Guilt over school commute

OP, no solutions, but a hand hold, as I’m feeling similar guilt right now too.
DD has just begun at an outstanding secondary (supposedly one of the best in the country), and leaves the house at 7.15am, arriving home just after 5pm.

Same as you, on paper, it doesn’t look too bad - it’s a 5 min car journey to drop her at the station, then 20 min train, then 10 min walk at the other end.
On the way back, it takes her longer, as she gets a bus home from the train station.

She actually seems to be coping fine with it (and many other children from her school do the same journey, it seems to be the norm that kids travel long distances for this school), but what gets me is the lack of time to do anything as a family in the evening, once dinner, homework and shower is done.

IME city buses don't ever get better - if anything they get worse as services generally get cut not added to

Did you often get that bus on that route? If so you'd have known what it was like before expecting your child to?

I don't think it's practical sorry OP

Most of the children in my village have a long bus journey to school leaving at 7.30am, returning close to 5pm. Our area is not well serviced with secondary schools. The first term is all about getting used to new schedules and the rules of secondary school and most children find it exhausting. I'm sure he will be fine once he gets more used to it all.

Completely normal around here. My DC go to Catholic school. The nearest Catholic secondary is 30 miles away and most of the children from the primary go there. The bus takes an hour but the train is significantly quicker. Would a train be an option - maybe not in year 7 but later on?

Hour and a BIT

I used to have an hour and big commute each way at that age, it was for a better school, was doable but not great.

2 hours for the home trip really isn’t though - can you arrange a pick up?

That school would have to be spectacular and the local one completely shit for me to consider that worth it. Driving him for at least some of the week if possible may make the situation better but otherwise I'm not sure I'd find this sustainable.

I don’t have the guilt because I wouldn’t make mine do that commute.
I know a parent who send theirs to a private school with that sort of commute, but she shares the journeys with another parent, and they both work so that they can drive the kids. It’s a choice they made.

If we're talking the difference between good and outstanding this is madness. The local school has to be the pits to justify this surely otherwise he'll be too tired to benefit.

Send him to the closer school. That's cruel. Let him have some friends that live nearby. School is often said to be the best years of your life. What you describe is miserable, even worse when it's cold and dark.

Absolute madness. Is he leaving at 6.30am in the morning so there’s no risk he’s late if it can take 2 hours? How on earth is this better for your son?

2 hours is a mad commute, my dc did 35/40 mins each way for a much much better school and they still felt the trip.

DD2 goes to school 30 minutes to 1 hour away (traffic dependent). DD1 goes to college 30 minutes to 45 minutes away. Both specialist provisions, so justified. I'd find 2 hours to be beyond the limit of reasonable.

I had to do similar commute for a "better" school.

Believe me, the school was not sufficiently better to justify 2 extra hours a day of sitting in a bus, being exhausted by the journey and not having any local friends.
Think of all the "better" things he could be doing with that time.

I would also query whether a school that involves perhaps three hours a day sitting in a bus can be a better school. The commute is part of the school.

I moved jobs last year to a better job - it is more interesting, more focused on my skills, more options to progress, more money. The commute is 40 mins each way (compared to 15 mins in my previous job). I have assessed that it is worth it, but the extended commute is part of the assessment, and a negative against the positives. If it had been 90 mins each way I doubt if I would have taken the job.

My commute to school was about 50 mins in total - walk, school bus, walk. I lived a long way from a lot of my friends (selective school, rural area) and looking back, that made my teenage years a challenge. Different now no doubt because of easier communication and probs parents more keen to drive DC to far flung places (mine weren't).

40 mins at a minimum is OK; a possible two hours each way is surely not. I used to hate my bus commute - bullying, boredom, worries about missing the bus. How bad is the nearby school? Would it be possible to counteract the badness with some enrichment at home - paid for by the bus fare or driving savings?

It's regrettable, but as with most things in parenting, it's an invidious choice. I'm interested that the word "guilt" is so prevalent here. I don't think men would dream of saying they felt guilty about a choice made to benefit their child. Anyway OP, the decision was made with love and his best interests at heart, and sitting on buses isn't exactly torture, my kids spend hours with headphones on wherever they are.

@Allotment123 my sibling and I used to commute, it was over 30 miles (we were dropped off and picked up). However, as you can imagine, it took hour and half to get to school (sometimes longer) and about the same to get home (driving into large city and back out rush hour time).
When we had snow, no one got back home until 10pm (it was one off, but awfully long time).

The first term was hard, I felt the exhaustion, but then we were so used to travelling (by then we would use train too on some occasions), we'd find it odd when people looked shocked at how far our school was.

So, he will get used to the travelling, but of course it's a case of assessing what is best for him.

That sounds exhausting. Can you move nearer?!

Hour journey time is fine and manageable. Two hours not.
However, his first few weeks he's going to be tired no matter what because of all the changes of going from primary to secondary.
I'd be looking at the reasons why the home journey was so long and working on how to make that more reasonable/reliable.

That’s too long a commute. Imagine the stress of being late for exams etc.

Similar for my older one. She spent the first year feeling exhausted and was then ok physically but very resentful during her final years. She didn’t want to change school however so there wasn’t a choice.

the younger one goes to a local school so commute not an issue but the education doesn’t even come close. It’s a tough one.

In my town all children who pass the 11+ have a journey of an hour or so. And as we live in a fully selective area, that’s a lot of children (about 25% of all children go to grammars).

My ds had an hour’s bus journey to his school, but no walking time. My dds had a quarter of an hour’s walk to the train station, a half hour train journey and another quarter of an hour’s walk at the other end. They survived. They would have preferred a shorter travel time, but accepted it as the norm.

How bad is the local school?

Does that really worth it? If the school was chosen by him and there's something special, maybe. But sounds like you chose it, and it's not significantly better than local school, just better.
Potentially 3 hours+ of commute, maybe 2 if cycle? So much wasted time when he can do something else, like clubs, meeting friends, etc.