To tell you the school does not decide when your child can walk home alone

[Itisuptoyou]

I keep seeing this on threads and I don’t want to derail what the thread is about.

But the school cannot decide this. You do as parent. It may be you are broadly in agreement with the school and I am but this is your choice and not the schools.

It irrationally annoys me when people claim ‘the schools don’t allow …’ Not up to the school!

My point is that the risk comes from the parent/the home environment NOT the walk home. Pretty straightforward actually. so because some kids have a difficult home life, all kids should not have freedom? That is the end result to your ridiculous assertions.

if a child has a parent who is using drugs and in year 5 isn’t allowed to walk home but in year 6 is… well are you really saying it’s ok for an 11 yr old but not a 10 yr old? No! It’s not ok for either of those children, but the walk home is not the risk. It’s the parent using drugs. You haven’t actually pinpointed the risk of the actual walk home!

are you seriously saying a school needs to see a parent every day to keep a child safe? My younger son’s school sees me infrequently, in the chaos of pickup time and lets my boy out as soon as they see me, they don’t smell my breath, check my appearance. They know and have risk assessed me by coming to my home when he started, by engaging with me at parents evenings, trips and meetings throughout the year.

and my older son is doing great, he is independent, loves getting about alone, feels extremely grown up and has learnt what to do if there’s a tube strike, how to manage a stopped Oyster card, has been stopped by police and dealt with it like a champ, knows how to manage trouble from other kids. He is amazing, and capable and it’s my job as a parent to nurture that in him, to teach him he’s capable and encourage his confidence. Not to tell him he needs mummy by his side because some parents use drugs.

the lack of logic is totally astounding actually. I’m almost shocked - but then I remember, risk is actually a difficult concept to understand, though application of logic usually helps.

I had to write a note saying that I was allowing my dc to walk home alone once they started year 3. School were surprised I think but didn't express any issues. From year 3 school doors were thrown open and all the kids poured out as one anyway 🤷‍♀️.

I don’t see this to be a big enough issue to be causing problems about it. If my school says no (which it does), I’d respect they’ve come up with that for a reason and find other ways to encourage independence. It’s not really a risk of SS being involved for the majority imo, they don’t have the capacity to deal with a single issue about school run between the school and the parent. If it’s on top of other concerns, that’s very different. However, it’s not an issue I’d argue with the school with.

Our school do only release to a list of people and you have to prewarn if someone else is collecting (state village primary school). They will let them go if you phone up - for example, if a meeting overruns and you’ve said ‘so and so’s mum might collect today’. If no one turned up, they’d keep your child back and call you (we got a club wrong once and they called). As I’ve never tried, I don’t know what would happen should you say they had to be released to walk home alone. They do list being brought to and collected from school by a responsible, known adult in their rules, so I assume parents who have an issue with that talk to them. As the school is responsible for the child until they leave the premises and I’ve chosen for my child to attend the school, I think they could argue they do have a say because they’re choosing how to hand over their part of responsibility. I’d hold them accountable for my dc seeing something inappropriate during their time of responsibility or being hurt, so equally they are passing that responsibility back at the end of the day (or taking it in the morning), which is fair. Children at our school are released individually from their classroom door or the hall door or the staircase door for classrooms that don’t back onto the ground floor.

I do think part of it is regularly seeing a responsible adult as a pointer for home situations to add to any concerns for vulnerable children. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to the majority, but I’d imagine it has value when a child is suspected of being neglected as part of the picture. I also think the sheer volume of cars on the street at school run time and people’s drives to walk past has played in part in our school’s decision (so I’d assume school’s location makes a difference). Equally, if local residents complain of issues from school children walking home, this would influence the school’s decision. I do know that Y6 from our school had apparently caused issues for one older lady and I imagine a select few from different schools do act badly, which then makes it less possible for the rest to access the school run as time to learn independence.

That's utterly ridiculous, they have no right to refuse to let a child leave for a medical appointment.

When DD has an appointment I just message her teacher to say she'll be late/leaving early/has to leave for a while during school. I know he'll never say no she can't. Once her dentist called and rescheduled her appointment from the next day to the current day and I had to call her teacher during lessons to tell him to tell DD to leave and bike to the dentist in half an hour (which he had zero issue with). Then had to call back 5 minutes later after the dentist called again to cancel! Embarrassing for me but at least I knew that there would be no complaints from the school about her leaving.

Op, if your school is within walking distance, could you walk or cycle so as not to add to the traffic

If you refuse to collect your child then the school will call SS, and police, to reunite you with them. Schools may have a policy of allowing children above a certain age to walk home, which you are welcome to avail yourself of. If they don't, you may need to find an establishment with another policy. There wouldn't be anything a parent could lay out in front of me which would make me listen as much as a safeguarding fail which would get up to Ofsted, tbh!

Allowing a competent child to leave, with parental permission, isn't going to interest either social care, the police or Ofsted

It sounds op as if, like me, you are a bit concerned about how much power schools have over children, relative to parents, now.

The school staff are also concerned from the other direction, that they have too much responsibility now.

It seems to me there is scope for discussion and improvement, but such details haven’t been high on public agendas for a long time.

Pragmatic and practical details of life haven’t been high in public agendas for a long time in fact, our entire culture has been shifted towards power games imo.

Allowing a competent child to leave, with parental permission, isn't going to interest either social care, the police or Ofsted

Who's competent, though? Would a 5 year old be, if parents gave permission? There are parents who would argue that. There will always be grey areas, and with questions like this, where things could go badly wrong and because of the setup in the UK there'd be a considerable impact on insurance / livelihoods / people's jobs, communities like schools need policies and a line in the sand rather than judging every case individually.

Children in Europe walk because there's not the same litigation culture.

there is no intrinsic difference between Scottish and English children but in Scotland most children leave on their own in P4 (y3) there may be someone to collect there may not, they are generally told if they are expecting someone to be there and they are not to go back into the school, so why is a English childjudged to be incompetent of doing this until 3 years later in Y6?

Children in Europe walk because there's not the same litigation culture

Interestingly, the journey to and from school is covered by school's insurance in my country, where children walk alone. So if the 5 year old child (youngest that could be in preschool) has an accident on the way to or home from school, even though the parents gave written permission, they can (and should) claim on the school's insurance.

Good question, are English children inherently less capable? Doubt it.

My friends five year old walks home with friends in Switzerland.

Could partly be location and road safety, depending on area? Scotland is sparsely populated. Also, simply individual schools and areas having different experiences that mean they have brought a no walking home alone rule into play.

Switzerland is a very different country, so difficult to compare the two. Much like when people bring up Japan in these threads, it’s a different country with different issues and strengths and it doesn’t directly compare.

😂😂😂How exactly is Scotland sparely populated?!

We do have roads, cities and cars, you know.

Our school wouldn't "release" them until Y5 with seeing the adult collecting them. Not even to an older sibling. So, yes they can and do decide.

I worded it in a stupid way. I just mean it’s just got a lower population than England, Wales (where I live) also does. I’m not saying there are no cities etc, obviously 😂🙈 Sorry! I’m just saying depending on location, the schools may be taking these things into account. If the school is rural with a simple route to it, it might be easier to have a walking home alone rule than to say no walking home alone.

Glasgow and Edinburgh are about as densely populated as Birmingham and manchester, small highland village no different to small Cornish or Herefordshire village, of course overall Scotland is much less densely populated as it is 2/3rd area of England with about 9% of the population and a lot of children in remote areas are travelling by school bus and also most children go to local school
However there is no overall difference between Scotland and England in terms of risk of car accidents or stranger danger

the walking home in P4 is general and applies in inner city Glasgow as well as outer hebrides, in fact when my DD started school 7 years ago in a village it was only P1 that were handed over specifically to parent /child minder etc the P2 and P3 teacher just stood near gate to keep a general eye that they were going to a pick up person, the new head teacher now has teachers from P1-3 at gate to make sure child has seen their parent/ granny etc

@gingercat02 yes that maybe true but if a parent challenged it and they went through with allowing school to call SS and then SS said they did not think it was a safeguarding risk, the school could not then refuse to release child the next day after it was agreed by SS that the child in question could walk to and from school alone

Fair enough and yes, cities are cities. Actually, thinking about it, I think I’m way off the mark statistic-wise on how much of the population lives rurally, so yes definitely wrong on the reason there! There is likely to be reason behind why the decision has differed, though. English schools must have reasons that they’ve put that rule in place. It doesn’t mean parents who want to can’t question it, but I doubt they all chose to do it based on making parents who want that time to teach independence annoyed.

So if the 5 year old child (youngest that could be in preschool) has an accident on the way to or home from school, even though the parents gave written permission, they can (and should) claim on the school's insurance.

Why would any school, or business, leave themselves exposed in this way? It doesn't make sense.

it maybe the Swiss are just less likely to be claiming, I am not sure exactly about Switzerland but this is true in Sweden
I have friends in Sweden they have trees in school playground which the kids are allowed to climb, I am told if a child fell out of tree and broke arm ( it happens) and the school took them to the Swedish equivalent of A & E and the arm was in plaster cast and a sling the most likely parental repsonse would be a grateful thank you from the parents for taking them to hopsital, it simply would not really occur to them that stopping kids climbing trees or chopping them down or putting a fence around the tree in case their was an accident was a reasonable response, as the Swedes in general believe the benefits of tree climbing and other such activities outweigh the risks of an accident. Primary school children are supposed to have clothes waterproof and wind proof enough to go outside upto -25C sliding on ice is encourraged not banned

Maybe you should have a word with my children's post-primary, who have strict rules about how their uniform should be travelling to and from school.