How do you manage work and the school run in secondary?

[GonkSocks]

If you and your DP both work 9-5 type office jobs with a commute, how do you split the school run, or just being at home for you kids, if your kids are in secondary school?

For context, recently DH and I have both been hybrid, where he's required 3 office days and I'm required 2, so it was easy to just have each of us do both runs on the days we were home. My office is switching to 3 days in office soon, so that won't work anymore.

DS just started Y7, so wraparound care seems to have disappeared.

He's able to get himself to and from school on the bus, but could use someone around in the morning to make sure he's getting out the door, and I'm not sure I feel great about leaving him alone for hours in the afternoon.

I think we'll manage by having DH go to the office a bit late one day, and me come home a bit early that same day, but I'm just wondering, what other things do you all do in this situation?

When my eldest started secondary school he left for the bus before i dod the school run for the younger ones. I work locaally so i could drop to school and then go to work. Some days i finished at 3 and 2 days they went to after school club so ok those days DS got home about 4pm from the school bus and was home alone until i got back around 6.
DD was the same but covid hit when she was in year 7. We then moved house from ohr small village to the town where the secondary school is. I dropped off to school as it is a couple of miles and they all walk home. DH works from home most days now is around but on the days he is on the office they just let themselves in.

My daughters school are open from around 7.45 so days i am going to office i just take her early and she walks home and is home alone till around 6. She has been doing that since year 7, now in year 10.

Talk him through what he’s expected to do when he gets home - change out of uniform and dirty elements into laundry hamper; get a snack and drink (and tidy up)

Isn't he aready accustomed to doing all these things, or capable of thinking of getting a snack and drink if he wants one?

Some dc’s aren’t yet though. I have noticed a lot less independence at an older age than there used to be when I was growing up - and even the difference between DD and her gang when she joined Cubs v the DCs who joined 10 years later (post Covid) and their ability to do things independently…or at all. Even suggesting they take their plates from table to basin was a problem, and getting them to do the shared chores of washing up became a grind…because they were so used to their parents doing every single thing for them. I was a leader for over 10 years, and there was a perceptible change.

My post was based on the kind of things we did when building up DD to getting herself home from school (in 5th class - the second last of primary school), rather than 1st year of secondary. But the kinds of things she needed to know and that she was worried about so we talked through or that she knew who to go to for help if we weren’t home yet etc. We did it over a period of about 8 weeks, but it was accelerated at the end due to a bullying issue, and we were glad she was comfortable getting home herself twice a week, which became 4 afternoons a week in 6th class (we were in a carpool to a local pitch for the last day so I did one half day from work in every 3 weeks). But I couldn’t have got home from my job to collect her more often. And she didn’t want to lose out on her extracurricular activities more than she had to, as well as everything else caused by the boys involved - and we agreed with that as parents.

She thought it so surreal when she went into secondary, before Covid, and how little independence some of her classmates had. She taught half the class to get the bus to the local shopping centre on a Friday after school in their second week…the bus that was just down the road from school and went right to the SC.

Some DCs know what’s expected of them and what to do - but others need to walk through it and have it explained and set out the routine for the new thing (secondary coming home alone instead of primary where afterschool club sorted the snacks) etc.