Hiw important is it to live near your child's school? (Secondary)

[User860131]

We're househunting currently. My child will be in secondary school in a couple of years. For reasons I won't go into we have first choice of secondary schools and catchment isn't an issue. The secondary school that she and her friends will more than likely want to go to is in a suburban area of a large city. It is fineish but it's getting more and more rough and I can only see this worsening as poverty increases. However it also does have a thriving town centre and a nice community feel and she'd be able to walk to school.

After looking at houses in the area though I'm kindof feeling like it's way overinflated. I much more fancy an area that's much more rural. It's only 3 miles from her proposed secondary but no bus routes and not in the school catchment.

I've talked to dh and we've accepted that if we go for the rural area we have to own that choice and accept being dd's taxi service for a few years. Can people share their own experiences though? Will my dd miss out by living a bit away from the main action? Thanks

Thinking outside the box, scrap keeping her at the same primary. Have a look at other secondaries, their feeder primaries and consider your commute. Is there anything good? If you move her for the last couple of years of primary then she can make new friends and move up with them.

We did this with our children but were fortunate enough that the amazing secondary meant they could walk to that one but I still had to do the school run for their current primary every day which was 15 minutes.

Alternatively, short term she stays in her primary and you do the school run to that in the car. You choose a secondary she can walk to or easily get a bus to and she goes with no one she knows from primary to the secondary. Both of my children went to a secondary that none of their friends went to. They made friends easily and kept those friends all the way through secondary. There are always children going to grammar schools or private schools with no one from their primary. Just worth rethinking everything so you have considered all options.

Stay in primary, find an alternative secondary. Move primary for a great secondary.

I agree with most. It is really important that your dc can get themselves - not only to and from school on a daily basis, but also for the after school things or Saturday things, but mainly for the friendships. Those chats on the way to and from school (be that walking or public transport) are so important for mental health and for friendships. Then there are all the other times they will begin to want to 'hang out' with friends are they get older.

Obviously, there are some dc that live rurally where there isn't a school bus, who get through life like this, but you are asking us how important we rate it, and my answer is 'very'.

Wow thanks all. You've given me food for thought... I guess I'm looking at this from the perspective that this will be where my dh and I settle for basically the rest of our lives..... I guess I hadn't really considered that it would make my dd's life so much more difficult. I guess we have some soul-searching to do.

I think it probably matters more if your child is the only one in that situation. We live rurally and it's 20 miles to secondary school from our village, further from others, but almost everyone is in the same boat. A comparatively small percentage of the pupils live within walking distance of school and most are bussed in from outlying places, so there's nothing unusual or particularly isolating about not being able to walk to school with your mates. Not many hang out together after school other than organised activities as everyone is dashing for the bus and there's hardly any spontaneous meet ups in the evenings or at weekends as everyone has to plan transport. From a parental point of view, whilst after school clubs etc are a bit of a nuisance sometimes, chances are there are other kids from your locality who are also staying for something so you can at least take turns with other parents.
So I don't think distance in itself is an issue, but being different from everyone else potentially is. If your DD makes friends at school who all walk to and from school together, hang out at Costa or something after school, do the same weekend activities and so on, and she is the only one who can't join in, then that may be quite isolating. Equally if the other youngsters around where you live all go to another school together it may be difficult for your DD to develop a friendship group at home, potentially leaving her a bit of an outsider on both fronts.
I think if you do opt for a school she can't get to independently then you need to be prepared to facilitate not just the journey to and from school but evening and weekend activities too.

For me it’s not about distance, it’s about being able to get themselves to and from school independently. That doesn’t have to be walking distance but I wouldn’t saddle my child with having to rely on me for lifts if there is any alternative.

I wish we had asked this question before we made our rural move and realised the impact it would have on our kids lives. At least you now know that it might not be the best idea for your DC and can make an informed decision.

We live fairly rurally but thankfully the local high school is on the edge of the town and is walkable. I loved the fact that my child could walk to school/friends houses, and equally importantly that they could drop in after school or in the evenings. Having said that, we're further away from town than most other kids so our house is seen as being more of an effort to walk to than the others (half hour walk) so I could imagine that going to a further away school would have a bigger impact socially...

We were in a similar position but decided we didn’t want to be slaves to the car - nor for the DSs to not be able to be independent - and therefore cut our dreams loose and bought a perfectly ok but not amazingly located house within easy reach of school and friends

now, two years on, ds1 gets the bus to school with his friends (or a half hour walk) and he’s absolutely hate to have to rely on lifts from us.

I think it partly depends on what your own life is like. Do you work? Will you always be available to drive?

I work 3 days. Dad fairly flexible ito wfh

We would love to move. Our jobs and everything else would be ok, we would be able to afford a bigger house if we moved. We stay put for a DDs. It feels like a sacrifice but when I think about the ability for them to get themselves to and from school, hang around friends houses, go to spontaneous clubs or to a local cafe, without it meaning we are running about or waiting sat in the car for them, it's worth it.

I think it depends on the reason why you are certain you will get a place at that school.

I'm not asking why - but if it's because of any particular vulnerability or delay, then actually being a little distance away could be a protective factor?

If it means a taxi into school or you driving your child in and out each day, that can cut down quite a lot of the less structured times and quite a lot of the large unfocused group times.

For my children that worked well because it meant I had a fair amount more input into the shaping of their school day - which helped smooth their journey through secondary school itself and meant we avoided some minor social issues becoming much larger ones.

Ultimately, is your child one who will benefit from being in the epicentre, or one who will function best at a manageable distance and with more support from you? (The beauty of it for us was that me driving them in and out was not necessarily seen by anyone else as support - other kids will just thought I was driving them in because of the distance!)

Dress rehearsal has run over by 45 minutes!!! Can't go home...too far.

Wait till you discover they have put in an extra last minute rehearsal tomorrow morning ...
(don't miss the mad rehearsal days at all!).

I hope your daughter's play goes well.

I work 3 days. Dad fairly flexible ito wfh

I think it's not just about your availabilty to be a taxi service. It's about being able to be spontaneous and not missing out - Let's go to Costa/the shops after school. Do you want to come back to my house for tea? Oh, your mum's picking you up. Oh well...

And also, as she gets older, being able to plan her own life, learn how to navigate public transport and travelling independently and finding her way around new places.

So during school holidays, Dad is always available to wfh on the days that you are at work, and his job is flexible enough to allow him to pop in and out as DD needs lifts? And he won't remotely find this a pain?

Ihave to drive my youngest to school and its very limiting. He physically cannot get there independently.

Mine walk. All their mates walk or local bus. They rarely need lifts any where. They can pop over to mates. They all walk home together & hang out. From Yr7

This.

Plus, traffic at the start and end of school, even 3 miles can be 20mins there, + 20 mins back = 40mins x 2 times a day.

I grew up in this same set up - further out from my high school, bad transport links. Yes, my mum would take me/pick me up for stuff that was pre-planned, cinema trips etc with my friends, but it was all the ad hoc social stuff that happened otherwise I missed out on - friends dropping by to call for me, the last minute gatherings and hanging out that I hadn't planned with my mum in advance and she was busy or out or couldn't spare the time to do two round trips to drop and pick me up. Even little things like hanging round after school and visiting a friend's house for an hour or so had to be planned in advance and it was rubbish. And when my friends all joined a gym together, I couldn't go; when the town where my school was got a cinema, I couldn't go on a whim with my friends - stupid little things but as a teen added up to me always feeling a bit on the outside of 'oh were you on XYZ park last night? We were just wandering through but we bumped into so-and-so and this happened'. Also just the fact that they were all from one place and I was from another - on a very small tribal teenage level that made me a bit different, although I guess it depends how big the school's catchment is (my school was one small town, and I lived in a totally different separate one, whereas if the areas are a bit more merged/less distinct this might not be an issue).

It's not like it was absolutely the end of the world and I'm not traumatised or anything, but it was a bit of a miserable set up for me as a teen and I struggled to feel like I fit in a good chunk of the time!

It was important to me and we sent our dses to the local very average comp because of it. We couldn’t afford to move and I and our dses really didn’t want a long journey to school. I did it for secondary and hated it.

It worked well for us. My gut feeling was the school was on the up which proved to be the case and my dses did really well there. They are both at top universities now.

Others feel very differently though and many parents local to us made very different choices and their dc travelled to school on public transport.

I think it’s a very individual decision and it has to be based on your own dc and your own values.

Living near the school makes It much easier to attend after school activities.

I'm on the android app so sorry if I've missed it, but does DD have any siblings? After we moved house 6 years ago, the bus from our village to DDs school was cut, so I'm currently in the 6th and final year of being taxi service to her secondary school. It hasn't been a problem for DD because I always take/drop her to friends when she wants. If she wants to see a friend after school, she tends to just go home with them, and I'll pick her up later. It works fine for her, but only really because my other 2 DCs are still able to get to their different school under their own steam (their bus wasn't cut). Different start/finish times would have been a problem if I'd needed to be picking up different DCs at different times, due to after school clubs etc, even if at the same school.

I was in a similar situation when my daughter started secondary school. We lived 9.5 miles from the school and the journey took her around an hour each way. We live in south London and I wasn't happy with her making such a long journey alone at first and so for the first 18 months I drove her a couple of miles to where she could catch the school bus and then once she was halfway through Year 8 I drove her to the station so she could catch the train. We thought about it carefully and decided that the school was worth making a seven year commitment to taking her to the bus or station every morning and collecting her again most evenings. The school had a very large catchment area, and there were only a small handful of girls from any one primary school, so my daughter wasn't an outsider in terms of pre-existing friendships. We were on the northern edge of the catchment area and thankfully none of her friends were from the southern end, so whilst it was a pain at times when she socialised after schools and weekends, it was manageable in terms of picking her up. She also had separate sets of bus and train friends who she travelled with. It certainly wasn't a negative experience for us.

I had a choice of two secondaries for ds, one he could cycle to with all his friends, and one was a short lift plus bus ride away (uncyclable road, with a bus fare cost). We chose the one he could get to independently - partly but not only for that reason - and it was 1000% the right choice. He wanted to go to the distant one because his best friend was going there, abd it was still the right choice to go to the other. His best friend moved schools for year 12 anyway.

When I was 16 I moved with my family from a rural house to a place in a town with a station. My parents were devastated to leave the rural house but I have never forgotten the total liberation I felt being able to get around independently, see my friends, get a Saturday job. Please put your girls first for the next few years. You can move after that if you want.