Maximum travel distance from school to home

[Jhhhfsd]

For secondary what's the maximum distance that you'd send your child?

Obviously I'm excluding boarding. As it is it unusual to go to school 20+ miles away from home

By choice, or being allocated it?

I believe its 75mins considered reasonable

By choice. As in sending children to the best grammar school even though it's far away

I live fairly rurally and know many children who commute 25+ miles to the nearest city for private schools. Not what I would choose for my DC, but it is certainly done.

In London an hour door to door is quite normal.

people will travel further for faith, private's & grammars.

So how far is the school for you? My son's school is 18 mins drive away on a quiet time, but in rush hours it can take me up to 40mins this can be daily morning and after school. I do the drop/pick ups. You need to consider the rush hour traffic, and will you be taking them or sending them on a bus? My son's friend catches a bus and has to wake up earlier and leave much earlier and returns home much later and is quite tired from the long day.

There's a private hire coach service. And there's also the opportunity for the train and a season's ticket. This will be a big change to just walking 10 minutes to primary.

DD does 90 minutes each way.

7 minutes walk, 50 minutes train, 5 minutes walk, 15 minutes train, 5 minutes walk.

She's Y11 now and has done this length commute since Y1 of Primary. And will do a slightly longer one next year.

The main thing is how faffy the journey is and how much walking/waiting. She quite likes the 50 minutes on the train. Guaranteed a seat, heating, wifi and she can get a table seat and do a lot of homework, or she downloads films onto her iPad and just chills out for an hour.

What gets annoying are ones with lots of connections, or long waits between, or long walks if it's raining. She could cut 20 minutes off the journey doing a different route, but it's a much longer walk at the end.

On the upside, she's incredibly independent and good at organising travel - knows how to re-route journeys, deal with rail replacement buses, find her way round a gazillion apps. She also has a season ticket so just goes into London at weekends to see friends etc.

When we were looking at Y12 options, we set the limit at 2 hours each way maximum - and only if it was the place of her dreams. In the end it came in at 1 hour 40 mins. And location is very handy for things she wants to do after classes so worth it.

@Jhhhfsd for secondary, I would say an hour each way is the maximum commute time I’d consider. I agree with PPs that it does depend on what the commute looks like. If it’s very faffy or unreliable I wouldn’t do it, but for a booked seat on a school coach (that won’t go bust within 5 years…) or a regular and safe bus or train service would be ok. It depends on the child, of course.

My DD commutes to grammar, and it’s 5-6 miles on two public buses (both extremely frequent services) and it takes her about 50 minutes in the mornings (she chooses to go early and do homework or hang out with friends at school) and an hour or just over in the afternoons. It was her choice of school – she could have chosen another grammar 4 miles away with just one bus, or indeed one of two decent comps, one of which was within walking distance.

We didn’t even consider the ‘best’ grammar in the region, which would have been 12 miles away and approx 90 minutes’ commute. Yes – it scores a bit higher on league tables, but plenty of girls get 9s in every subject every year at her chosen grammar, so there was no reason to think that our DD would do better elsewhere.

In your position, I would consider the following questions:

1. Will you be prouder of your children if they are at the ‘best’ grammar school? Is this actually about bragging rights with family/friends? Be honest with yourself!

2. Are you certain that your children will achieve better grades and/or be happier at the ‘best’ grammar than they would at a closer grammar or comprehensive school?

3. Are your children extremely keen to go to the ‘best’ grammar, despite the long commute? If they are keen, is it because they genuinely love that school or are they keen because you’ve told them it’s the best?

4. Is the private hire coach service a very reliable and longstanding business? Round here (West Midlands) catchment areas were introduced for some grammar schools a few years ago, and a couple of years later the private coach service folded at short notice due to reduced demand, leaving many families stuck. At least you have the train option - it it very easy, reliable and safe?

Nobody can tell you what’s right for your children. I would just encourage you to question how important ‘best’ is, and whether the difference it will make to your children will be worth all that lost time.

I drive my SEN foster DS 20 miles to college every day and it takes an hour. Then drive 20 miles home again about 45 minutes. Then again to collect 20 miles, 40 minutes then home again another 20 miles and another hour. Rush hour is dreadful near Birmingham.

My daughter has a private hire coach service. It’s an hour each way. The first term of year 7 was difficult but after that she got used to it and now uses it for her downtime in the morning listening to music and her homework in the afternoon.

Bear in mind all their friends will also becomes away, and I doubt the coach would accommodate out of hours extra curricular activities. So you end up being taxi one way or another.

This is well worth considering.

One of the reasons we went for such a long commute was that our nearest decent local option was an hour by school coach. It meant leaving home the same time as it arrived 30 minutes before classes began, and there was no late option if you wanted to do after school clubs, school plays etc.

Train is much more flexible, and if they already have a season ticket then no problems meeting up at weekends.

My ds travels 20 rural miles to school. I drop him at the school bus at 7.45, and collect him from the bus stop at 5.30 or he walks the four miles home.

He's done that since he was 11 without issue.

Time taken to get to school (in actual rush hour) is more relevant than distance.

Remember that you are not comparing School A versus School B, but School A versus School B with an extra 2 hours (or whatever) a day because you don't have the long commute.

Is "the best grammar school" really worth that? How much better is "best"?

Are you realistically going to get a place at the school? Grammars round here are over subscribed and places are offered by distance radiating out from the school. If you lived that far away you wouldn't be offered a place regardless of your 11± score.

2 of my children go to a good grammar school. Some children come form ridiculous distances IMO. I feel very sorry for those children. Mine are tired enough without making life harder. They have the rest of their lives to commute. Unless your local school is awful don’t give them a horrible commute.

My children's school was less than a ten minute drive round the back way but took them over an hour (walk to bus stop wait for bus get stuck in traffic jam then walk to school)

15 miles drive.

When I was at school we lived 3 miles away but the bus took nearly an hour.

I was just thinking about the mental health implications of such a change

In what sense?

Its very normal for children to have a longer journey to secondary school than primary school, and longer again at Sixth Form. Even just for the normal, local Comprehensive school. (The catchment for ours is 7 miles in one direction for example!)

Going from walking 10 minutes to nearby primary to a near 1 hour journey

I don't see why it should have any mental health implications at all.

DD's train in the morning is literally hundreds of kids going to different schools. They all seem perfectly happy.

They end up with train buddies - otherwise audio books, Netflix App.

Not a single child in our village has less than a 45 minute journey each way... as that is the closest school. Lots of parents opt for much longer to avoid it.

Is her journey around an hour long?