Is this school run ridiculous?

[BluePeonie]

Dd is at secondary 10 minutes drive from our house.

Two younger ones are at primary 25 minutes drive from our house (usually takes 45 minutes in morning traffic including dropping DD off on the way) . I spend 2 hours a day on school run in total with toddler in tow.

Our house is great, rural and big enough for all of us. We wouldn't be able to afford this in the city. I always visit friends or go to toddler groups/town in the city after the morning school run which works out well.

The (state) primary school is exceptional and DC are very settled and have great friends. If it wasn't for this I'd move them!!

DH doesn't want to live in the city. I wouldn't mind, love the country but had the commute!

Is this ridiculous?

You get a wonderful opportunity to talk to your children where they have to listen as they can't get away.

I too had a long drive to take my kids to and from school.

This is why I'm living in a house in the middle of a town, which is too small for our family of six, because if we moved out we could have a much bigger house, but all four children are at school within a 10 minute walk of the house - and I very rarely need to use the car during the week at all. The sports centre, their friends, the shops etc are all within walking distance. I would LOVE to move out to the countryside as I feel like a country mouse trapped in the town mouse's life, but for the moment we compromise because of the convenience.

I grew up very rurally and in term time was away at boarding school so it wasn't an issue, but the holidays could feel very long, as there were no buses (or only one every other Friday or something ) and so either my parents had to ferry us everywhere or we just had to entertain ourselves.....which I mostly did by riding and reading and was happy, but my much more sociable brother suffered I think!

I've been forced into doing a ridiculous school run by a local council as there are no vacancies for my daughter where we have moved to.

I am planning on seeing out her older brother schooling at the primary school and seeking a vacancy for her in 18mths time. However I can imagine I will be reluctant to move her then as she is so settled and it is a really good school. Not necessarily academically but the teachers staff and community are amazing.

The tricky thing is by the time she's in Year 6 how younger sibling will have started reception. I would like him to go to a new school that is being built but as it is a staged new intake there will be no year group for her.

I completely get what you are saying about seeing friends and going to groups straight from the school run as this is what we do. We then head home for lunch/afternoon and return to school area. Often entertaining the children at the park Library etc whilst another sibling does a club.

It's certainly not what I would have chosen to do but we had the offer of a secure tenancy and I would have been stupid to have turned it down.

Bit off topic but I find it so strange that when you live in the country you end up having to drive everywhere. Seems to negate the benefits of being rural.

I would move the kids. But I do anything to avoid driving!

2 hours a day!? I'd move to a smaller house in the city, and have the time.

I know mine is a bit different as I work where my kids go to school at the moment, but I do a trip of nearly an hour each way (including taking youngest to nursery, doing the drop off - and the required chat - and getting going again). Yes, its a PITA - was very much so when was on maternity leave. But they love the school, and living very rurally means I am used to travelling a minimum of 20 mins to even get to the supermarket. On the plus side, we have some great audio books to listen to and time to do all the reading homework and times tables homework in the car on the way home!

Bit off topic but I find it so strange that when you live in the country you end up having to drive everywhere. Seems to negate the benefits of being rural.

I'm a bit confused by this comment. Surely the point of being rural is you're not surrounded by shops and buildings?

I hate being stuck in a car so I couldn’t it. Because of traffic it’s a 20 minute drive or a 25 minute walk for to school. I’d rather walk.

I suppose it's a matter of what you're used to and people can get used to almost anything (it amazes me the number of people who claim to be perfectly content with such commutes). But for me spending that much time in a car every week day would mean a serious impact on my quality of life.

For a while DD was at a childminder about 20 mins away from our house, then to drive to work was about 25 minutes back the way I'd come, then obviously do it in reverse at the end of the day. It was awful and I hated it so much. I felt like I was spending my whole life in the bloody car. I could only hack it because I knew it was temporary (matter of months, not years) and I only did every other day anyway (alternating with DP).

Now I have a 5-minute cycle with DD to nursery followed by a 15-minute cycle to work and it's like a different life (not only a shorter commute, but the short distances mean that I can ditch the car for the bike and I find cycling is much better for my mental and physical wellbeing). If I were you I'd be looking to change things.

If one DC only has a year left after Sept, leave them at the primary. You’ve only got the school run til July next year.

For your toddler, put them in the local primary. If they start school this Sept, you will have a year of juggling the run, but afterwards you have 6 years of a shorter commute. Older DC can go into before/after school clubs for the year, since they don’t want to move school and it’d be a lot cheaper paying for childcare than moving to a smaller house.

It’s not as simple as “move them to a closer school”

We have been allocated a school 5 miles away- no buses or school transport. There are 3 schools within 10 mins walk, another 3 within 40 mins walk.

None have places. We have been on the waiting list 3 years, and have appealed every year. One issue is we are only allowed to wait list for 3 schools, and there are about 10 closer than the one we are at that would be more accessible. Add that to defined catchment areas, which means people further away actually have priority even though we live closer. Because of that we don’t have any sort of realistic chance of any school other than our catchment, which is already oversubscribed so 3 kids at least would need to move before a place came up.

Entirely up to you. If it suits, crack on.

I'd hate it, but then we deliberately chose a house within 5 mins from the primary school - and sacrificed space to do so. Everyone has different priorities.

After August my school run will be:

DS1 - High school 35 minutes away in a different town

DD - local village school ten minutes walk from home

DS2 - nursery 20 minutes drive away, different town again.

I’m not looking forward to it but needs must and it’s just about doable.

Agree with @missadasmith that this is excessive. Maybe it's a great school, but imagine what else you and they could all do without all the travel time - and as they get older, how hard it is going to be for them to have active social lives or get involved in school activities if it's a 25 min drive to be close to where their mates live, they have to take turns in your mum-taxi with three other siblings, and presumably if you're that rural, public transport won't be great either.

I'd move closer to school.

I grew up doing an hour to school, an hour home again. It was our dad's commute too, so we would all go in together, do after school activities, and home again together. We had loads of story tapes, old radio show compilations, music tapes, and listened to the news together every morning - and had some of the best talks all together. My brother and I used to make cassette mix tapes as well and we'd take turns listening to each others' music.

It's not ideal but I think we made the best of it, and it meant we grew up right on the beach which was amazing and our friends always wanted to come to our place rather than hang around the town centre. Some of my favourite memories are of listening to Jeeves & Wooster radio plays and Michael Jackson in the car. We were expected to sort out our own school stuff from a young age as if we forgot PE kit or homework there was no going back as my dad couldn't be late to work, which made us more responsible and punctual. We also used to eat breakfast in the car to make it easier to get out of the house (mostly breakfast wraps).

It's not a short commute, that's for sure - but you can make it more bearable I think.

It is not ideal but if your kids are happy and you are happy with your house you shouldn't worry about what people say. Everything has a price.

I sympathise OP. I have 3 primary school dc and 1 secondary school dc. They are at 3 different schools in different directions. I spend at least 3 hours a day doing the school run and that is if there are no after school activities, which lengthen the afternoon school run. We also used to walk to primary schools and then we moved to a different county and this is just the way it is now, it’s tough and monotonous but it won’t be forever. I feel it’s just something we have to do to get the best education for our dc in the area that we live now.

We moved to the other side of our commuter town so now are about 4 miles from their primary. Driving anywhere in town takes an age particularly in the morning so 4 miles can take half hr. They like the school though. We're not unusual for commuting as its a Catholic school so you get people coming from all over and the nearby villages.

What is the area like near the secondary school? Is it closer to the city? If you moved there could it cut down the commute but still be away from the city?

I wouldn’t want to be spending so much time in the car on the school run, especially with a toddler but I’ve never wanted to live in a rural area either, so my priorities are different to yours.

It would be sensible to move them to the closer primary school. They’d soon settle in and make new friends.
They would then have friends living locally too.

Once upon a time, when DS moved from local prep school to big school, we decided on the basis of academic quality to do what we had seen another friend do. We were in the car by 6.30 am to meet the school bus at 7.15, and I did the 50 mile round trip twice daily for a year. At the end of the year, it was so exhausting, the school said it was too much and we moved to the local comp... which taught DS precisely half of eff all (badly) for two years. So now we are trying to catch up the wasted GCSE years with weeks to A levels.

As it happens, I am not sure the outcome would have been very different had we made other choices, but it would have had to have involved boarding school and with one child, that wasn't what we wanted.

That sounds excessive. Why are there no school buses? I would complain to my local councillor.

Going against the general feeling here, but your school runs sounds reasonable to me
We have no choice of schools. Many first school pupils have a commute of at least 30 minutes, some 45 minutes on narrow windy roads. This increases to an hour or more for secondary school.

I used to do over a two hour commute walking on my days off.

Now DH dropped dcs off on a morning so that probably adds up to 30 mins on his journey to work and I pick up - this adds about 40 mins into my journey - dh often picks them up as it's currently no too far out of his way home whereas I work 6 mins away from home but dc schools is about 20 mins away.

It's not for long in the grand scheme of things.

Surely if there is no safe walking route (no pavement) then the council is obliged to provide transport for your eldest?

For your younger 2 I can understand it being denied as you turned down a nearer primary.