To send child to a secondary one hour away?

[hibbledibble]

I'm thinking hard about secondary options currently. One option is about an hour away, and an amazing school. It would however involved a train ride and then a bus.

Other options are a bus ride away, and also good, but don't have the same amazing facilities or stellar results.

I'm torn regarding which school to pick as first choice.

Is an hour too much to travel?

Agreed with those that say it's too far. Think ahead to years 10/11 when the homework is piling up. They still need down time as well as having homework (on top of dinner/ after school sports or clubs they may want to do) .. an hour after school is valuable time and an hour spent travelling seems like unnecessary dead time - unless there is a hugely compelling reason (like your DC being desperate to go there or the other local schools being dire) .. plus I agree re having friends within walking distance. My friend spends her Saturday nights driving 45 mins to go and pick her DS up from various places that she has no idea about as the friends are so widely scattered. Plus (finally) the dark and brutal jan and feb mornings!

I don't think it's too far. I did it, as did at least 1/3, if not 1/2 the school (no, we didn't live rurally, it's just normal to travel that far where I'm from). And it had zero impact on making / keeping in touch with friends. But perhaps socialising was different then. Everyone went home on a school night. On a Friday night or weekends, we caught buses / trains to each other's houses, met centrally to go to the movies etc.

The two forms of transport may be annoying if they're not regular. e.g. I wouldn't want to be waiting at a bus stop for an hour, wondering when the bus will turn up.

Terrible idea. What happens if they want to go to a friend’s house after school or go to clubs after school, what will the journey be like then late and in the dark?

I still regret making DD do this.....ten hours a week travelling, leaving home in the dark and getting home in the dark, no after school activities, no local friends... She's a tough cookie but ended up quite ill at one point.

Have you ever done a commute that involves two different types of transport in a single journey OP? I would never inflict that on my child, so much stress and opportunity for things to go wrong.

Would they be able to transfer there for sixth form if they wanted? I went to the school down the road for year 7-11 but then moved to a highly performing sixth form college in a city an hour away for A levels because I wanted to do so. I had an amazing social life and sitting on a train/bus for an hour to get anywhere was a thing I got used to very quickly, but that was as a 16 year old where I'd made the decision rather than as a child where my parents had - but then if all of their friends are also going then it may not be so bad. I'm in London now and as others have said, kids literally go across across the city on a commute to get to school like adults do so it depends on what is normal in your area.

We worked on an hour max door to door commute and a decent public transport route not a fixed time school bus.

That included waiting for the bus / train etc and the walk at either end. It was fine. Actually the commute they ended up with was often shorter ( the bus / train combo was better than the single bus trip route ) AND it was just walkable too at 5 miles through the city.

3 kids through the school sequentially and I think each walked once due to severe snow - please have a back up plan for that - we couldn’t have driven to get them the roads were not passable.

It was fine.

I’m not sure an hour commute that was 10 miles or more would be ok though. I also won’t mention the atrocious homework done on the bus 😂😂 but I left that up to them

I'd never thought about the impact on my grades from the school commute, I got very good at doing my homework on the school bus, which maybe wasn't the best working environment, and came out with very mediocre grades from a good school. Maybe I'd have done better with less travel, will never know.

I did it for my A levels. It was horrible and stressful as I risked missing the school bus connection. The only other option was taking an even earlier train and waiting for over half an hour at the station. In the end, I stayed on the train and took a connecting train, which took me to the town and walked the rest of the way to school.

As soon as I passed my test, I bought myself a crappy car and drove. On top of that, I depended on a lift to and from the train station in the adjacent town so I was hanging around the station if my mum got stuck in rush hour traffic as I was picked up at 5.15 pm in the winter. It would be awful to have to it 5 years.

I did this at secondary school and it was fine. I would rather have gone to the good school than the awful ones close to home.

It’s normal where we are, my daughter is on the bus for around 85 minutes each way, the same with most of her friends. The bus is their favourite part of the day where they all socialise.

Take a week off work and do the community yourself for a week and see if it's feasible. November is a good time when it's dark.

Try the journey yourself at rush hour, make sure you are carrying both a rucksack with a couple of books in it and a PE bag with a full football kit.

When it gets busy give up a seat for an adult.

Then consider train strikes, if the train isn't running how will he get there, ditto bus.

Then the cost of travel, I know in some areas children travel free but not in all areas.

Does he lose things? It's much harder to find a planner that has been left at school than a planner that might have been lost at school, on a train, on a bus or on the street.

One of the things I hated was that I was often the last person in the house home. That sounds like not a lot but things would happen like my parents might order a takeaway, they got what they wanted as did my brother and I had what they had guessed I wanted, and sometimes it was what they thought I wanted, and in the oven to keep warm because I had missed a bus.

The only other option would be child comes with me (40m in car) to high school in town I work in, or another town about 50 mins away in bus as well. This thread is interesting. Some children, like the ones in my village don’t have a choice (unless parents move) and cope perfectly fine.

I think it is different when all children are commuting and when it is a school bus.

Some schools are really strict on punctuality and a child can end up in detention for being 5 mins late, if 40 children are arriving late because a school bus is late the school knows it is not the children's fault and can plan accordingly.

@FAQs

It’s normal where we are, my daughter is on the bus for around 85 minutes each way, the same with most of her friends. The bus is their favourite part of the day where they all socialise.

I do think it's fine when everyone does it and all the kids who attend the school are bussed in from outlying towns and villages as they're all in the same position.

But if everyone who attends the school lives in town A and you live 30 miles away in town B, it can be incredibly isolating to be stuck on a bus on your own for two hours a day while all your mates are free to hang out at each other's houses etc.

I don’t think it’s far away. Mh school was about that, so was DH’s.

When we look at senior school options for DC we’ll have about 15+ schools to consider, closest I suppose 30 mins commute.

Bear in mind you too will be doing that trip for after school activities, parents' evenings, concerts, matches etc. A journey can be productive tine but also mean an early start and finish, with homework deadlines looming and little time for socialising with local groups and friends.

I think it's too much. We're putting down a secondary school that's a 25 min bus journey away, but it's ds's choice as much as ours (he currently attends the junior school in the same village). He'll only have to get a bus back home 3 days a week though, we'll be able to drop him off/ collect the rest of the time as we're in the village to drop off/ collect his younger sister from the cm. It's a door to door bus service too, so nothing complicated about it.

I think it depends on the child. My parents wanted to send me to a school a short bus ride away, and I pushed to go to a “better” one further away. I got into the one of my choice, and never really complained about the journey. From the age of 11-18 I left the house at 6:45am every day, and got home just before 5pm. I had to get a bus, then a train, then another bus or a long walk, to get to school, and the reverse on the way home. It genuinely didn’t bother me. It also didn’t affect friendships either, as I’m still close friends with my best friends from school, almost 20 years on.
I was a fairly academic, not very physical child, and not only did that school push me academically, I think I might have been bullied in the local comprehensive. My sibling went to the local school and it was right for them, socially they fit in there and they would have hated my school. So it is a question of what is the better school for the child, not just which is the better school.

I did that kind of journey for sixth form, but I think that's a different kettle of fish to asking an 11 year old to do it! I was shattered in 6th form and my parents usually took me one way, then I'd get a bus (rural variety going round every village in the area!) home... Had a friend or two on the bus with me so not too bad, or I read. When I passed my driving test it made a big difference too, obviously that isn't an option for most high schoolers!
I think the main things are the complexity of the journey though (multiple changes, walking either end), the reliability of public transport options, and whether other children would be making the same journey. That matters more than total time as time spent on a reliable train with a friend is probably quite fun/social, whereas waiting around in the cold for unreliable connections on your own is not.

This thread is interesting. Some children, like the ones in my village don’t have a choice (unless parents move) and cope perfectly fine.
My nephew is in this situation and my dd who is the same age walks 15 minutes to her school. She gets home at 3:40. He gets home at 4:50.

My nephew's school only set an hour of homework a day as they know their students are all on buses for two hours a day every day whereas my dd gets double that. His school also don't schedule after school matches, they are all played on Wednesday afternoons whereas all my DD's are after the school day.

My dd would hate it, she’s now 15 and loves the flexibility of seeing friends locally whenever she wants.

She’s always involved in extra curricular activities so often stays on at school for one thing or another.

She has quite a lot of homework and revision now so I can’t imagine having to factor in a long commute.

If you live rurally and everyone has to travel I can see why you would, but otherwise I would stay local unless the schools are dreadful.

@thewhatsit

I don’t think it’s far away. Mh school was about that, so was DH’s.

When we look at senior school options for DC we’ll have about 15+ schools to consider, closest I suppose 30 mins commute.

And your dc will probably go with some friends. Op hasn’t clarified if this is the case. Going alone is completely different.

Currently DD's favourite school would involve a 10 min walk to where the school bus picks up, then a 45 min ride. So she'll be only with others from that school on the coach. I had 45 min journey to secondary and always vowed not to give that to my child .... trying to steer her to a nearer school, we shall see .....

How will he socialise with children from that school?
Will he be able to go on his own?
How tired will he be?
How long is the journey on a bad day?
How will public transport failings / bad weather affect the journey?

Have been through a similar situation with DD a couple of years ago although she is a bit older and it was the choice between two colleges, one a 5 min train ride and 10 min walk with just OK facilities versus one that involved 1 train (15 mins) and 1 bus (40 mins) but the college had great facilities. She picked the better facilities and the longer commute. It turned out to be a shocker of a journey, the train was no problem but the buses were awful, it was one bus every 20 mins and they were always running late and if they got really delayed in the rush hour they would just cancel it completely and she'd have to wait for the next one and it caused her problems with her college on occasion due to lateness. She was leaving at 7am and quite often not getting back until 7pm which was especially grim in the winter. It also prevented her from doing her out of college sporting activity which she loved and she wasn't able get a part time job like a lot of her friends. She transferred for her second year to the nearer college, resumed her sporting activity (and the social element) and now has a part time job two evenings a week and Saturdays. She is a lot less stressed and happier now.