11 year olds travelling to school - London

[TeddyIEI]

Hoping some London parents can put my mind to rest or something.
My brother his wife snd 3 children live in south west London. My eldest nieces (twins) turned 11 at the end of July, they are due to start senior school. I've just learnt they will be going to school in central/west London and taking the tube there alone!!
On the first day my brother is going to make sure they get off at the right stop and they have done the walk from their stop to the school before with their mum before. They have to be there for 08:10 and will leave at 16:50ish, so will almost definitely be caught in the rush.
My sons are 13 and 15, we live rurally and right now they can do whatever in our village, walk to the bus stop for school (school provided bus), my 15 year old has been allowed into the nearest town to go for food with friends and I wouldn't mind dropping to the cinema/picking them up or similar. But the thought of them going into central London alone, at peak times at 11 makes me feel a little ill. They will be on the tube for nearly 30 min (no changes) and a 5 or so minute walk either end.

Is this normal? Do lots of kids in London do this? AIBU to think this can't possibly be safe ?

Honestly it's very normal in London and actually a great journey if it's 30 mins with no changes and only a five minute walk at the other end. It's rush hour so loads of people around and there will always be two of them together. All my kids were very confident on London transport at that age.

DT’s have travelled to school by Tube since they were 4. DH used to take them (and I collected) until they were 11 when they went on their own although they often met friends on route. A short walk either end. Totally normal.

In Japan much younger children get the subway to school.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JD6razeczwY

But I don't think the OP will be back.

Very normal, and very good for teens I think. This is why I never live in the countryside with teens, they don’t get that independence from a younger age. I don’t know why you think rush hour is dangerous or scary.

See, I worry that my teen niece and nephew are infantilised by living rurally. Taken everywhere by Mum and Dad Taxi, barely any independence travelling.

But you seem to have additional worrying OP. London is just a place with people going to work and living normal lives like everywhere else. Except we do it by public transport. The system is easy to navigate, these kids will have been travelling by tube, train and bus all their lives.

Worry about the restricted little bubble within which your 15 year old is ‘allowed’ into the nearest town but you would drop them off and pick them up if going to the cinema.

The fact that you have to be so car dependent because you live rurally doesn’t mean it isn’t safe to do otherwise

It is normal where they are but if BIL doesn't actually go to work that early I would have thought that at least for the first few weeks he could do some or part of the journey with them. It can be horrendous in the morning trying to get on or as another pp said off of public transport at that time. I would want to have done it in the same circumstances the kids will be at least a few times.

My kids got on and off public transport (with company) from a very young age in London. They are competent in it in the way that a child raised on a farm understands the risks with large equipment, slurry pits and animals. I suspect your own children have life skills that their London cousins do not.
They will be fine, it's what they know.

Very safe route, v smart parts of London and despite impression most Londoners are very helpful and will look out for the vulnerable and the lost when the tube goes down.

Buy them an A-Z, go old school!

Totally normal. They won't be doing it without any preparation though - at our London primary kids start walking themselves from Y5 and most of them in Y6. They will know how to use the tube and busses etc.

This is normal OP. I did it as a child and now my nephews do.

Because there are only nice children where parents choose to pay for it 🙄

theyre not even alone, they’re twins travelling together.

There’s an assumption that it’s either London tubes or rural living on this thread.

I live in a big city (not London). My kids have a 10 minute walk to their local state school. It ends at 3pm and they’re usually through the door at 3:10pm. I like it that way, they don’t have an especially long day. They use buses at the weekend to get out and about with their mates.

They’re not country bumpkins.

I think the reason this thread is central London vs. Rural is that the OP said she lives rurally.

Ahh yes, I stand corrected then.

I grew up in Brighton. From 13 I would come up to London with a friend for the day (mainly travelling on the tube and buying make up).

It's totally normal

I've been commuting for decades and my kids commuted to school

If there are ever any delays that are difficult to deal with (a suicide for example, person under the train), other adults will always step up and
make sure school children are ok.

Kew to Victoria is a direct journey on the District line and takes about 25 minutes. No route is 'perfectly' safe but the District line is packed in the morning so there are plenty of people around. About the only downside is the frequent 'points failure between Richmond and Turnham Green' Announcement of Doom.

They have parents. Why do you need to be assured about their safety, don't you trust the parents or something?

If there were to be a problem with the Tube I think that they would cope better than your children would cope with a travel problem!

Totally normal.

Thousands of kids have done this everyday for decades for state, grammar and private secondary.

citymapper will be their friend for delays or cancellations.

It's been normal for decades. I used to go to school by tube in the mid-70s. Only once did anything bad happen - a man exposed himself and masturbated in front of me when I was about 14. That was horrible, but could just as easily have happened elsewhere.

I grew up in a small village and secondary schools were all in a town about 8 miles away. Every day from age 11 I and my brothers would get the public bus there and back - it took about 40 minutes.

In the next village along they had a train station so kids there would get the train five stops and then walk about 20 minutes through the town to school.

We had more worries than London kids as there were only a few buses a day - so if we missed the 4pm bus back there wasn't another one and you had to talk to the station, get the train and walk the mile or so home from the next village.

Of course it's normal. Kids use public transport to get to school all over the UK, including London - how else do you think kids would get to school if their parents can't drive them there?

Using the Tube isn't even remotely difficult and the journey you've described - a short walk to the Tube station, one train and then a short walk to school at the other end - is about as easy as it gets. And why does it matter that it will be rush hour? Why do you think the train being busy would make it more dangerous for them?

In any case, they're not your kids so I'm really not sure why this is something you're worried about.

I'm pretty stunned that at 15, your son is only allowed to visit the nearest town or be driven and to and from the cinema by his parents. Surely he's been further afield independently than that at 15?

Londoners are notoriously unfriendly. The kids would run a mile from anyone who actually spoke to them, not like country folk who strike up a conversation with anyone

Why on earth are you so terrified of London? It's just a city. Getting public transport in London is no more dangerous than getting public transport in any other area.

In general, the bigger the city, the easier it is to travel by public transport. Services are more frequent, there are more stops and stations and more alternatives if a service fails. My mum lives in a small, historic market town in a nice area, where her options for public transport are either local buses, or getting a train into London. She finds travelling around London much easier and less stressful than getting one of only about four buses a day to a bigger local town for shopping. In London she never gets stranded because there's always an alternative route/mode of transport. But if her bus home from the nearest local town doesn't turn up, she's basically stranded or has to fork out £45 for a taxi.