a regular direct service bus too if she wants to stay after school).

If you have to pay a fortune / there's no bus service / you're tied into driving, it's a very different decision to make, even though it might still be the best option.

7 miles, maybe 20 mins by bus (though she has to leave home 55 mins before school starts because of bus times). That's our closest secondary, the other local option is 12 miles but bus leaves 10 mins later.

3 miles?

15mins on a bike. 45mins on at least 2 buses. 45mins - 1 hour walking.

40 minutes door to door on one train (20minutes) with seats always available

1 min to the school where I work. (not UK)

Both DD's come home when they need to. We also go to school at different times when it suits us in the morning.

I may well have exposed tmi

DSs school is a few miles from here. Is catchment school and so there's a school bus. Takes him about 15 min on the bus. When he's at his dad's house then it's a 5 minute walk to school.

11 miles, 30 mins+ in car, 1 hour+ on bus home (convoluted route with many stops).

Ds goes to the nearest school. The station is 8 minutes bike, 15 minutes walk or 4 minutes car and the train journey is 8 minutes. Then another 5 minutes walk. So maximum half an hour.

You need to think of cost as well as time. And you need to think about getting back after clubs and matches and rehearsals. And as they get older, you need to think about parties and so on. My dd went to a school an hour away- and when she started to have friends an hour in the opposite direction it was a serious pain in the neck.

We rejected a school (with an 8 hour school day) that was also minimum 75-90 minutes each way (blend of travel modes).

DC go to secondaries that have 6-6.5 hour days, 9 miles away, mix of walk-bus-train, about 40 minutes each way.

1.5 miles 30 min walk according to google maps. She sometimes gets the school bus door to door though. It's up a long steep hill as we are at the bottom of a valley

7 miles and it takes 45 mins by car in morning traffic. We did consider another school which was 12 miles but would have taken the same travel time.

Ours is the only local catchment school and is 10 miles away, about 25 minutes by school bus. Our village is not the furthest from the school either. Although we are in rural Scotland.

I used to get a bus 12 miles away.

There was very heavy traffic and it could take up to 90 minutes each way.

I hated it and was always exhausted.

Takes 15 mins

5 miles on a bus route straight to the top of our road but also our work route so fits in nicely.

Only 5 miles away but there's no close bus stop near home, nor near the school, so it's a walk to the bus stop, very slow bus ride into town (round villages and then hits bad traffic congestion) followed by a mile long walk uphill from the bus station to school. He leaves home about 7.20 to guarantee getting to school before 8:50 registration! And that's just 5 miles! Sometimes if traffic is bad, he gets off the bus in the queue and walks another mile.

Under a mile. Would take the average person 10 minutes tops. Takes a 12 year old half an hour, can not comprehend how this child can walk so slowly without going backwards.

45 minute journey but dedicated school bus stopping almost outside our house. One of DD's friends catches the same bus at start of its journey BUT her mum has to drive her to school bus making for a 90 minute journey altogether. This seems very long to me but her Mum says she loves the school and is worth it.

Not started yet but will be approx. 40 mins - 10 min walk, 20 min train, 10 min walk

About 25 mins if I drop her to the tube, otherwise ca 35 mins if she walks to the tube. London ca 5 miles. Reliable, safe.

When considering one secondary school with a commute I thought borderline, I tested it myself at the correct time of the morning, timing every leg of the journey

For me it is not just the expected number of minutes that is worth considering, but also

• reliability - how many minutes of "buffer" needed to avoid being late? (Consistency)
• simplicity - is it ONE means of transport, then much better and less stressful than 3
• safety - road crossings in London can be scary even for adults, avoid dodgiest places
• company on the journey or not
• how confident or anxious she feels about a particular route, stress / comfort
• how much time it consumes for the parent (not just vs work, but e.g. 4 legs of 30 mins would be two hours wasted! Parents also matter)