Can your child walk to secondary school from your house?

[DarkGreen]

We are moving to a new area where the secondary school will be a 10 to 15 minute bus ride away from home for the kids and I feel funny about it. My kids aren't anywhere near secondary school age but don't plan on moving again.

AIBU considering only buying somewhere with a secondary/high school within walking distance or is it more normal they have to travel?

Rural in Scotland nearest secondary is 10 miles away DD will get school bus every day like most kids at the school the catchment area is large some come from upto 24 miles away

Annoyingly there isn't a school bus that runs to the school she has a place in, so will be public buses. She will be only just turned 11 so am a bit nervous about it, especially coming back when it is dark in winter. I suspect we will juggle it between us for the first winter and see how we go.

My dc will be able to but the catchment is wide so plenty dc will get the bus - school transport isn't funded if your within 3 miles though so they have to pay. School kids just use the public bus service

No. It's 3.1 miles away. Just consider if having to pay for the bus will make things tricky for you in future though.

My DD goes to her catchment secondary, it's more than 3 miles of pavement less roads, but the council have recently changed the rules and no longer fund bus places.
They do however fund bus travel to the 'nearest' (not catchment you note) school. That is 3.09 miles away and not on a bus route . Bus is £10 per week, but we car share instead.

Nope. It's the norm where we live though as it's a cluster of tiny villages. Even wider out, there are so may villages that the children have to travel to towns on buses. Some even go to primary school on a bus, without parents from reception. All perfectly fine and usual.

Mine can, about 10 minutes. It sounds for where you’re looking at, it will be normal for children to travel and they’re likely to do so with friends, so I wouldn’t worry too much.

Here they are on secondary buses from between 30 and 45 minutes. Sometimes an hour in heavy traffic. Depending which school they go to. It's an early start and late finish, but kids are resilient and it helps greatly with independence. They seem to enjoy chatting, listening to music or watching youtube, reading, getting homework done etc.

As secondary schools are generally larger and more spaced out than primaries, surely more children have to use public transport than walk. Not every family with appropriately aged children can live within walking distance of a secondary so they can’t be unreasonable not to!

In theory yes. In real life no. Bc of their SN.

My DD has left secondary now, but she used to have a 30 min walk, followed by 15 mins train journey, followed by 10 min walk. There was a secondary school 20 min walk from our house but I withdrew her from there in yr 8 after she experienced ongoing bullying and racism.

Yes. About 20 min walk

No school is a 5 miles away by the shortest route. It is 2 buses and at least an hour travelling or a 20 minute car drive. Since the pandemic I have picked up and dropped off every day.

We could have sent them to a school 5 minutes walk away but DH teaches there so we thought it wasn't a good idea.

Ds has to walk 15mins to the bus then a 30min bus ride. He walks with friends to the bus. There are closer secondaries but for a few reasons we chose this one.

Yes, 10 mins max. I walked to and from secondary growing up and it was important to me that DC could do so as well.
It meant when ds1 decided to join the after school rugby club in year 7, there were no issues about how he would get home afterwards. I have friends in more rural areas whose kids can't go to clubs after school as there's only the school bus home and both parents are at work.

We've done both first high school was a bus, then we moved and moved my youngest and she can walk and the eldest also chose that school for 6th form so she now walks too. But dd1 did 5 years of the bus with no issues

I can see my sons secondary school from my window 😆

We used to, which my DDs were starting to hate as the main route is a bottleneck that some troublemakers liked to exploit. We moved and they're very excited to be able to avoid that now by needing to take the bus.

Nope, 45 minute bus ride.

There are also trains though so in a way it's easier than the local school to/from which there is the one bus and that's it.

5-10min walk but we bought in the area with that in mind. Nice area good school

Nope, would be bus or car here. Same goes for the middle school.

No. When they started we lived in a village so they bussed to nearest school in town A. Too far to walk on roads with no pavement.
We moved to town B when eldest in year 9, there is a secondary school.in walking distance but he preferred to stay where he was with 30 minute bus journey.

Nope. 20 odd miles on the bus to secondary here. Primary was just over 3 miles with no safe walking route.

We live in a semi rural location

Our current secondary is about 3 miles away but the road isn't really that safe to walk down.

There will be a new secondary in the next village over in a couple of years but it will still be a bus there as it will be down some narrow country roads with no paths