Banning the school run

[AElfgifu]

leading on from driving/walking thread, Gove suggests banning driving children to school.

All schools to be double red lined ( not stopping, unloading, pausing at all.)

all roads within half a mile of a school to be resident parking by permit only during school drop off or pick up time.

parents not allowed to park within half a mile of their school.

(Although most roads round here must be within half a mile of a school?)

The school at the top of my road is ridiculous. They park on the junction so you can't see when pulling out (cars or children)
Next to the school is a gravel car park. Nobody uses it , they just abandon the cars half on the pavement on the junction
When I say the car park is next door it's literally 10 steps from where they park now. I don't get it

YY OddFodd this one is bad enough for an April Fool except it had the word Gove in the title - and it's now June

Our school (not in UK) doesn't have a lot of parking, and parents are therefore discouraged from parking at drop off/pick up; what they have instead is a system where there are staff standing at the kerbside outside the school (usually the principal, others seem to rotate) helping the little ones and watching the bigger ones get out of the car and go into school - so parent never leaves car. They have a slightly more complicated system for pick up (staff with a megaphone, parent puts sign (provided by school) on dashboard showing name of child/class, by time parent gets to kerbside, child is ready to get in.

Seems to work fairly well though I don't envy the staff standing outside in the hotter months. If you need to go into school you can park and do so, but on the rare occasion when most parents do park (first day of year, sports day etc) it is ghastly, and you can really see the benefit. I don't think it would work in most UK schools (not enough staff, not necessarily practical with road layouts etc) but it is an example of a different look at the issue that worked for us.

Ha, I'd like to see him enforce that at our school. There's nothing but single track lanes frequented by tractors if you go half a mile out of the village. Try again Gove, you numpty.

I wouldn't be able to park outside my own house if this came in. I am lucky in that I do have time to walk there and back, get in my car and go to work, but many people can't.

.

It won't work, parents ignore the rules of the road and parking restrictions on a regular basis in the current situation.
They'd just park on the red lines, like they do on the zigzags and on the pavements and over people's driveways. School run is egotism and rudeness incarnate, twice a day.

Really Tucson ? No child over the age of 8 that lives within 2 miles of the school should have to be driven to school. They can walk. It's good for them

In theory great, in practice not so much.

If my DS had gone to the catchment school it's just over 2 miles across a very busy main dual laned road with a 40 limit - it's one of the main roads into town. I would not be happy with him walking that on his own until he was in secondary school, just too dangerous and I don't think I'm that over protective.

If he had gone to our nearest school - under a mile away, walkable by a path beside a rural non busy road, I'd probably be happy with him going there on his own from P4 ( age 8.5) although I'm not sure if I'd get into trouble for letting him do that.

I'm sure we all agree that if the school is within walking distance and it is safe for the DCs to do it and it doesn't mean the parent will lose their job, and all parties are physically able to do it then fine in those circumstances it would be best to walk.

Those who think this is an excellent idea might want to ponder on what happens to those who - thanks to "choice" - have not been able to get a place at their local primary school and have to go to one 5 miles away.

Or, indeed, those who don't even have a local primary school and have to go to one 5 miles away.

Or, indeed, those who find the local primary school a little too keen on God fairytales for their liking and, in order to get the secular education their kids deserve, have to send them to one 5 miles away.

Not so black-and-white as "I don't like those annoying sods who park by the school" now, is it?

The route we walk to school in theory should be safe for DS to walk by himself by the time he is 8 or 9, realistically it is made so dangerous by drivers dropping off at school I can't see it happening until he is in year 6 if at all.

I think schools (and to a point local residence) should work with councils and police to put in realistic restrictions to keep things safe for that school. Blanket policies will never work but schools concerns about safety/parking should be taken seriously.

If Fuckface Gove wants to ban driving to school he should try making sure that all children have a school within walking distance. Utterly impossible in many rural or semi rural locations but DS couldn't get into any of the 3 schools within 15 mins walk of our house and ended up at one a 30 min (at fast adult pace) walk away. I get the absolute rage having to drive it but it's just too far to walk there, walk back and get to work. Can't cycle either as have too many non cycling littlies to cart around. Massive bloody pain.

So I am assuming give will also be taking steps to ensure all children can actually get a school place within walking distance and will also be forcing employers to be more flexible with start and finish times for working parents to account for the extended journey times cutting into working days

Oh and also verynovicegardener making up the salary difference due to the loss of earnings incurred by having to start later and leave earlier.

Dds school
Is four miles away I'm
Learning to drive but currently rely on buses. I'd love to walk her to a school but our catchment one is shit and I won't send her there.

I find it very odd that those go have the lovely set up of being able to walk their kids to school, don't.

I'm
Not talking about those who work and drop off on the way, or those from out of catchment. I'm
Talk in about those who can't he bothered to walk the shirt distance and just drive. Those people are te ones who are the problem and are creating issues for everybody else.

If the government really wish this to happen, then they need to put their money where their mouth is. I have just started maternity leave from a job promoting walking and cycling to school, there is a fund called the local sustainable transport fund, and the whole idea is to reduce congestion on the roads in towns and cities to ensure that they remain attractive places for businesses to invest.

The main issues stopping parents walking to school are, that they need to drive to school and go straight to work afterwards.

However, parents also do not walk because of fear for the safety of their children, many schools do not have school crossing patrol officers, and who can blame people for not taking a role which is for most borough councils the lowest paid one on the whole of their payroll.

To put this in place and make it workable, there would need to be a safe place to drop children, for parents to then go straight onto work, and then for school staff to ensure children get to school safely, via walking buses. So called park and stride sites.

There should be school bus services that parents can book their children onto, where they are certain they will be safe for the whole of the journey.

All those that are not going to work, should be targeted to try to persuade them to walk to school.

If the government want to stop parents driving to school, the alternatives need to be attractive, and fit with parent's needs. People used to walk their children to school, but most couples had one parent staying at home and available to walk them to school.

The funding I spoke of above is woefully inadequate and will for some boroughs run out at the end of this financial year. It does not cover all schools but only a select few.

Times have changed, arrangements for getting to school need to change too.

I can imagine if you did implement a policy like this, it would have very wide ranging benefits for society. Loads would be less crowded, drivers would be required to drive more carefully as there would be more pedestrians and cyclists, children would grow up more healthy and independent, councils would be forced to upgrade roads near schools to make them safer for pedestrians and cyclists, etc..

I don't think its feasible in Britain though. Too many people are incapable of walking a mile, along with their children.

I think the UK has massively high rates of people driving their kids to school compared to other countries, particularly Scandinavia and The Netherlands and Belgium. In the latter, its perfectly normal to see young children cycling to and from school on their own. But usually on much safer roads than here. Round her, they are building all sorts of new developments, and don't even bother to put pavement access in!

I used to cycle 5 miles to school and back. I'm not sure why, except it meant an extra 10 minutes in bed instead of leaving with my parents and getting a lift in the car! Nothing ever happened to me, it was very dull, I didn't even get a puncture.

I cycled everywhere when I lived in Oxford in the 70s and 80s.
Wouldn't cycle to work where I live now, very few cycle paths, far too many parked cars and traffic is fast and often oblivious.
Walking is fine if there's a passable footpath or pavement, but there often isn't.

And of course, as well as lack of cycling provision, promoting more cycling when the school is perhaps a few miles away, would also run foul of the quite considerable "cyclist-hating movement", which seems to be quite vocal on mumsnet and parts of FB, etc..

What about the many grandparent who take/pick up? My dad will be doing the school run into his 70s and has bad knees. Not fair to expect him to park half a mile away.

When I was at school no parent drove their kids to school. Mums walked us to Bus Stop until we were about 8, then we walked to stop on our own (or even all the way to school 2 miles away).

Coming home from school, as I recall Mum met us at school gate then got bus home. That went on until we were confident that we could get bus home alone (well, alone with dozens of other children all doing the same).

I think there was a school bus when I was at infants, but later on it was just public buses from the same bus stop as the school bus. IYSWIM.

I think School buses are the way forward.

We didn't get our catchment school, thanks to an excess of siblings. So instead of a 10 minute walk I have a 20 min walk to school across a 40mph dual carriageway absolutely heaving with commuters, and then 20 mins on to work.

We walk most days but I go straight on to work, so when it tips down in the morning I drive. A 40 min walk in torrential rain always results in wet socks, no matter what you wear.

Our school solved the drop-off problem by introducing a system whereby as soon as the gates open at 8.45 the children can go into the classroom. Everyone filters in in dribs and drabs until 8.55 when the bell goes.

The residents had a road safety meeting they invited the HT to. They suggested the school set up a walking bus, completely missing the point that the biggest traffic problem in our area is the students from the local FE college who take all the spaces, and see nothing wrong with driving on the pavement when they meet a car coming the other way. School operates an unofficial one way system to ease problems so the residents and students drive round the opposite way. The council refuse to make the one-way system official, for all sorts of excuses.

I can never understand why successive governments bang on about the school run while ignoring the huge numbers of college and university students who drive. Surely as young adults they are the very people who are most capable of walking/ cycling?

iwill

The park and stride site sounds a fab idea!!

Yes I definately agree that the worse it gets the less people there will be who allow their children to walk to school because parking and congestion makes it worryingly unsafe.

No child over the age of 8 that lives within 2 miles of the school should have to be driven to school. They can walk. It's good for them.

With all your wisdom can you point out a solution to my problem.

Ds is 8 he attends mainstream school, he is asd, he has no road sense. He needs close supervision as he is a danger to himself.

So I beg you to give me a solution.

Gove is fifty sorts of arsehole rolled into one, but I don't think this was him. This appears to be one Michael O'Brien, the councillor in charge of children's services in Medway - a sort of amateur arsehole where Gove is a professional.

He says the school run should be banned and children should be forced to walk to school "come rain or shine". Parents should be forced to park at least half a mile from school, blah, blah, blah.

If you vote in Medway please remember his name.