Local school vs further away better school

[warmbutteredtoast]

Finding it really hard to decide whether to send our son to the local primary or another school that is a 10-15 minute drive. I’d love him to have local friends and an easy walk on the morning. However, the local school isn’t great, not terrible, just not brilliant. The school that’s a drive away is really lovely. But 40 mins of driving a day (4x10 minutes) is a lot for years. Any advice welcome!

Is further school attracting pupils from a wide area, or e.g. one set village? (Look at distance offered for places) that should tell you if you'll have other families willing to travel for playdates etc, or if you'll be getting in the car while everyone else walks home together.

Saying that the reality of local pick up isnt as idyllic as some make it sound, plenty drive due to work. Theres wraparound, clubs and grandparents rather than a core group of friendly parents waiting at 3.30 to walk together.

I would go for the better school, we went out of catchment (though still walkable) and the benefits outweigh the lack of spontaneous playdates.

We chose a school that's a drive away (15 minutes but on my way to work so not so bad), over our 2 local schools that were really not good.
It's not ideal, ideally all schools would be a good enough level that we'd all just choose our closet one!
Most of the people in our area prefer to drive to the village schools that go to the local one. So one benefit for us is that most people at our chosen school are not actually local to the school, so our child is not alone in not having 'local' friends, most are a 10+ minute drive away as well.
Agree with another poster though that you need to add quite a bit of time for parking/walking/children faffing to the drop off and pick up time. I leave an extra 10 minutes usually.
We actually wanted some schools that were a closer drive and guaranteed to have a higher pool of 'local' friends (there's only 1 from her nursery in her current school), but they were all over subscribed so we didn't get in.