Its just hit me how much commitment driving 30mins (20miles) to school each day is.....

[aintnomountainhighenough]

We have chosen an absolutely fantastic school for our DD. We have taken a lot of time over it and I have worried about various things through the process and have talked through and overcome all my worries. However one angle which I didn't really appreciate until yesterday was the drive to school.

The school is 20 miles from our house and takes about 30 mins (that was at normal school start time and in the rain). I am concerned about the effect this will have on us as a family and would be interested to hear other peoples experience of travelling this distance.

Thanks

I've been doing a 30mins each way school run for the last um 5 years. It really isn't ideal to say the least.

I don't think it is fair (or tenable) on younger siblings doing it, and I couldn't do it twice a day, 5 days a week myself (2 hrs+ in the car) so I have a full time nanny. This means that we can share school runs, and whoever doesn't do the morning school run stays at home with the younger ones.
If I didn't have the school runs from hell I'd probably have more part-time help. So it is expensive from that point of view!

Environmentally it is also a disaster, obviously

However I wouldn't say that 30mins in the car 2ce a day is terrible for the ones on the school journey - we get a lot of talking and singing and what have you done in the car (including ORT reading!) so by the time they are home they just tumble out and run off to play. It is just a killer on the person doing the return trips! So if you can do a car pool with other local parents, it becomes much more manageable.

Finally, whoever said that it can end up being 3x a day or more at the ends of term is absolutely right. Judo displays, ballet displays, parents evenings, plays - there are a lot of those sort of things.

So basically - if you have a decent option nearby, then try that first. If you don't, then move house. If you have no other decent option, and can't move house (like me) then be prepared for some seriously dull travelling.

Yes, its a big chunk of your day, and of the children's day. But it's not just dead time, my lot listen to story tapes, or music or just chat about the day. When I've dropped them off and I'm coming back home to log on and start work, I listen to teach yourself Italian CDs.

Having said that, I've always lived miles from where I went to school, or children go to school, so at least half an hour travelling to school just seems normal. Moving to town to be closer to the school, or for any reason really, just fills me with cold horror. Spot the yokel!

If the school is exactly what you want for your daughter then the journey, and all the rest of the stuff associated with it, is just one of the things that it will "cost".

Can't believe anyone would consider this viable I'm afraid and find your comment about lowering your standards

I don't get that - people who live close to the schools their children attend are yokels? How close do you have to live in order to achieve yokeldom?

Sorry - meant I'm a yokel because I can't face living in town.

Ooh that's a relief. Was worried we were yokels. I mean we probably are yokels anyway.

Sorry aintno, I know that Cod's posts can come across harshly, but she's right on this.
It's madness to drive a 4yo half an hour to school every day, esp with a 2yo in the car for an hour each way, plus dropping off time etc.

And every day. For the next nine years. Is there really no school nearby that would be OK? You have to factor in the huge value of local playdates and pals (yes it's really hard to keep up with out-of-school friends, I know, we have tried) and convenience for all and exercise of walking to school (walk to school so good for calming down - tore out of house this am having argument with DS1 but by the end of the road we were singing songs!) against the (I am sure) excellent education your chosen school would provide.

I and DH both went to grammar schools which involved (in my case) leaving the house at 8.10 and getting home at 4.30. My best friend lived about 20 miles away - ie the other side of the moon. DH's commute was even worse. And this was secondary! I look longingly at the teenage kids wandering past my house from and to the comp round the corner from us - oh to drop in on a pal on the way home and text your mum to say you'll be home in a bit!

Oh yes anchovy is right about all the other things at school,, what a pain it would be to have to drive 30 mins every time. Well you just wouldn't bother.

Hope you can get a place in your local school aintno.

our local school (5 mins drive to RAF base) is crap (and is 80% forces, with something like a 25% turnover in pupils every year - not great for friendships!)

our next local school(7 mins drive to bigger town) is SO ordinary, on a tiny site in leaking prefab sheds

our only decent state primary schools around are village schools - one is 15 mins drive and is lovely but and tiny has just announced closure (sorry "merger" with another not good school a further 10 mins away).
Couple of others are fine, but 20mins away.

So there is no lovely walkable state primary near me and never will be (thats the trouble with being a yokel) and any nice one will be a 20 mins drive. Private has many benefits for us, one being that all extras (music lessons, riding etc) can be done there in school hours, so reducing the need to further drive children around the countryside and make child 2 hang around while child 1 has a 30 min cello lesson 15 mins away IYSWIM

These decisions aren't always easy. And if you live in a small village (pop 90) in the middle of nowhere, the car is always going to be a big part of your life

Clary thank you for your post and your honesty, infact thanks everybody (including Cod!) for their posts. The decision has been made and this post has helped in this, my daughter will be attending the local school.

hope it goes really well for you all!

Gloomy feelings coming over me just reading all this.
We live 5 mins' walk from our primary (well, 10 with grumpy 5-yr-old). Next term, 11-yr-old DS1 goes to secondary -- 20 miles away on very busy roads. This is forced on us by his special needs, and oh boy do I wish he could cope with the more local school. This way he gets no independence, knows no one when he starts, and will spend hours in the car every day for 5 years. Poor kid. And the enviro costs, as pointed out, will be heavy.

Local friends (if you like them, as you said you do!) outweigh plenty of disadvantages in my view.

Hope it goes well, Aintno. It is easy to get snagged into thinking in very black and white terms before your child is actually in school (this school terrible/that school wonderful) but it is actually much more complicated than that. All schools have their ups and downs -- hopefully you and your dd can start at the local school feeling upbeat about your decision. Resist the urge to panic the first time something happens that you don't like (rough playing at breaktime, reading books not getting changed as often as you'd like), give it a couple of years and then see how things pan out. A happy and settled child is the single most important thing.

i would just add that it your child will be very tired in first year or two and will find the hour journey a day very tiring - as well as you

being a commuter at that age seems a bit harsh - i would even suggest that any advantages of going to the better school may well be cancelled out by your child being too tired to take it all in

perhaps you could supplement the education with private music classes/french classes when child is a little older?

sorry - just saw latest post

i think that will be great and you can get extra classes etc for your child

good luck

I did this - not out of choice. Birthday parties are always at least a hour away the other side of the school. When you are running late it is utter panic. Ditto jams/roadworks/rain. Parents evenings are a slog. It actually works out at 20 miles there, 20 miles back, 20 miles there, 20 miles bavck - 80 miles a day! Then there are days when the school ring up ten mins after you get home to say she has puked - could you do another forty mile round trip in the next half hour please to pick her up. You can't reasonably nip back to hand over a forgotten recorder/maths book/note ot the teacher.....

We moved house.

This is where I bow out of the thread. As a yokel with children at a "SO ordinary" school I don't feel I can contribute!

I did this amount of travelling as a child, and my advice is, dont.
it is a lot of stress for the children, and may have contributed to us all suffering from depression in our late teens.

Hi. Just thought I would add my comments.

Firstly don't be disheartened by negative thought other people have posted.

We have recently decided to send our DD to a school about 15 miles away, again a 25- 30 min drive there. The local school down the road isn't very good so this is what we have decided will give her the best education and opportunities in life. I do think the early years are the most important.

We also have a 10 month old but most of the time I will drop her off with the in laws just down the road so she doesn't have to sit in the car for that long but there will be times when I go out for the day and she will come to, she will just have her naps in the car. She will also go to the school nursery when she is 3 and do 2 full days so I wont have to go back at lunch time to pick her up. I don't work and feel totally committed to this.

The school starts at 8.30 so we will leave just before 8am which will be a challenge for us in the start! School doesn't finish until 3.30 pm so I have abit of extra time in the afternoon.

As for friends, they come from a wide area so don't really know what to expect at the moment but things will just have to be well planned.

I agree it's alot to take on and there are times when I think 'what am I letting myself in for' but I think this is the best choice for our DD and will provide her with the best education and I wouldn't worry about what other people say. Im lucky that I don't work so i can commit fully to this and at the end of the day it's your decision, don't let other people dictate what they think is right or wrong as we all have opinions. HTH and good luck!

Oh and we will probably end up moving in the next few years anyway.

I think you may be being a tad optimistic in thinking you will be able to leave the house at 8am for 830am YM. We used to leave the house at 745am in order to avoid any traffic jams & most importantly find a parking space. Our school starts at 845 BTW & used to be 17 miles away from our house. (Now 1 1/2 miles) There is no way I could of left at 8am or later & expected to find a parking space.

Yes I agree we will have to leave at about 7.50am but will obviously have to see what traffic and parking etc is like at that time of the day! And will want to get DD in to class with a few minutes to spare and know she is settled!

The school run for dd was 16 miles-it lasted 18months then i sold the house and moved within walking distance as i was beginning to fall asleep at the wheel following sleep depravation with ds

Im not surprised NAS. When I was doing that (& working during the school day) I knocked 3 wing mirrors on parked cars (never came close to an accident prior to nightmare school run, & not since) I was just too tired & shouldnt of been doing that much. Thankfully I only had to do it for 4 months. No way id consider doing it any longer than completely necessary.

Thanks for your comments. We have decided to give the local school a go for now and see what happens. It has been a very difficult decision but I feel the impact on us will be too great. I don't want to start her our chosen school and find the journey too much, pull her out and put her in the local school only to find I am disappointed. So we will send her locally and I am hoping that it will all work out brilliantly and am being positive for my DD.

In the meantime we are looking at how we are going to make this happen for example by moving so that we are in a position to send her there by the time she is at most 7.

Well done on makng the decision - it was obviously very hard for you. For what it's worth (not much I know!) I think you've done the right thing. But please and I say something else?

PLEASE don't assume you will be disappointed.
And please don't think of it as temporary - that way you won't feel committed to the school as a family. In any school you sometimes need to question and challenge things - and if you have at the back of your mind that you'll only be there for two years, the temptation will not to do that. That won't be good for the school, or for your dd - the first two years are really important. Ind it will be very hard to stop yourself thinking "Wow, she did SO well at x - but if she had gone to the other school, would she have dine better?"
I'll shut up now.