taking children to infant and junior school

[ccl7891]

Hi,

At the moment we live in a town where the 3-11 are on the same site. We are thinking to move to a village, but 3-11 are on different sites. My wife struggles to find a way to send children to school because the infant school is 0.3 miles down the road and the junior school is 0.5 miles up the road. My wife doesn't drive, so she walks the children to school. I was wondering if anyone could help with this issue. Thanks!

They usually have staggered drop/ pick up times? Your family won’t be the only one facing this issue. Perhaps ask the school how others cope with it?

Do they do staggered start times? I can't imagine she is the only parent dropping off to both schools.
Or is there a walking bus or similar for the older ones?
Really you need to find out from parents who use the schools what they generally do (school/local Facebook group or something).

Surely every local family with more than 1 child (excluding twins!) will have this issue at some point. They will either have staggered drop/pick up times and/or a fairly wide window to drop e.g. at our school I can drop DD anytime between 8.20 and 8.50am. Scooters for the kids will help if having to go to one school then the other makes the journey longer than they’re likely to walk without moaning!

Thanks everyone since this is something new for us. The current primary school we are in has little flexibility. But we will check with the local families and the school once we moved there.

They'll have staggered starts. Also you'll find a lot of parents will share the walk with each other's kids. Our school is like this. One parent will take the infants, one the juniors etc. Also the Yr5/6 start to walk solo earlier in groups

My children have exactly the same set up. They have staggered starts. You drop one. You walk to the other. Along with lots of other people! It’s not a problem at all.

As others said they usually have staggered start times (15 minutes apart for sites 0.4 miles away from each other) although anything more than half a mile would possibly be difficult to manage.

Breakfast / ASC if they don't stagger

They will stagger though. Schools don't want children being late every single day for years or children not being collected on time for years.

The schools definitely will have thought of this. You might also find there's a shortcut - the school I work at and the feeder infant school are officially 0.2 miles apart (just checked on Google Maps) but we have a back gate into a lane which makes the journey much shorter.

The schools will definitely stagger their starts as otherwise half the school would always be late (or very very early!)

Most parents here go to both schools but there’s often another parent you can find who can share the load sometimes, which helps.

We have this locally. The schools start at the same time, but you can drop the juniors into the playgroup 20 minutes earlier and dash your little ones up the hill to be just in time for the start.
At the end of the day there's half an hour to get between them so lots of time.

However what most people do is either do child swaps (so one takes the infant children and other parent takes the junior children) or the juniors walk down in groups.

A fair number of parents take new infant starters in buggies for the first few weeks while they're getting used to it, but very rarely do any of them still need it after half term. Most use scooters.

How about one drop off is your responsibility rather than both falling to your wife? Or pay for wraparound care at one of the schools.

Meanwhile back in the real world...

The schools will have staggered starts so two adults doing the drop up and pick up every single day is going to be completely unnecessary.

How many jobs are there that a person can have that pays enough to support a stay at home mother and more than one child but where you don't have to be there between 8.40am and 9.05am and 2.45pm and 3.10pm forty weeks a year?