Walking home from school alone

[Mammak83]

Does anyone know who has the authority to say a child can walk home from school alone, is it the head teacher or parent? TIA

You do as the parent, not the school. However, were you letting your 4 year old walk alone the school would be perfectly within its rights to insist you didn't or to raise a concern with social services!

The school can also recommend if you have a year 6 child that you start to give them some independence in readiness for secondary, but can't force you as such. Secondaries will assume all their pupils are capable of making their own way.

I think DD's school only allow years 5 and 6 to walk home without an adult, at least there was a letter asking for parents to let them know if this was going to happen (DD is only year 1 so I'm not entirely sure).

My DC's primary used to advise that they could walk to and from alone from the age of 10. This is in London. They would be concerned if younger children were coming/going on their own.

I think that's about right for my area.

Ours allows from the summer term of year five onwards if they have parental permission. Before that they insist an adult collects.

The parent. Our school requires written permission from a parent before allowing children to walk home alone. Year 6 only, Year 5 from summer term

Thankyou. My dd is in Year 6, at the beginning of term we were all given consent forms to sign agreeing to let our children walk home from school alone. Up in till last week she said they couldn't walk home alone because of a little to do with two of the children in the park after school. After school some of the children would go to the park across the road for half an hour including my dd. Other parents I know would also go to the park. I trust that my dd has the ability to walk home from school responsibly as well as play on the park for half an hour with her classmates. For the head teacher to then take this right away is completely uncalled for. I stated to her that it is not up to her and the decision is up to me, she argued with me saying it was her decision to make. She now says she's in the process of talking to the schools solicitors. Surely it will take one phone call to get the answer! Instead she's just prolonging the decision!

Not saying this is what's happened here.

I know of one girl when she was in year 6 had consent revoked by the school. Parents said it was a little to do off school.
Any time she was unsupervised she spat at, swore, chucked stuff, purposely injured others. Consent was revoked 2 weeks in beciase of constant incidents including a vicious assault.

If a school is concerned about safety they will revoke. Some schools have also revoked lunchtime passes because off the behavior of some students.

Having a chat with the solicitor isn't just as simple as a quick call to say yes or no. It's a bit more complexed

Standard seems to be KS2 (so Y3 and up) and above can walk alone

The school has no right to "consent" or not. It is down to the parent but the school must be happy there is no safeguarding issue and if a child is badly behaved on the way home, the school behaviour policy can be invoked if it covers such an eventuality. Read the guidance on Safeguarding regarding journeys to and from school (2012). The Head of your school needs to read this too! No need for a solicitor. It is clear that the parent decides but that decision should be based on the reasonable knowledge that the child can accomplish the journey safely. Therefore a child that walks and understands how to cross a road and stay safe would be trusted earlier than a child who did not respect red lights at crossings or the edge of the pavement for example. The safety of the walking route and availability of pavements should be considered too.

Thankyou that was really helpful.