I saw a post in as US person was saying most kids walk or bike to school. Here not the case especially rural areas with no sidewalks/pavement.
Like if my kids were to walk to school it would take an hour. They would have to leave by 7 am. Plus walk along major 4 lane road
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My school was always in my home town and i had to walk around 15 min to reach it.
But that school was also attended by many pupils from smaller neighbouring villages that didn’t have any school. They came by normal public busses or trains.
And our school started at 7.15 am (not standard everywhere in Germany) so many of those who had to come by bus left home at 6 or so.
In rural areas here that’s not the case either necessarily. Growing up my primary school was 5km away and my secondary school 13km. I always went to school on a school bus. In secondary school the bus came early as fuck, so I always had to wake up at like 5:30 for a 8am school start. Horrible, horrible time.
I live in a very big city, there’s five schools in what I would call “my neighbourhood”. 20 minutes walk / 5 minutes cycling / 10 minutes bus between the furthest two schools.
I don’t know what’s their catchment area but I don’t think any child is coming from very far away.
Big cities are pretty convenient.
In every neighborhood there are plenty of schools. To primary/middle school I had to walk 5 mins, high school was around 30 mins by public transport.
In the big cities there are usually schools within walking/short city bus ride distance.
It’s slightly worse in the countryside, as not every village has its own school, but there are special school buses in many of such places afaik. Besides, most people in the countryside have a car, so it’s not that much of a problem.
Depends. My primary school was 1,5km so a walking distance, middle school was 4km. Every child going to primary or middle school that is farther away than 4 km, I think, has to have a bus to school provided
My closest school (which has both primary and secondary schools) is 0.7 miles / 1.1 km and is easily walkable.
Primary school was a 5 maybe 10 minutes walk.
Secondary school was a half hour drive one way if you go straight there, for me it took about an hour.
College was a 1 ½ hour commute by public transport and bike and later on after I switched my major and school it was a 15 min bike ride.
Huge difference between urban and rural areas. In cities, most kids will live withing what one could call biking distance to their school.
In rural areas, most have to take bus. If you live in the same settlement as your school, you could of course walk or bike, probably even nicer than in a city. But if your secondary school is many kilometers away because you live in an area with lots of tiny villages… You take the bus.
Literally next door. Good for the kids but during breaks I need to close the window as the little monsters scream like hell.
My primary school was just down the road from us, less than a 2 minutes’ walk away. Secondary was in the next town over ~8km away, so we had to get the bus
My primary school (kindergarten-to-grade-5 in US terms, I think?) was maybe 15-20 minutes’ walk from home, and that’s with little legs.
My secondary school (US grades 6-10?) was about 45-60 minutes by public transport, but that one was quite a lot further away than the average probably is.
My sixth form (US grades 11-12?) was about 30 minutes if I walked; usually less if I took the bus, but how *much* less kind of depended on the timing.
Proximity is a factor for school enrollment (issues with that in secondary because smart kids miss their chances if they live in a bad neighbourhood), so kids tend to live closer if they go to a public school. Doesn’t matter for private, of course.
For us it’s 2 km, but manageable because it’s on my way to work so at least no extra travel and close enough when working from home.
I live in a small city with a population of about 15,000.
We have five primary schools in total. Of these, two go all the way up to 9th grade, while the other three only go up to 6th grade.
* **Grades 1–6** – Most pupils live within 600 metres of their school, with a few as far as 1.6 kilometres away. These children do not cross any major roads; they travel either within residential areas or on bike paths that pass under larger roads.
* **Grades 7–9** – Most pupils live within 2 kilometres, with some as far as 2.5 kilometres away. Many will need to cross a two-lane main road as they commute to a neighbouring school district.
Children who live in the countryside or in small hamlets travel by bus or taxi to the nearest school. Those living quite close to the city (typically 2–6 km away) may lose this privilege as they get older.
Average distance to the closest primary school is less than 1km. 2.3km to the closest secondary school. We don’t have school districts like the USA so people can choose to go to further away schools. Cycling and walking infrastructure is everywhere, also in rural areas. School buses are rare, but children take normal public transport going to secondary school.
I lived in a city during primary school and the longest distance was 2km. I lived in a small town in a rural area during secondary school and a few kids were cycling 20km.
An hour of walking is 15m of cycling in a rural area, so they would ride their bikes if your kids were Dutch.
Growing up in a small city school was a 3 minute walk from home, all children walked to school and it’s still the same way. High school was a bit further, maybe 15 minutes walk, most kids walked or biked there but a few came by bus from a nearby village.
In rural areas it’s different since in my region depopulation has been a problem for decades, many rural schools have closed through the years and only those in larger towns remain open and children for the surrounding villages take the bus.
I live in a city now, and the closest one is 500m second 600m, third 900m, so 7min to 15 min (10-20 for kids, I guess).
I lived in a very small town (cca 5000pop), we walked 1,5km 20m or 30m for kids. Later we went with bikes..
There was no large-large highway, but on one part, there was a larger road. But maybe you don’t know this, we didnt really go alone. Like two houses from me was another kid, so I waited for him (he for me), we picked up a guy half way, and another one close to him, last 500m we might meet some other groups like this so we combined..
But it depends a lot. If there is no school in your place, you are gonna travel by bus to another place, it is very common.
We’re in rural NW Ireland. My son’s (26) primary school is 7km away, and his secondary school is 9km away. So it’s either we drive him or he gets the school bus.
ETA: with the amount of books they bring home there’s no way he could’ve cycled.
When I was school age, I lived about 1,5km from my school. But my town is rather large in area, so some kids had 30km. But everyone who lives over 5km away gets a ride in a bus or taxi (free).
I biked or walked. There’s sidewalks now for the entire way I had to take, but back then the fastest way didn’t.
I can see the daycare my daughter goes through my living room window. The school she’ll go when she’s older is crossing the street from the daycare.
At least in Paris I’d say most kids live at walking distance from their school.
Primary school: 5 minutes walk
1st High school: 7 minutes walk
2nd High school: 10 minutes walk
3rd High school (yes, we moved a lot): I chose one outside the city limits for its reputation so 15 mins public bus, but I had others within 7-8 minutes walk
University: I went in another city. 35 minutes train + 10 minutes walk.
Edit – I forgot the year I lived in a >100 village when I was 8. I had ~2kms/30 minutes walk. I guess nowadays people would freak out but it was the kind of village where literally everyone knows each other, all the neighbours whose houses I passed knew me, and we didn’t get any outsiders ever because there was NOTHING there. The village school served only children up to 12 years old, after that they had to take a bus to the bigger town 12kms away.
My elementary school was a 10 minute walk. In the first few years, I would walk/cycle with my big sis. Parents shuttling kids around was (and still is) rare, except for the very youngest who were shuttled on a child seat on mum’s bicycle.
Secondary school was a 20-25 minutes bicycle ride away. If it rained, one of my parents would sometimes drop me off and pick me up again. But if the car wasn’t available… bad luck. Take a rain coat. You’re not made of sugar 😀
My third school was 20 minutes by train, and then 15 minutes by tram. That was actually nicer than it sounds – most students needed to take the same tram, so it was a bit of after school socialising until the train station, where we’d said our “see ya tomorrow” and all went our separate ways.
That’s how it was for me. During my first year of junior high, I lived near the high school in a small rural village. Then my family moved about 8 kilometers away to a little agrarian hamlet in the middle of nowhere, but it had a K–8 school within walking distance. So I finished out my 8th-grade year there, walking back and forth each day.
When it came time for senior high, I returned to the original high school by bus. Luckily, my grandparents lived within walking distance of the school, and my dad worked at a nearby mill. Most days after school I’d walk over to my grandma’s house and wait there until my dad finished his shift and picked me up.
I went to school in a city and it was about 35-45 minutes walk through a maze of little side streets. The kind where l was the only one around, no cars, no division between street and sidewalk, just gravel. With my kids I lived first in a village where the school was about 2 km away, walkable distance. In the morning my mom took them by car but after the lessons they usually walked back themselves. Later we moved to a different city and the only way to get anywhere was by car. Son tried cycling to school but it turned out pretty impossible.
four minute walk to the nursery school
eight minute walk to the primary school
eight minute walk to the secondary school which includes a sixth form.
Walking-distance schools are less common than in my childhood. Back then there were a lots of small schools with 100-150 headcount, but they were shut down forcing rural children to commute to cities. So nowadays only about 40-50% of kids walk to school.
The problem is that school buses are generally awful. Based on my observations that applies to the majority of EU countries. Therefore your kids are better off taking the public transit – 20-30% do this. But an increasing number of parents opt for the family car.
I know that cycling to school is a thing in certain places, but not really popular in my area.
I mean even if there is a separate cycling path, when I was a kid we always wanted to race each other, do wheelies and all kinds of tricks that just don’t mix well with safety. So apart from PE teachers all pedagogues hate the sight of kids arriving to school by bicycle. It’s discouraged below a certain age without parental escort.
There are car-free days organized when all of a sudden the number of kids riding to school goes up, but it’s a niche >5% thing.
The nearest primary school here is a 5 min walk. Secondary school is 5 or 10 min by bike. For me, as a child, the nearest primary school was 5 min by bike, but I went to a school a little further away, at a 10 min bike ride. My high school was 10 min by bike.
My son is not in school yet, but the school is less than 1 kilometer away, maybe a 10 minute walk on a separated walking/cycling path.
wtf? There will be plenty of **USA cities** where walking or cycling to school is normal too.
It’s not a “nation” thing.
It’s an urban density thing.