Does this sound ok? School run…

[Mrsupanddown]

I tried to get all the kids in to one school which is 5 minutes from us but the appeal was rejected. So I have left oldest DS at the school and DD is joining him. Youngest DS is at the school nearest to home.

I plan to drop DS (9) at school with DD (8) at 8:35. There school gates don’t open until 8:40.

So they will queue up outside with the other kids and parents. DS will wait until DD goes into her class then he will go to his.

I will be able to drop youngest off then in time for his gates opening at 8:45.

Does this sound ok and safe enough?

Would be fine at our local primary school (London). Kids generally start walking on their own in yr5 but sometimes in yr4 if they are very close to school. There would be loads of adults around at the school gates if there were any issues but I would expect an 8 and 9 year old to be able to wait sensibly for 5 mins.

But where do you draw the line though?

We could all be paying for our 16 year olds to have taxis door to door 'because it's safer' than ever walking - but this would not teach them responsibility and being ready for the world. Or refuse to ever let them use knives or the cooker because it's safer not to.

Teaching kids learned helplessness and calling it 'safety' is not doing them any favours.

I'd suggest it's the allowing them to chat to randomers online that's the issue here, not the walking home alone part.

If the school couldn’t accommodate you with space, I suggest you chat to them about your problem and ask them to assist you with a solution.

Given I was walking to school without parents long before that age, it sounds absolutely fine to me.
Clearly I am old though.

Kids walk alone to and from school at that age here but the school does need a letter from the parent to confirm (probably so it’s not the responsibility of the school).

Would I be comfortable doing this with a reasonably sensible 8 and 9 year old? Absolutely. My dd is just turned 8 and I could trust her just to go into school in this scenario even without an older sibling. However I seriously doubt school are going to be ok with this so you're going to have to make other arrangments.

I've recently visited Vietnam and kids there who only looked 7 at the oldest were walking themselves home with toddler siblings. I'm not saying we should do this. However I think we do our kids a massive disservice for so many reasons when we don't allow them to take responsibility and take risks. That's a separate debate though... you're not going to be able to do this OP is the bottom line

Is there no breakfast club at either school or a parent friend who could walk them in? What will you do if the 9yo is off sick?

It's baffling to me that people would say that the school wouldn't allow this. My 9 and 10 year old often walk to and from school alone ( sometimes I go with them, sometimes not), how is it anything to do with the school? (I'm in Ireland rather than the UK so maybe things are very different 🤷)

I’d suggest that allowing children to do things independently in a safe and risk measured way is actually better parenting than helicoptering them in every scenario.

This is a perfect representation of misplaced risk assessment though. Trusting a child to walk a short walk to school, do what they're meant to do that day and know who to turn to and how to act if there is an emergency is part of any healthy child's development. Allowing an 8/9YO to enter an unnatural virtual world in which they are completely naive about who they're talking to or what dangers might be lurking with so little supervision that they're able to tell a predator where they live and arrange to meet them without informing any other adult isn't allowing freedom it's completely reckless and no doubt down to laziness of a parent who cba to monitor their internet use

However I seriously doubt school are going to be ok with this so you're going to have to make other arrangements.

We don’t know what the OP’s school will say but as I said, our DC went to separate infant and juniors which may make a difference to school's attitude – no DC were watched in or out of the gates or to parents at juniors. There was no rule that said they couldn't find their own way home from year 3 AFAIK. Few did, a number in year 4, most in year 5, all in year 6.

This was not that long ago tbh (DS2 left juniors in 2014).

Depends on your area though. I wouldn't want my blond, tall daughter of eight to walk alone by herself in my area. Definitely would be a target in the area we live in. Not to mention she often forgets to check the road when crossing.

Maybe I'm misinformed but I think the minimum age most schools in this area would allow self travel to school is year 5 or 6. Point taken though OP should probably check with school

Our school would flag it if the children weren’t in y5/y6 as parents in the lower years drop them to the classroom
door rather than the school gate
Parents in a similar situation in the younger year groups usually drop them to school and one of parents from the class who they know will take them to the door.
I use a childminder as it’s 30 mins for us, but on my day off I take in my youngest child’s friend after meeting them at the gate.

Ask first school if you can drop DCs into the main reception or somewhere 5 mins early. That's what a friend of mine did when she had 3 DC at 2 schools, having moved to the area and neither local school having spaces in all her DCs year groups. I used to be incredibly jealous when she could drop and run and I was still waiting around 10 minutes after the gate was meant to open making me late to drop youngest at the childminder and then even later for work!

Our school would flag it if the children weren’t in y5/y6.

Flag it and what? The parent gets hauled into the Head's office and asked to justify their parenting? They get reported to social services (who I would wager have better things to do that dealing with 9 year olds walking to school)? The parent gets publicly shamed on the school's social media?

Schools only do this sort of nonsense because there are so many parents prepared to go along with their made up policies that only children over a certain age are "allowed" to leave/arrive alone.

It would be put into the school safeguarding app, which all things are logged onto to see if it forms part of a bigger picture….
I didn’t say the would be hauled in front of anyone/social services involved however if the OP doesn’t discuss the issue with the school and drops them off when it’s usual for children of the age group to be accompanied in then it will raise questions ie
how do they get to the gates, how long have they been unaccompanied for, if there is such a rush in the morning did the children have chance to have breakfast etc
If you have a primary school where all children flood in through the gates and walk themselves to where they need to go, no one would know.
In our school Years reception-4 the children enter through their classroom doors, upper years through 2 corridor doors.
If my youngest child appeared at his door without a grown up they would ask how he got to school because they would be concerned he had crossed roads himself, got himself ready in the morning etc
Im my area it’s typical for years 5/6 to to be more independent in readiness for high school.
I didn’t say it was right/wrong just what would happen in our primary school.

My Kids would be fine, to do this - small village school. Others had been reported to social services. They now allow my 8 year old old walk home with my 11 year old. Again lots of schools would say no.

But the children are being left alone on school grounds, what’s to stop the younger one wandering off? Or what happens in a fire? They need an adult with them until they go into the school and It’s not schools responsibility to look after those children until they enter the building as they are then immediately registered as being present. Year 6 is different because they are 10/11yrs old then and prepping for high school but anything younger is a no go in my opinion. People would be the first to point fingers if something happened to one of those children before school because they weren’t being supervised, there are other solutions available for this situation.

It’s not as if gates open for a nanosecond.

You can wait for the two at one school to enter gates then hop along to the other school in time to get him in before gates close.
you’ll just have to make sure that the older two goes straight in the minute the gates open

No idea whether the school will allow it, but it's bonkers that so many people don't think an 8 and 9y.o. shouldn't be unsupervised even just outside school, for 5 minutes, with many other pupils and parents around.

It needs to become normal again for 8, 9, 10 year olds to walk/cycle to school on their own. I appreciate that wouldn't be practical for some journeys and some children, but it should be the default.

Exactly. It's basic parenting, not a luxury.

So much of this depends on whether you live in a little village that is safe with low crime and strong community, vs inner city / busy suburb with a lot of unknown people passing through etc. but it's not abnormal for children your dcs ages to be waiting outside the gate early at my children's primary.

It’s not that issue alone, it would draw attention to those children if they are being left at the school gates like Lessglittermoremud says. I personally would not want a 9yr old walking to school alone, crossing busy roads and not having the same social awareness and intelligence as a yr6 11yr old. If it was on the news that a 9yr old child had been abducted when walking alone from school it would cause outrage and rightly so, people would absolutely blame the parents for allowing it to happen (rightly or wrongly) but they are still kids at the end of the day, they have years to be adults, why not spend that time with them on a morning before they go in