To let 7 year old walk to and from school alone?

[RLE2]

DS is in year 3, we live about a 10 minute walk away from the school. We live in a quiet area, he won't be near any busy roads, the only roads he has to cross is our road and the school road. The school road isn't too busy as it's only people going to the school using it and our road is empty apart from neighbours. Is 7 too young? It's not unheard of for year 3's to walk by themselves at his school but most still walk with a parent, a few don't

well said @lyralalala people think schools have a lot more power than they actually do, what really matters is the law and the law is silent on the subject of walking alone just like it is on being home alone

it is a parental judgment which if things go wrong will be tested to see if it was reasonable

yes - but my point is that there is no blanket rule across the UK. Obviously.

(And I'm personally happy for our school to decide this)

DS2's school don't allow children to leave without an adult until year 5. They are brought out at home time and the teacher/TA makes sure everyone is collected by the right person or leaves safely if they are older and have written permission to walk alone. They have a strict uncollected child policy that ultimately, after other avenues have been exhausted, involves social services so you have to get them or arrange for someone else to. They use discretion so if you are unavoidably delayed and ring ahead they keep your child until you arrive but if you just don't turn up or are regularly late it's a massive safeguarding issue.

They have a strict uncollected child policy that ultimately, after other avenues have been exhausted, involves social services so you have to get them or arrange for someone else to

You do realise if they call SS they’ll likely be told to wind their necks in?

In no occasion (I worked in schools for 15 years) did a HT who tried to implement that policy get the backing of SS. On the three occasions they didn’t back down SS pointed out that their workload is massive and children walking home from school when parents deem it safe is not a high risk activity (unless someone dripfeeds that their school is next to a motorway).

Every other time as soon as parents have questioned it the HT’s have taken advice and ended up sending out forms getting parents to sign that it was their responsibility if they allowed their child to walk themselves.

It’s not the schools choice if your child walks to and from school.

@drcoconut as soon as social services are informed there is permission for them to leave they are not interested
so if SS ring and you say I wrote to headteacher giving Johnnie permission to walk home alone that is the end of it as far as SS are concerned; headteachers like to give impression this is a policy to scare parents into conforming but in actual fact it is balderdash

It wouldn't be for me

I'm not considering letting my 7 year old walk to school alone btw. He is nowhere near ready and it's too far through the busy town centre to be safe.

Headteachers make those rules because they know the vast majority of parents won't challenge them but yeah, not enforceable, SS would only be interested if a child was supposed to be picked up but wasn't because the parents were drunk/high/too busy robbing a bank, not if the parents had made it clear that their child could walk alone.

dotty1970 I'm sorry but that's ridiculous, my year 7 would've been mortified if I'd insisted on walking him to secondary school

I'm interested that on this issue the general opinion is that school policy is ridiculous and unenforceable. But if you dare to send your DC to school with a minor uniform breach or use your discretion to keep them off sick you're a shit parent who's teaching your child that school rules aren't for them, encouraging disrespect etc. This stuff is only policy too, there is no law against a skirt that's a few mm too short or the wrong colour hair band. Why the difference?

DrCoconut I can't speak for anyone else on the thread, but I believe school uniform is also a misjudged idea which is used as an elastoplast to cover up a multitude of problems, mostly inadequacy of senior managers. School uniform policy tells you a lot about the head's ambitions for him or herself, and a school obsessing over uniform always has bigger problems.

I used to teach in England in a school where the head of my large, core subject, department avoided teaching his bottom sets by keeping them in the corridor and yelling at them with actual spittle flying, about uniform infringement.

My kids go to non uniform schools and always have because we've lived abroad since before any of them started school. They're baffled by the concept of teachers saying anything about their clothing choices, and no school time is wasted worrying about clothes.

Our school don't allow it til year 6. Someone asked how school would know, my dd's teacher knows she doesn't walk alone so isn't allowed to leave the teacher until he has seen me. A lot of her class walk now they are 11, she doesn't yet as it's a 30 minute walk from our house and her only friend that lives near us isn't allowed to walk on her own until after Easter holidays so dd will walk with her then. I think 7 is too young but I think it also depends on where you live and whether it's the norm or not, but here year 6 is definitely the norm and I wouldn't have considered it until now.

while in Scotland 99% of schools have uniforms it can not be a condition of education so you can't be sent home or banned from lessons or subject to internal exclusion for wearing jeans to school
I would say the vast majority conform to a certain extent at local high school which is quite good the uniform is mainly black bottoms and jumper with white shirts and a tie
98+% wear black trousers or skirts & white shirt, 85-90% wear tie, 80% wear the jumper some wear a black grey hoodie instead less than 50% wear the optional blazer mostly S1 and S6 prefects have a special blazer
the tiny differences between Scotland and England's education systems / results are not because Scottish schools don't send 14 year olds home for wearing the wrong colour socks

When I was in first year of juniors, my childminder took me part way, seeing me across the road and I walked the other few minutes. That was nearly 40 years ago. The works was generally safer and less people drove the kids to school.
My 7 Yr old us also in yr 3. The school will let them leave without seeing them picked up, but they are told to return if the person meeting them isn't there. Some meet them at the gates(other side if the school to her classroom), some at the bottom of the hill (school is at the top of a shortish hill, making it a culdisac).
My daughter still gets taken and picked up. I trust her to be sensible, keep to the pavement and cross the road using the zebra/with the lollipop lady.
However I have no trust in the judgement of the adults to not drive on the pavement and to stop when a child or the lollipop lady is on the crossing.
There have been several near misses when I have been there, only avoided because I took evasive action. (we were on the pavement when a car decided they wanted to mount the curb to turn around. Car parked outside the gates next to the pavement. Looked for cars coming up, but didn't think about the fact that the wing mirror was overhanging the pavement. Started to reverse and nearly hit my daughter in the head) . Mention anything to the driver and they get abusive.
If you have doucts I would say it us too soon. Generally it us year 5 and 6 that go completely by themselves. We will start phasing it in so that she us taken part way first in a year or two. She also enjoys to chat on the walk.