Guilt over school commute

[Allotment123]

DS just started year 7 aged 11. Now has to get the bus to school. Could go to local school, this school is better. Buses been utterly rubbish, should be 40 minutes, 1 hour door to door. Today it took him almost 2 hours to get home. I feel so guilty but it is a much better school for him. When he's older he could cycle in less than an hour but all roads do not an option now. Do other parents have this guilt. He comes back so tired and grumpy

I had an hour each way commute in secondary so that I could go to a much better school and it was completely worth it. Does he have an iPhone with Audible / games etc to at least relax on the bus? Anything over an hour is too long though so I would look at if that’s a one off or if something can be done to shorten the trip home. Maybe you could collect home or is there a train option? Is there an option to lift share with other parents?

I wouldn’t like a two hour commute home on a bus. There must be a better way to do this.

No definitely too long. Also if the journey is across the city there will always be delays especially in rush hour. He’s a bit young to be dealing with full buses, cancelled buses etc. and imagine the winter months.

I did a bus journey for school (not as far) when I was a kid but I did it with a few others and I remember we were all late for the maths exam when the bus was full.

If there is a local school I would send him there and make the move now.

Where did his friends from primary go?

Can you work on the cycle? 5 miles isn't far, cycling in traffic is a skill but just needs practise.

My 10 year old cycles to school on his own on the roads which I have taught him to navigate correctly. Only half a mile but every intention of him cycling the 5 miles to secondary from day one in Year 7 - we will practise it over the summer holidays.

It seems too long Op, u less the local school is hideously awful then I think I would reconsider. Xx

@Allotment123 it seems that lots of people have come on here specifically to pile on more guilt, so I will offer an alternative viewpoint. In my job I work with lots of kids after school, I see them go through primary, in to secondary, and that first term in secondary school they are ALL exhausted and grumpy, the ones who travel further, and the ones who don't even roll out of bed until 8. It's the transition that is hard. My DD leaves the house at 7, and depending on the carnage of the bus system, makes it home any time from 5.30 at the earliest. I don't feel guilt for it as she is beyond happy at her school, (she helped choose it in the first place,) she does clubs at lunch times, chats to friends on buses that overlap, does revision homework if she's on her own so that it's done and dusted. She's keeping up with the things she wants to do outside school too. It's been a big adjustment, but she's embracing it. So I'd say what it comes down to, is if your son is happy there. Have a chat to him, if he is, then stop feeling guilty, he will get into the routine, but maybe look for little ways you can help him. Sometimes my husband myself are able to drop DD at school early on our way past to work, or even at a nearer bus stop. Sometimes work patterns mean that of she stays after school in the homework room for an hour, someone can pick her up and she's home earlier than she would be normally with the added bonus of all the homework being done. We look for ways of helping her as much as possible. One of my other children would not cope so well, so when we apply to secondary for him it will be with a different plan in mind. Only you know your child.

Does he have any friends/new schoolmates who also go to this school from your area? I'm wondering if there is a parent who might be driving that you could come to an arrangement with, even if only a couple of days a week?

Or at least another child to pal up with on the journey.

Is it not possible for you/his father to drive him?

It seems odd that there is no school bus, unless you live in a completely different area to the majority of the other pupils. Even if one doesn't come as far as you could he take a school bus somewhere else and then be picked up or cycle home?

Or can he go to a club or childminder or friend's house or something and come home later to miss rush hour?

I feel somehow that there might be a creative/lateral thinking solution that you are missing.

I think many of you would have an aneurism at the distance kids in my country have to travel just to get to any school. 50/60km + in some cases. And form kindergarten age 5 as well. So no your son will be fine.

I had to do this long bus commute and it was miserable. How bad is the closet school??? In my case it was really really bad so I do think in the long run it was for t beat but god it was horrible for me. I was up at 6 every single day and not home until 4.45-5.30 depending on the bus.And no one was there when I got home either until about 6.30. It was crap for me but in hindsight I would rather have done it than gone to the really bad school. So if the other one is really terrible then continue.. but find a way to make it easier for him. If the other school is ok, take that option. Xo

This isn't comparable though. It's not the same situation.

There are plenty of children here who travel long distances to private schools or to Catholic schools for example. There will be school buses and the the school will know their catchment is large and make adjustments for that.

This boy is won't be able to go to after school clubs because then he will be travelling home in the rush hour. In the dark. He will still have to do his homework, two of three hours in a couple of years time.

How bad is the local school?

it’s not just the commute, it’s that most of the people he makes friends with will also live quite far away I am guessing.

Unless the local school is really god awful, I would ask him if he wants you to look at moving him.

I wouldn’t take a job that was an hour, at best each way. I wouldn’t expect my kids to do it either. I want them to have some life during the week. They will be grown ups with jobs that take up a lot of your life, for a long time. No need to make it happen sooner.

If my ds (same age as your son) did this commute, football and evening activities would be out the window

I think many of you would have an aneurism at the distance kids in my country have to travel just to get to any school. 50/60km + in some cases. And form kindergarten age 5 as well. So no your son will be fine.

And these children are doing that commute by themselves on public transport are they? With no friends to travel with because they are going to a more local school.

I don't actually think it's that unusual a commute. My advice would be to leave the house earlier to avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic and maybe do the same after school or find a friend whose parents could drive him or other ways some previous posters have suggested ti help him. It's not that bad to only have 1 bus to take to school.

We have grammar schools in our town and those kids regularly travel an hour/ over an hour each way for school, by bus or train involving a similar walk-transport-walk journey as you describe.

The schools' catchments are about 15 miles radius, so quite a large area and varying degrees of accessibility depending on where you live.

If there are no other options to drive or car share, is it possible to review his route and try catching the bus at an earlier stop, to get on before it becomes full?

Are there other kids who live nearby who make the journey to the same school? Could they keep an eye out for each other? (The grammar school kids here have "train friends", cause they get to know each other during the journeys, kids outside of their class and year groups.)

Review the situation at half term or Christmas, see how your son feels about the journey and the school then.

We know lots of kids who commute (including some of my own). What helps is having a friendship group also commuting, plenty of snacks & water, battery pack to charge phone, doing homework on the train especially revision/duo linguo etc, audio books, listening to music and some can even read on the bus.

All the kids we know actually enjoy the commute. So I would say see how it goes and help him settle into it with the above tips.

I don't know what you mean by, "should be 40 minutes, 1 hour door to door" - it's occasionally that long/usually that long/nearly always that long?

My instinct is something along the lines of [assuming that your "local school" is less than say half an hour away]:

(a) if destined to commute alone, an average of c 1 hr each way is about the longest sensible commute, assuming you're just talking about choosing between two state schools with identical funding per head etc but one with a more affluent demographic;
(b) if destined to commute in a group of other kids for company/security, an average of maybe something like c 60-75 minutes is about the longest sensible commute.

I should add, those are the absolute maxima. Really my instinct would be to prefer the local option above say 30-45 minutes.

We did the same and I must admit it was the worse decision we could have made. It was an absolute shame that his friends were not local and the travelling time followed by all the homework there really wasn't much down time.

Please think hard about changing to the local school. Surely it's not THAT bad?

Would you do a 2 hr commune to get to work? If the answer is no then it's extremely unreasonable to expect an 11 yr old to do it. You made the wrong decision.

I think the 2 hour trip today is clouding things. It's too early to tell yet but if the norm is less than, say, 75 mins I would say that's ok. OP's son is not commuting 3 hours a day, he had an extended journey today, and it's still very early days.

When I lived in London me and my friends used to reckon on a hideous commute, tube lines closed etc, about once a month. It was stressful the first few times but you learn to take it in your stride. I know he's younger but with your support, the odd nightmare journey can be coped with. It's completely different to having a 3 or 4 hour of commute every day.

Some DC at ours are in catchment, in a town, and still have a 1.5 hour walk if there is no space on the one bus. Others travel a lot further for the grammar. Parents usually try to give them the odd lift to or from school when work allows, and that goes a long way to helping them feel better about it.

Is the school a Grammar and it’s the closest one, or the only one your DC got into or is it a Comp?

Lots of parents on this thread have no real sense of kids travelling a distance for school because perhaps in their area almost everyone goes to the local school. Perhaps there aren’t any selective or specialist options nearby.

Lots of kids do travel up to an hour each way to access a particular school. Parents choose to do that usually because they think the learning experience will be better for their kid in that kind of school and academic outcomes better too. Lots of parents can’t really imagine looking at that stuff and choosing to travel a long way for those things, because going local is just what people near them do.

As a general principle, I don’t think secondary kids having to travel some distance is a problem. Often it’s worth it for the better school. But of course there are limits. Journeys can often be disrupted and you do have to think of worst case scenarios when working out time of journey. If 2 hrs one way is more than something that happens perhaps once or twice a year, it really is too far.

The ElevenPlus forum threads are full of parents who are contemplating sending their kids on ridiculous journeys to access super selective grammars. Their plans are often just not viable but daft. In reality, most of them never happen, but some do start on crazy journeys and then leave.

I’d say a 5 mile journey should be okay. It doesn’t sound daft. But 2 hrs is daft. I’d think there should be a solution to this. Cycling could be the way forward or some kind of lift share or taxi option? OP, don’t feel guilty about your choice to go for the best school 5 Mike’s away, if you are willing and able to work out better and more reliable transport. If this really has just been an unfortunate one-off of 2 hrs, again, that’s okay, but it cannot be something that’s regular.

Don’t worry too much about him being tired after the 1 hr journey, That’s partly just adapting to secondary rather than it’s a ridiculous length of time to travel.

In reality, it’s often the case that families and kids need to make some sacrifices to get the great schools. Lots of people struggle with that idea and wouldn’t do it, even if they had the choice as they will value convenience and local friends above perhaps a few better GCSE results and possibly a more settled and calm learning experience. Others don’t have the choice anyway or if they might have it, are totally unaware of further away options.

Hope you can find a way to make it work OP. It clearly needs some urgent looking into and it would be a shame to have to transfer to another school, but if the journey could regularly take 2 hrs one way, I’d say that regretfully the school isn’t. Viable. I hope that’s not the case for you snd your family.

This.

It's not ideal, but given the set up I think you're going to have to get over him cycling because it will be much faster than the bus. Even at 10 miles an hour it should only take 30 minutes and that's very reasonable.

Take October half term as an opportunity to practice til you're happy. Buy really good lights, and make sure his bike has as many reflectors as you can muster (on the basis that no secondary school child will be persuaded to wear fluorescent gear). If you can stump up the cost you can get amazing jackets that just look a flattish grey but are super reflective.

www.provizsports.com/en-gb/switch-mens-cycling-jacket-black-reflective.html

Are kids allowed to ride electric bikes? Could be useful!

Never mind the 2 hours today, how long does it normally take? An hour each way is totally normal and fine for secondary. And despite what a pp says, we've found that the bus service fluctuates. Through covid it got worse, this year its much improved.