Can a school really stop you letting your child independently walk to school?

[Duv]

My child is no where near old enough yet for this to be an immediate consideration, but in principle I'm a big believer in giving children independence where possible, and walking to school independently is something I think can be highly beneficial for children (dependent on their maturity and how close they live to school/how many roads they cross etc).

I walked a mile to school from Yr5 by myself, and whilst I remember this raising a few eyebrows amongst other parents at the time, it was ultimately my parents decision and i was soooo thrilled to be able to do it and go so much out of it.

Ive been faintly aware that the dial has been shifting the other way steadily over the last few decades, so much so that many secondary schools kids are driven to school, but what's surprised me is many primary schools claim they won't permit children to walk to school alone at all of until year 6. This seems like it's really not something that should be their business (at best they can advise on, but not enforce).

Can you just override their policy and say this is what our family are doing? Has anyone had any experience of being so bold? I see lots of people say 'if you don't like it pick another school' but that's obviously wildly impractical. I'm not looking to open a conversation about whether it is right in principle for a 10 year old to walk to school alone, as I know where I stand, I'm just interested in people's experience of school push-back.

My year 5 child has been allowed to walk to and from school with written permission from me. State school. SW region

My children all walked to school with their friends aged 7-8 ,we had a lollipop man at the busy road. They were all absolutely fine. This was in the late 90s to mid 00s .
Children nowadays are not given a chance to grow up and be independent.
I walk my dog by the school my children went to and the parking is double the size at local rec and rammed with cars from 2.30 pm onwards !

“Stranger danger” is unrecognisable as it’s incredibly rare! Kids are killed by other kids! Most kids are harmed by people they know. There’s some risk in doing anything but walking with other dc is the safest.

I never said stranger danger wasn't rare, I said it was a reason parents stopped letting their kids walk - this, and increased car ownership so people drove their children to school - is exactly what happened in the 90s. All the reasons given for why parents won't let their children walk to school are rare.
Knife crime isn't really an issue for primary kids, it is more relevant for secondary but they are not only allowed to walk but are expected to do so.
Anyway glad I found this thread. I am going to write to my DDs school and tell them that from next term (yr 4) she is free to walk herself home from school at the normal time.

I walked aged 5 to school, no major roads to cross. It's really common in Scandinavian, Japan, Germany from 4/5/6/7.

A school cannot stop you letting your child walk to school independently. They cannot legally refuse to allow your child onto the premises simply because you didn't walk with them. They can refuse to allow your child off the premises unless an adult is there to collect them.

Primary school for me was a little under 0.5 mile from home. I can't remember exactly when I started walking there on my own, but I was definitely doing so by age 7 - twice a day as I went home for lunch. This was in the suburbs of London in the early 1960s.

My dd will be walking on her own there and back from September (year 5). We live 0.4 mile away but the road next to the school gets really busy (no safety measures on it all which is so annoying, I’ve raised it with the council countless times). This term she’s been crossing the road by herself with me nearby so I can make sure she’s paying attention and looking carefully as there’s a blind bend, single file traffic and a junction. She’s been good with it so she’ll go by herself from September and I can’t wait! I don’t know what the school rule is but they seem to release all years 4-6 into the playground so wouldn’t actually know if they walked home or not. Years 3 and below have to be handed over to an adult or high school child

I live next to the main path up to our local school. I’ve seen very small kids making their way too and from school. It depends on the child surely.

My Grandchildren’s school is 2.5 miles away and an unsafe walking route (nearest state with space!) but this year, as he’s year 5, grandson has been allowed to arrive and leave on his own and walk from or to an arranged point where he dropped off or met. Interestingly he is the only child in his year whose DP allow their DC to do this! In September his sister will join him at this school, in year 3, and after the first week or so we will allow her to walk part way to school with her brother and are awaiting the reaction from the school when they both attempt to leave school without an adult…..

Our school “allow” this from the summer of year 6 (independent school). However, I know parents have been more forceful and given written permission from year 5. School official line is you need their permission in any year, but if you get the school coach, it’s outside of their remit and the kids can get off and go home on their own!

The children in my road caught a regular bus from infants, so from 4 plus, there were generally a bunch of kids, perhaps half a dozen, up to 11 years old who walked to the bus stop not exactly together but for the same bus, bus stop a few hundred yards from the houses along a lane, the bus then stopped about 100 yds from the school gate, and we walked into school. Same in reverse going home. Sometimes the mum of a 'little one', walked to the bus with them and sometimes met the bus on return. If we missed the bus we walked all the way, a couple of miles (buses were a minimum of an hour apart).

I was thinking about this this morning. DD is nearly eight, Y2, and incredibly level-headed. We walked to the bus stop together, got the bus a mile to school, bus stopped outside the school gates. I wondered about walking her to the stop and having her travel alone, if she wanted to. There was a girl from her school on the same bus, alone - I assume y5 or 6. I suppose the things to think about are a bus diversion etc but as much as eyebrows would be raised I think she'd be OK.

I’ve found schools flexible on this issue. My twins were 9 and going to a class at local community centre 300m walk from school. Technically they like them collected till 10. I felt it’d be fine and they were keen so they agreed to release them.

We walked to school without parents from y2. So aged 5. Dm saw us over the road and we crossed a very minor road between home and school. Took 25 mins door to door. Everyone did it apart from a handful and YR. It was considered normal! What legislation gives schools permission to dictate on this I’m not sure.

From YR my dc could have gone to school in a minibus as we are an unsafe walking route. We decided not to. In y9, aged 13, she went off from Heathrow with a friend, unaccompanied by adults, for a 3 month school exchange with a South African school. I think being resourceful and resilient is a great thing for a child to be.

How quickly would you want a school to contact you if your child didn’t turn up at school, having been sent to walk in on their own? Just asking, because schools are under increasing financial pressures, which means fewer staff, which means that the time taken to get all registers completed and centrally checked, check all absence messages, check with all classes that no mistakes were made with marks in the registers (eg marking a child absent when present, or present when absent) so as to be certain which children are genuinely unaccounted for, is only going to increase. There are always several children unaccounted for every single day, because a significant number of parents fail to follow absence reporting procedures and waste considerable amounts of a school’s time chasing them up to find out why they have not sent their children to school that day. Needless to say, 99.9% of the time (at primary level), a child is absent for a reason known to the parents, but the parents did not have the courtesy to tell the school, despite the fact they would be the first to complain about inadequate safeguarding procedures when the day came that they thought their child was in school when they were not.

If you are OK with the idea you may not know your child has failed to arrive at school until at least 10am, then there’s no problem letting them walk in on their own. If you think you would be very unhappy about the idea that you didn’t find out about your child’s absence from school until mid-morning, then your child is too young to walk to walk to school on their own. Schools used to be more relaxed about children walking to school on their own, because they were more relaxed about safeguarding and attendance generally and children could actually miss whole days of school without their parents being aware of it. These days, schools are expected to police and safeguard more and more, with dwindling resources - they therefore need parents to take on more responsibility themselves. Making sure parents know their children were safely dropped off at school because they actually dropped them off at school is one way of doing this.

I walked alone, with sibling or friends to and from school at age about 5-6 but this was in 1960 (ish) there was very little traffic, we lived near the school and there were loads of other kids all walking the same route at the same time plus a lollipop man for the one bigger road. It was the norm in those days. My own DC had a fairly busy road to cross (with no lollipop or crossing) so were unable to walk themselves home from primary at all. Although in Y6 we just walked them as far as the main road, saw them across it and then they did the rest of the journey on their own and then the same in reverse to come home. DGC live in an area where they have first, middle and upper schools. They will go to middle school for Y5 to Y8. I have seen parents waiting outside the school gates of the local one so I imagine the school just let the kids out and some will go home on their own, so from Y5 onwards Those parents who have younger kids still in first school couldn't pick up the older ones anyway being unable to be in two places at once.

I’m surprised parents these days would be happy sending primary school children off to school on their own. It’s not like the olden days when people knew their neighbours and looked out for each other. It’s just asking for trouble especially if like someone said you could go several hours before finding out your child isn’t actually in school.

It's really no more dangerous now than it was in the 70s/80s/90 etc

It's just you know a lot more about the stuff that happens due to the internet etc.. I mean, let's not forget which era Saville, Harris, Glitter etc came from......

Well it's only primary school in year 5 or 6. I felt the same but they have to learn at some point otherwise what will happen at the start of high school? Not just that some people are single parents and it's a matter of money and getting to work...

It does depend on circumstances how far the school is ect. My child takes a phone to school then hands it in to the teacher.

Year 5 or aged 5? Aged 5 is bonkers.

Did you all receive a lump of coal for Christmas too (if you were lucky)? 🤣

There’s a lot of hyperbole on MN I know, but this type of post does make me sad. Even if four and five year olds are sensible, what about other children and adults who may wish to cause them harm? Saying it’s unlikely doesn’t rule it out by any means. Four and five (and even older) is so young to be unsupervised.

Mine are now grown up, but in some years of primary, the child would not be released until the teacher had eyes on an authorised adult. So your child would not be able to walk home.

I think independence through walking to school is overrated anyway. My adult child has no issues and was driven to school right through (due to rural/distance). I don't know what difference to his adult life it would have made if he had walked to school 10 years ago as opposed to being driven.

Mine are now grown up, but in some years of primary, the child would not be released until the teacher had eyes on an authorised adult. So your child would not be able to walk home.

As soon as a parent says their child is to be released to walk home schools, generally, allow it because they are, mostly, well aware that they do not have the authority to stop the parent making that decision. All they can do is deal with any safeguarding issues if they are present, which usually there isn't.

In 20 years working in schools i saw numerous parents challenge the schools policy on this and only once did the school do anything other than agree (and in that case it was part of a wider bunch of safeguarding issues).

I think from age7/8 it’s absolutely fine for many kids to be walking alone, mine did from 7&9 years old to school as I had to catch the bus to work though I collected them on my way home. Know your own children, know the route they take, are their lots of others walking it??? All makes a difference. My neighbours kids go alone, year 2 and year 5, no roads to cross at all, 5 minute walk

One of my friends didn’t even take her dd on the first day. She wanted to walk by herself so she let her.