How far would you be willing to travel away from school?

[MamaWorrier]

Pretend you have an important event coming up, think wedding/funeral/graduation, and it's happening on a school day.

What's the longest you'd be willing to travel from school/nursery - without having childcare close by in case of an emergency?

Depends on the transport infrastructure I would be planning for a car breakdown

If for a day school (I assume you mean this vs. boarding?) then I would always choose the closest school that is appropriate for my DC. At nursery/primary level as close as possible should be a major criteria.

When looking at secondaries and considering schools further away, take a look and see which routes the school buses and public transport take as this opens up your options a lot.

An hour or so.

But I think the take on this is to make more contacts locally so if there was an emergency there would be someone to call on.

Most people are happy to help in an emergency.

I'd go wherever I needed to for the vent but I would make rock solid plans for a sleepover etc at a friend's house so I wasn't worried about getting back

Is it practical to attend a wedding on a school day? Maybe if it was literally just the ceremony and a quick lunch, but you'd probably need to not drink if you had kids to pick up at 3pm...

If it was a funeral and important then as far as you need to go. If you aren't going to be back by 3pm then you either need to arrange for childcare to cover or can't attend.

We've done 2 hours for a funeral. Child booked into after school club and friend lined up to collect as back up if we weren't back by 6.

We've done 2 hours for a job interview and 3 hours for a funeral but DS was in full wraparound 8-6 and it was still a squeeze getting back both times.

Up to 2hrs.

An hour but I don’t drive so that’s my limit

@cheezncrackers I think you misread, the OP wasn't asking about the general distance school is from home, but how far you would travel on a school day without backup childcare for an Ad hoc event.

Probably an hour or so for me, but schools do longer school trip and if your child was ill you'd probably have to / or want to go and get them if you could

Thanks all. Totally appreciated.

We do have contacts locally, and family too, but family locally are likely to be travelling to the same event.

No alcohol will be consumed by me and DH at event.

Wrap around care is available, and DC would be happy with that.

Friends would be more than happy to help if we got stuck somewhere, but I was thinking more among the 'emergency' lines of if one of the children fell sick/got injured at school or nursery - which is unlikely to happen, and hopefully won't.