To not understand why so many people drive their dc to and from secondary school?

[Dancergirl]

Surely once at secondary school dc should get themselves to and from unless it's really not possible to get there by public transport?

Someone I know - her dd has started Year 7 at a local secondary. There is an easy and convenient school bus. But she's driving her and picking up every day even though she also has younger dc at primary!

At dd1's school (she's currently Year 8), it seems lots of her friends are driven to and from. Some live locally and there are very good public transport links.

Why?? Am I missing something?

ginger for so many reasons.

1. Because unnecessary journeys like this clog up the roads and cause pollution.

1. Because it creates an unhealthy dependency on the car and on the parent. I assume you don't want to be doing this when she's 35.

1. Because travelling independently is a life skilskill. I went to university with 19 year olds who had never used a bus and had no idea about routes or how to read a timetable.

Another one here whose children have nowhere to store their wet gear if they trudge in in the rain.

Ours have lockers, yes, but they are about the size of a child's shoe box.
Ds claims that he can only fit one trainer in at a time (his excuse for often only having one trainer...)

If they cycle, they bung everything including the bike into the school bike racks and hope that their coats/helmets/reflective jackets etc are sooo uncool that no other child would bother to nick them.

Primary was fine, because it had cloakrooms. Secondaries, IME, don't. That seems pretty universal.

I just checked the 'Transport for London' website, and it seems they receive part of their funding from a government grant. The buses where I live are run by a private company.

Presumably the grant comes out of central funding, so kids in London are getting free transport part subsidised by the rest of the country, whereas in my town there is no grant and no free transport, just extortionate public bus fares and a council who are so short of funds they cut free school transport three years ago. Oh how the other half live!

Funnily enough even though the holier than thou, walked to school in blizzards & floods, did me no harm posters have got on my wick my DCs do in fact walk to school.

My real gripe is with the school which insists that students wear poncy office shoes entirely unsuited to walking to and from school. I am quite happy letting DS & DD go to school wearing army boots and trainers respectively. So far no notes home!

When i was young the school bus was a horrible experience, late, dirty over crowded and a lot of bullying, I really appreciated my Dad dropping me and my friend off and her Mum collecting us. A door to door transport with a parent can't really be frowned on can it?

Well... It's -24 out there atm. There is a school bus but it takes 50 minutes to do what would be a 5 min car journey. The pavement hasn't been ploughed so he'd have to walk along a snowy road with cars sliding along it.

But you know... Just excuses.

Right, DD walks to secondary with friends, and gets a lift home from her friends granddad because he looks after her friends after school. No buses except the contract buses, which are only available to kids living more than 3 miles away (we're not).

DS walks from his friend's house to primary, with friend's mum. DP drops him off there on his way to work (as he leaves later than me, at 8am). We live 2 mins walk from the school , so I park at home before collecting DS from the after school club on foot.

But even if DD was getting a lift into school as well as homewards, not a problem, she already knows how to use the bus.

I had forgotten about my own horrendous experience with cycling to school. I did it every day - 3 miles each way, busy roads with huge roundabouts all the way. We didn't have a car. I'd grown up cycling everywhere - I wasn't a novice.

I did this most days from y7 to y13. It was horrific.

There were many times I was nearly killed, many times I would arrive at either destination soaked to the skin, choking and almost unable to breathe due to the heavy traffic and long hill climb.

Often I just wanted to die. It wasn't good. It was STILL better than the bus, to me.

Now I drive I see a lot of cyclists in danger every day, and some of them are children and I would never want my child to be in that position either.

My two secondary age children walk 1.5 miles to school (not far I know)

If they have after school clubs or a late finish for any reason I will pick them up

Don't drive them to or from for any other reasons although when number three gets there in September I may well drop them closer to school if the weather is absolutely dreadful

But I don't want them used to a lift, it needs to be a treat!!!!

On public transport Stanley yes London Bus companies are subsidised and but they are not truly funded by the rest of the country - there is no way the City of London would function without a decent and integrated public transport network. For the London Bus network to be part of this requires the private bus companies to share bus design and colour schemes, timetabling information, ticketing, fare structures/ revenue - which is impossible in the rest of the country where buses were deregulated as well as privatised in the eighties. London Boroughs, TfL and The GLA have to cooperate with the bus operators to ensure bus routes are serving the needs of their communities and certain socially useful routes are part funded by the London Boroughs from their budgets.

If a local council in the rest of the country wants to coordinate bus routes and ticketing to benefit their residents they are out of luck as due to competition laws the private bus companies can not discuss such commercially sensitive topics. So in our village for instance we are left with two buses an hour on virtually the same route operated by two different companies barely ten minutes apart - so if you miss the later one you have a 50 minute wait, then if you catch the wrong bus back you have to buy another ticket despite already having an over priced return for the same journey.

Shit bus services are mainly down to Thatcher - who was wise enough to see that it would be a mistake to deregulate the bus services in London but did not give a toss about the rest of the country.

DH drops son off on the way to work. I collect at 3.20pm, if DS caught the school bus home, I would have to pay £600 a year for a one way journey. Also the school bus would only take him as far as the end of the catchment area, so I would have to drive 6 miles to pick him up, I might as well drive the whole way. The only public bus to us leaves at 5pm about 30 minutes before DH would pass the school on the way home.

Public Transport is almost non existent in rural areas.

Our teen DCs get a lift to school from DH in the morning as he's going that way to work. They walk home.

Well, I am appalled about a) such poor provision of public transport in some areas, and b) lack of storage in schools! How difficult can it be for schools to provide banks of lockers for coats, PE kits etc??

We are lucky enough to be able to send DS to a very local school within walking distance - and we chose this above other options (that we had a chance for) because an easy journey to school adds to the quality of life for all of us.

DS would go on the bus otherwise, no way I could accommodate driving him to and from school alongside work. But we are also lucky enough to have free bus travel for school children in London.

I think it comes from the GLA, not central gvt?

Ah! We are not lucky wrt lockers.

Space. Schools really do not seem to have space for all those lockers.

I picked dd up for the first half term twice a week. She has a long journey and day. I would fo it afain but its the cost.

Very hard to provide, I suspect, Dancer! Our local schools are around 1000 to 1500 pupils. A decent-sized locker per pupil would take up a huge amount of space . Ours does provide teeny lockers that you could maybe fit a purse and spare socks in, but certainly not a coat or boots.

Hahaha - 2500 children at our school - each locker 18 inches wide, maybe 3 stacked... do the maths.... around 1200 feet of wall space that needs to be accessible to all the kids no matter where their tutor room/PE hall/Lunch hall etc happens to be... there is no time to traipse off to a locker between lessons... lockers of sufficient size to be used would be wasteful of space and inaccessible most of the time anyhow....

the kids here carry their stuff...

Actually, come to think of it, DS sometimes stuffs his excess belongings into the tuba case, as that can go in the music store room.

Maybe that's the answer -- a fake instrument case?

Lancelottie - our music teacher used to let those of us in the orchestra leave extra stuff in the music room along with our instruments. We were very grateful.

Is the lack of coat space something that's happened recently, perhaps in response to so many pupils coming in vehicles and not necessarily needing coats?

I see our catchment high school pupils stopping outside the school gate to take their coats off each morning and stuff them in their bags as they are not allowed to wear them once on the school grounds.

I think it's becoming clear that this issue is not something that be debated in such an general context.

The title of the thread should really have been 'To not understand why so many people drive their kids to school IN LARGE TOWNS LIKE LONDON WHERE THERE IS ADEQUATE & CHEAP TRANSPORT PROVIDED apart from those with bullying and SN issues'.

Re: the congestion/pollution part of the equation for eg:

Round here i imagine a very high proportion (60%?) of the school kids at the secondary in town, are driven to school, because, like us, most of them come in from the surrounding villages and have the distance/cost, reliability and timing of buses/dangerous lanes issues which reduce the choice of travel, which have been deemed ok reasons to drive a kid to school, on the thread. I imagine it's the same for most rural areas.

And we don't have a congestion or pollution problem. During my 20 min car journey to the school i will only meet one or two other cars until i get to within a mile or so from the school and then it's just light traffic. (Granted the one or two i do meet on the lanes are usually doing way over the speed limit, making cycling a suicidal activity - but congested it certainly isn't).

So this is mostly all about driving kids to school in big towns, then. No?

Shit bus services are mainly down to Thatcher - who was wise enough to see that it would be a mistake to deregulate the bus services in London but did not give a toss about the rest of the country.

Thanks for the explanation. It seems my point still stands then- oh how the other half live!

True dat Stan - but the country doesn't sub Londoners on buses - London pays.

Oh and goldmandra - my 3 were always made to take their big coats off once inside school. And yet still the school try to dictate the colour and shape of the winter coat! Must be black. No fur on hood, no logos, etc. Why?? They're not bloody allowed to put them on in school!

(they're not allowed to take their blazers off when it's hot either until pupils literally start to faint with the heat)