To think DD should get the rail replacement bus

[WrongKindOfWaterOnTheTrack]

DD goes to college in a city about 40 miles away from our home. Lots of kids from our area do as the college in town doesn’t have a great reputation. The city college also actively recruited, taking DD & the rest of her set to open days to talk about their Oxbridge scheme etc.

the commute is usually about 10 min drive to the station, and about 1h15 on the train. However the trainline is now in its 3rd week of closure due to flooding. This happened last year and actually also earlier this year, and sometimes DD has taken the replacement bus, but she hates it. She says she can’t get any work done, it takes much longer than the train does, & I think she finds the uncertainty stressful (it’s not clear always what times the buses will go or whether there will be space for everyone). She hasn’t gone into college once during this current closure.

It is true that the bus takes even longer than the usual commute would do, and I think she enjoys having time to fit in exercise etc without spending so much time on the commute. She is also conscientious and I think is doing all the work at home. But I feel surely she should be going to college, she can’t miss weeks on weeks of lessons?! I feel when she chose the college miles away, she chose the harder option travel wise & should be committed to the travel…

AIBU?

I am not sure why there needs to be another option? The student is happy, the college is happy, the work is getting done. OP, you are not your daughter. You choose society over WFH; she does not. Its not like covid, she does have choices and has made hers.

have you ever been reliant on the rail replacement bus? our town is now cut off due to works on the rails and we have had no trains for 2 months.

There are buses but there aren't enough, they are slow, and did i mention they send 2 non-bendy buses to replace a double decker train which is always packed. It is ridiculous and for that reason many people are working from home.

For your DD I'd encourage her to try for twice a week, but if she can get the work done from home, i would leave it at that.

That journey is far too long on a train never mind a bus. Not surprised shewants to work from home. If she is getting the attendance mark for working remotely then let her do it. Not as if shes not doing the work - that would be different.

you should do the journey for weeks on end with no sign that it is going to change before you think your DD should do it.

I had a long train commute a few years ago. I used that time to do a degree on the OU - only possible on a train, no chance on a bus.

Not in the UK - college here means 6th form, so 16/17yo not uni age.

If it is taking 2-2.5 hours each way and the college are happy for the students who are impacted to be marked as present provided the work is done, then no I wouldn’t make her go in. Not sure I understand why you are making an issue of it given the college isn’t.

I'm very much like you op, in that I believe face to face teaching is always best, particularly when we know how much lockdown affected kid's mental health. However under the circumstances, there really is no point in her doing such a big commute unnecessarily if college are setting the work online. Maybe if the rail route closure is longer term then a compromise of attending once a week for a face to face is sensible?
This makes me so annoyed though about public transport narrowing the opportunities for kids in semi rural areas, such as where I live. The bus commute to the local agricultural college my ds wanted to attend was 2 hours each way, so I pushed him into A levels locally instead, which was a shame. Even at 6th form he still had two bus changes. He could have stayed in halls, but with already having my eldest's uni rent to pay, I couldn't afford it.

Quite a few colleges in the UK have halls of residence.

OK so you choose to follow puritanical stoical norms and think spending 5 hours on a bus is a moral strength, she doesn't and neither does her college. Your values and morals are yours to follow and you are free to spend 5 hours on a bus any day you like. You can set examples, discuss your beliefs and hope your children will follow in your footsteps but you cannot impose your values on them. You're effectively asking her to give up 25 hours a week to suit YOUR moral code. Her values obviously include taking care of her mental and physical health, working hard, and being efficient with her time management.

Not a single one where I live, unless it is one of three very elite state boarding schools within a 50mile radius of me (where the dorms do not operate on a ‘hotel’ basis, so unless you applied to board at the outset you cannot get rooms. In those cases - as my DS was allocated a place at one - there were 74 boarding places offered to a year group of 2500 at £18-19000 pa).

Not in Scotland.

The UK isn’t just England.

Well said! Why does everything have to be such a misery. So she might have to do it when she's working - well she'll do it then, then!

I also think the college has some clout in this. They, and the local councillors and MPs should be actively trying to come up with some solutions. It's not acceptable for rural communities to be effectively cut off for weeks on end.

I'd take that as they know which kids can get alternative transport and which can't. And that they expect those that can take alternative transport to do so

The OP is discussing 6th form college. Her child in in Y13.

A google search on whether 6th form colleges in the UK (yes, and I know this includes Scotland. Thanks for the patronising geography lesson. I’m not English either) states that there are only 34 state boarding schools in THE WHOLE of the UK offering boarding to a percentage of students.

Having applied to three of them for my DC, I am aware that these generally offer fewer than 100 boarding places per year of intake. And they are applied for from the start of the year and the contract is for a full academic year.

You and others can be as arsey as you like… but they do not offer occasional boarding, nor will they suddenly find empty room for children impacted by travel issues which is the point of the fricking thread and also the point of my initial reply. OP’s DD will not be able to board.

Moreover, she does not need to as the college is happy for those affected by the travel issue to be absent provided they turn in the relevant assignments.

The part you’ve added about college saying “please take the bus if you’re able to” does slightly change my opinion. But only to the point that I think she should be trying to get the bus, but not make huge efforts to do so. I think the college ultimately means that those who can get the bus without trouble should do so (eg those a few stops down the line) not that if the bus technically passes your house you must come in even when it’s ridiculously long to do so.

Be at the bus stop on time and come home if the bus is more than 10 minutes late. Abandon the journey and come home if she’s on the bus and it’s getting severely delayed. If bad weather is predicted at home time, don’t go in. If she does try and it’s bad several days in a row, she doesn’t need to try again.

I think it sounds like she's behaving like a responsible adult. She's weighed up the pros and cons and made a reasonable decision. You said when the trains run, she never misses a day of college. She's not skiving now - she's logging on and doing all the required work. There's no need to make life harder just for the sake of it. I wouldn't catch a rail replacement bus in her place. I'd stay home, with reliable wifi and peace and quiet and get my studying done there.

The post said‘ college here (as in the UK) means…’

That is not what college means in Scotland and I was fine to point this out.

I wasn’t discussing boarding colleges so don’t know what you are wittering on about.

At 17?

There are two state colleges in my county that offer boarding facilities, one is a specialist maths school that has a catchment about 4 counties wide, and the other is the agricultural college. There are no boarding facilities at my DD’s college.

As long as she is doing the work and College are ok with it then I don’t see the issue.

Yes.

Not everyone does better with face to face. When doing my degree I started in 2018 and finished in 2021, last year of it managed to get firsts in every assignment and overall got a first. Second year once COVID hit I did better too.

Being able to just put time aside and focus on the laptop rather than being surrounded by other people, made it so much easier.

Whilst studying for their highers? Before university?

Please could you kindly share which ones they are? Off topic I know but I really struggled finding them and only found 2 or 3 which did A levels.