Quality of education/ quality of life

[Blinkingnoraaaaa]

I live in France where it has been acknowledged that there are problems with state schools, including in terms of squashing creativity in pupils.

We are lucky enough to have school places for our children at a super, supportive, creative private school, and our children (aged 7 and 4) are very happy there. It's an hour's drive away.

But the day is so punishing... they are up at 6am, get home just before 6pm, and there's still homework to do, so my oldest only gets about 30 minutes of free time a day. There's also homework on the weekends.

My children are shattered, I'm shattered, my back hurts from all the driving, we miss a lot of other activities because we have no time or energy to do them...

Is this schedule worthwhile? The children are thriving, but we miss out in many other ways. And unfortunately I can't put them in the local school now and back to private later... Either we stay there for good, or go to local for good.

Thanks

Having come straight from another thread where people are talking about children who never enjoy school, then I would be tempted to say stick with it... that said I have a lot of family in France whose children have gone through the state system and have thrived.
Have you looked specifically at your local school? Surely all state schools cannot be alike?
Or would a house move closer to the private school (assuming it's all through) be an option?

Thanks for your reply.

We've ruled out moving house because we love where we live, we can't afford to live in the city where the school is, and we really don't like the towns in between.

I suppose I could ask for a tour of the local schools before ruling them out... It's true I've just gone by the national mood rather than the specific schools

I guess the other thing I'd say is it seems like an incredibly long school day given the timings so presumably they are doing extra sport/music/activities at school which you then aren't having to travel to separately?

Eg my kids are at school 9-3/4.30 on ASC days and schools are only 15 minutes from home but we still spend a huge amount of time driving around to get them to their activities and also often aren't home til around 6pm.

When you put it like that, it sounds okay actually... They have two days of extracurricular included in that. Maybe the day isn't as bad as I'm worrying!