Children walking home alone from school

[Jeclop]

General discussion here.

At what age did people start allowing their children to walk home alone from school?

For a little context, we live in London in a fairly busy area that is also very touristy on Fridays - think well known street market that is visited en masse. School on said street. The walk home would be around 20minutes or a short cycle (on the pavement!).

My children are still a few years off being able to walk home alone but out of curiosity, when did you start allowing your children to walk home alone, with a parent waiting for them at home?

Surely they tell the teacher they are walking home themselves and if you were to get a call you'd reiterate that?!

Year 6 I think. Generally a quiet, safe village, but unfortunately one quite tricky road crossing to do - we did quite a lot of practice first. I'd have been happy for them to do it earlier if we lived on the other side of that road. Felt we really had to allow it no later than year 6 given they would be taking train into Reading and walking a mile to school through the centre the following year!

Dc were ten. That fell at different points of year 5/6 as one is old in the year and one is the youngest in the year.

Beginning of Y6. I was quite nervous - but DD wasn't and she's fine walking too and from school.

Mine started the term after she turned 7, which is normal where we live. She has to cross a few roads but always at a zebra with traffic lights. It usually takes her 10 minutes on her bike or 25 minutes walking but you won't get a good sense of the distance from that because she goes at an absolute snail's pace. It's under a km.

My son has a 1 mile walk through a London suburb and he started in mid year 5. He’ll have to get the tube to secondary school by himself (maybe older sister will be nice for the first few weeks!) so he needs to get used to it. For context also he is in yr 6 now and has started to go to local shops/parks with his friends for a few hours and bring himself home.

It looks like year 6/ age 10 is usual in UK
I grew up in Germany, walking to school age 7 - I now think that was crazy!!!

End of year 6 here. Two main roads to cross and we're 20 minutes walk away, with few others in our direction, those that are live slightly further away and on the bus route so don't tend to walk. We may have started earlier but had to walk dd2 anyway. We started letting eldest take a slightly different route then she would leave the house 5 minutes earlier than us and make the whole way there.

Year 7 she now gets a bus to the city centre, then either catches another bus or walks 15/20 minutes to school.

The school allowed from year 5 until the new head joined, then it was not at all for a while! So let them walk to school instead from year 3 when we lived close by, then from year 5 when it was a 1.5 mile walk through fields and down a country lane. It was not that often though, I liked the walk.

Year 6 for my DC, some schools allow from Y5 but their school will not allow this.

Just wondering as you say London, what the plan is for secondary? Especially in the independent sector it’s very normal for Y7s to do unaccompanied public transport journeys to school. So I will personally be bearing that in mind and working backwards- not allowing a straightforward walk until last term of Y6 would be quite the baptism of fire when they have to get on the tube solo after only 12 weeks of that. I think we’ll probably go with Y5 for DD but she’s a bit younger at the moment so will wait and see.

My kids school playground backed onto my back garden, so I just used to open the gate and let them through.
So you could say they took themselves right from day one.

Year 7 for eldest, DS about to go into year 7 and I'm scared!

It’s normal here in primary 5 which is year 4 in England (but half a year older so maybe close to year 5). I think the thing is that it is usual here, so all the children are walking along in friendship groups.

There's definitely a cultural and age difference between Scotland (younger and usual) and England (older).

Year 5 or 6, but in london I’d wait until secondary school

Year 5 here. Our town has a First, Middle and High school system, meaning that children leave their first school at the end of year four and attend middle school for year five through to year eight.
The school days all end within five minutes of one another so parents with first-school age children have little choice but to allow their year five children to at least begin walking home/towards their younger sibling's school.

At my kids school (NI) it's 'allowed' from P5 (year 4) my older two (P6 and P7) haven't really needed to walk as I am usually picking up their younger sibling but are starting now to prefer to walk home with their friends & this works well with after-school activities and what not. We are in a small town, about a 20 min walk, only 1 busy road to cross.

From P4 or P5 (in Scotland) which is about age 8/9. Ours is a pavement walk along a busy suburban road and crossing patrol. Lots of kids walk together (but lots of other kids get dropped 300m from front door to school gate by 4WD)

Year 6. Luckily DD"s grandparents live close to the school so she did that first, before the longer route to ours.

Slightly different set up here. The school he is in is primary and secondary. In fact starts from nursery so he will always have the same route / walk.
I on the other hand had to do the tube ride as a kid, I just can't remember from what age!

It's not up schools they don't have PR.

We live in a v similar area and allowed them to walk from yr5 onwards. Allowed them to walk home alone from yr6. That was probably a bit later than most but they have sen so not as mature as other kids.

Thanks for all the replies. Seems like the general consensus is around age 10.

In Japan, my daughter started from age 6!