What age do you let your children walk to school alone?

[Soubriquet]

And how many roads would they have to cross?

Dc’s school have a policy that children can do the school run alone from year 5 but year 6 is preferable.

Mine are year 2 and 4, so not walking alone yet.

When they do, they would have to cross one ‘main’ road (which I would supervise as it’s outside our house) and one back road.

The main road is the only road through the village but even then it’s not overly busy.

The back road sees a maximum of 10 cars a day.

City - they need to cross 2 A roads and several side streets. Or hop on a bus.

They started in the summer term of year 5 (occasional coming home alone), then adding to it in autumn year 6 (both ways) but being accompanied when it was dark in winter unless exceptional circumstances, then expanding again from spring and being pretty much solo for the last bit.

I'd have done it all at least a year earlier, if not more, if I lived somewhere with less relentless traffic

I’m in london; our school allows kids to leave school alone (if parents have signed permission) from year 5. However lots of children walk to school beforehand, my year 3 child has classmates who walk with an older sibling or even alone. They are the sensible kids, though.

I happily let mine set off by herself but she has to wait for me and her little sister to cross the road because of all the dreadful, selfish drivers around the school (mostly other parents, blithely speeding to pull up outside the school, not giving af they might flatten another child..)

My daughter's school doesn't allow them to walk home alone until 6th class , I'm not sure what the year equivalent is in the UK. She would have a ten minute walk with one road to cross which is manned by a warden

P4 age 8/9 is common here.

Mines been walking himself to school since after the last homeschooling so maybe October last year, was just turned 9 and end of year 3.

He also takes a bus to his dads, bus leaves from school and stops near to his dads house. Maybe. 12-15min journey.

"I trustdd to cross roads safely but I don't trust drivers to drive safely.

I run several times a week around the local roads and almost every day I see cars go straight over zebra crossings, exceeding the speed limit. Cyclists and motorcyclists speeding through a green man at pedestrian crossings when they have limited visibility of who's crossing etc."

Don't know how to quote properly but this 100%.
Dd1 is year 6 now & super sensible & trustworthy. I need to let her walk home now it's light with the clocks changing. It's 1.2 miles/26 mins according to googlemaps and there is a quiet route she can take with only one main road to cross. But people speed & jump the lights all the time & there's a college nearby and the kids hunt in packs which also makes me nervous.
Most of her peers walk, rarely anyone else at after school club in year 6 so I need to sign the form over Easter but it scares me!

Year 5 with 3 busy roads to cross.

Is anyone else’s school only allowing it from year 6? Ours is year 6 but seems every other school says year 5?

Our school won't allow it until year 6 but from year 5 as we were there anyway to pick up DD, we'd collect DS from the playground then let him walk home ahead. It as good as DH would be at school and call me to tell me when DS left and I then knew if he didn't turn up within 15 minutes, we could start to worry! .

Comments that a child is a bit dreamy or unreliable worry me. I'd argue that DS was absolutely a child who, when he was 7 or 8, you'd have thought, "hell no". All it did was make us more obsessed with giving him the tools he needed to be independent. I see my job as a parent to teach him the things that don't come naturally to him. Not to accommodate those things indefinitely.

Actually, to reiterate the above. I've started realising that DD is wildly competent but possibly as a combination of Covid and being the younger sibling, she's not really that confident or looking for independence. I've started with a few very minor efforts to get her a bit more independent and will probably ramp these up a bit over the summer. She's only 7, so lots of time, but I don't want her to embrace the idea that if she's nervous she can just not do something.

My DC are in yr 4 and 5, I let them walk home together or my eldest on his own. I gradually started dropping them further from school and letting (testing) them lead on crossing roads whilst we were together. I still go and collect my youngest if she’s on her own. We live a 10 minute walk away with 1 busy road to cross.

Maybe when she was 14 as she shot up to 5’7” then 😂 but before that I would’ve been too nervous

Our school let them walk home from year 5 with a parents concent. My son walks home, he knows im not far behind him if he needed me as im at the school collecting his siblings

I don’t have kids myself but I did a school placement last year at a school outside my house and I saw 2 girls around 7/8 who looked to be walking home by themselves. They may not be my children but it is a concern and bugbear of mine to be doing that at that age as if I did have kids I wouldn’t like if they did that/wouldn’t allow them yet. I personally think it should not be the right thing for children aged 8 and under to walk to school and back unsupervised yet.