Private School: How long to get there?

[byvirtue]

We live rurally and are considering a school a 30 minute drive away. I was saying to my husband if other kids live a 30 minute drive in the opposite direction we will be spending a lot of time driving our child around on a weekend. I’m wondering if this is normal or should we think about moving closer at some point?

So I’m curious how far do you live from your child’s school and does it impact them seeing friends on the weekend?

Prep or secondary?

Our prep is 30 mins from home, secondary is 1hr but I drop for a bus 10 mins from house.

She would be going in at 4 with a view to staying until 18 (assuming we like the school). We would drive for prep and for secondary it’s a 15 min drive to a train station and 20 mins on the train.

There are a lot more schools an hour away but we hadn’t really considered those because of the distance.

I'd say that's fairly normal times and distances for private.

Our prep had children within a half hour range and the secondary has a huge 1hr circumference into two counties.

Both schools are rural.

Rural children get used to being driven and dropped or not seeing friends that often out of school.

We started out 25 minutes from school and I just couldn't take it. Add in bad traffic/construction etc and it's 45 min. Add in another child with different pick/up drop off times and it's a complete nightmare. At 30 minutes you will commute 2 hours every single school day and that's not counting the days there are plays/matches etc. On those days it will be 3 hours. It's too much.

I'd also strongly encourage you to go on a school morning and try and park in the car park during drop off and then get back out onto the road. Everyone drives to school and it's a complete clusterfuck at every single rural school we've been to. You need to add 15 minutes on to get out of the car park!

We have a 15-20min drive from our house to DD prep school..... It’s a fairly stress free drive as in the countryside.

My DC are unusual in that they can walk to their prep school, people tend to come from 20-50 minutes away. It does mean you will spend time driving to parties and play dates. You do definitely miss out on the local friends you'd have at a state primary.