I just learned that school buses are not really common in Europe and most kids walk or take a bus/train/tram to school. With teenagers I can see that, but is it really the case with 6-7yo’s as well? Here in the States, most people would be pretty hysterical to have their kids navigate through urban traffic unattended. Also I assume in the first year of school, most kids cannot read yet(at least not proficiently) so that may also make hard to navigate the public transport in big cities.
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Everyone bikes to school in the Netherlands, when you are really young with your parent and from about eight you go on your own.
My mom brought me to school until I was about 6-ish (usually in a kids seat on the back of her bicycle) and after that I would cycle to school myself. Other kids who lived further away would either take the public bus or, if they lived really far away, they could make use of the “school-taxi” that our school had (although this “taxi” wasn’t a common thing as far as I’m aware).
They walk. Which isn’t really an issue, schools are everywhere. Where there aren’t, you teach them to take the short bus ride.
Parents bringing them to school are frowned upon.
There are nation-wide campaigns to **not** accompany your kid, in order to teach them responsibility and social awareness. It’s assisted by the police teaching the kids on how to behave in traffic.
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Edit: Parents, not Patents 🙂
They walk. They take public transport. Some of them have partens with a car. But a lot of them don’t have the luxury. Like kids from our village are going to different towns by themselves since year 1 if their parents don’t work in the same town and at time they can take the kids with them (we were lucky, our school was just on the other side of the river behind the train stop). I think most parents simply train the route with their kids if they have to go by themselves and there’s often some group going to the same school so they are told to stick to them until they learn it.
That obviously depends where they live.
Kids living nearby walk.
Kids living in neighboring villages use regular buses.
Kids living in remote areas are going by car.
There’s no bad way, just bad preparation.
My school was just 1km from where we lived. First year I would walk to school together with two friends who lived in the same street (we had practiced this a little prior to starting school). Second year my friends started biking to school but my parents didn`t trust me with a bike yet (I WAS really bad at biking for some reason) and I did not want to walk alone, so my mum would drop me off with her car on her way to work. From third year I would bike or walk with friends or alone.
For younger primary school pupils in Scotland (ages 5 to 8) the figures are: 45% walk, 5% cycle, 4% use a scooter or skateboard, 5% take a bus, 12% use “park and stride” (ie driven part of the way and walk the rest), 28% are driven in a car and 2% are driven in a taxi. For older primary pupils (ages 9 to 11) the figures are almost the same except only 22% are driven in a car and the other methods are all up slightly.
I always walked to school since I was 8 as my school was 10 minutes away on foot.
I was walked by my mom or my older cousin for the first two years of school.
The thing in Europe is that our cities and towns are rather dense and everything is in a walking distance.
My high school was even closer as it was only 2 minutes on foot. I would go back home to have lunch with my mom if she was at home for my long break. By high school though most school don’t care if you leave their premises during the hours, you just have to come back for the next class.
One time I ran out of the class just because the delivery came and I had to take the package. Came back 10 mins later.
They’ll typically walk, bike or take public transport. For the first few times a parent might accompany them, maybe even the whole first year, but by the time they reach second grade they’re usually off on their own
They’ll usually walk – there are primary schools in every local area, so most children live within a 10-15 minute walk from their school, except in very rural areas. Even there, most villages have a school. Otherwise, parents drive kids to school, or they’ll cycle or take the bus (accompanied by a parent for very young children).
One thing is that american urban areas are very hostile to pedestrians, with big broad roads, almost like highways, that go directly through cities and towns.
Elementary school children are often brought to school by parents, when they go to work.
in the countryside, we have schoolbuses for children, since it is more convenient and safe for everyone.
Kids start walking home alone at around 12y old. Before that, they are in afternoon care in school, where they just play and run around on the playground or inside. Maybe do some homework, etc.
Depends on a lot of variables. Some parents drive their kids to and from school, as the school is either far away or their schedules (work-school) match.
But it is common for kids to walk to school by themselves or with friends. And that goes for 6-7yo. But before they can walk by themselves. Parents usually walk with them (take them to school) for a couple of months. Just so the kids get used to the path and how to behave in traffic.
walk, public transport or parents drive them with the latter being rarer.
You have to remember that European towns, on average have everything close to each other. Suburban areas don’t exist in the same way they do in the US(far removed from the town centre and completely removed from anything that’s not houses) and elementary schools are typically very close to people’s homes and even if they’re not, public transport is safe and reliable. US towns have zones when you only have houses or only have shops and US towns lack pathways for walking, they’re designed for cars. European towns have a mix of everything, so kids don’t walk in the middle of nowhere. While walking to school you’ll pass plenty of shops, some cafes, lawyers offices, accounting offices or whatever else someone decided to open in that part of town. You’re not walking in the middle of nowhere and you have plenty of people walking around. You have people going to work, just chilling, going shopping, moms with kids. There’s a lot going on.
Often, when you have 6/7 year olds, parents will walk them to school so they can get to know the area, etc. They typically walk on their own when they’re about 9 depending on the kid and parent. You’ll often see a bunch of groups of 10 year old coming home from school in groups.
European parents often walked to school on their own thus they know what it means, while american parents were raised in hyper protective bubble of never being allowed independence and they’re raising their kids in the same way.
I suggest you pick some random towns on google maps and see what surrounds schools as you will be surprised how in the middle of everything they are.
Well in the village by walking usually, same for smaller towns. First year they usually walk with parent at least for a while and than alone/with friends/siblings.
In the city they will take public transport or their parents will drive them there(becoming more and more popular since last decade due to most parents having large SUV).
For example if the school is in next village, kids will take a bus. Elementary school in the nearby village is quite big and nowadays they have even their own school bus and yeah it’s yellow lol.
Mostly by walking/public transport.
Public transport have just numbers here in Prague so not really a problem with reading of first graders, also for first years you usually visit a school accessible by walking or using “two stops with any bus which comes first”, going for education to other part of city is rare before 5th grade.
If there is a busy traffic nearby there might be a municipality police helping with road crossing
In Serbia, especially in urban areas, elementary school is usually not more than 10 min walk away, and the streets are pretty safe so parents usually have confidence to let kids go to school by themselves, but parents often escort kids in 1st or 2nd grade.
However in rural areas, and suburbs kids who are far from school usually use buses, with parents escort first few years, or get driven to school.
Here, usually the parents take them. They are at school from 8 to 5 which I think is absolutely batshit crazy.
Mostly by three ways:
1. By walking, those who live at a walkable distance from school.
2. Taken to school by parents.
3. By school bus, that it’s available on request from the school or the parents to the municipality. Typically, a school bus looks like this https://giornalenordest.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/scuolabus-pordenone.jpeg
It really depends on A) country and B) rural vs cities. I did all my schooling except for first grade in Spain, so that’s the country I’ll be answering for.
In **rural Spain** (Catalonia at least), we have 3 options:
1. **Walking**: You’re lucky and your school is within short walking distance. In that case, you may walk to school on your own (starting at 8 or 9 years old) or with a classmate/older sibling/parent.
2. **Car**: Maybe you still live within a short walking distance anyway, but your parent needs to use the car to go to work (again, you live in a rural area so public transport is close to nonexistent). They wouldn’t have time to walk you to school and then go back home and get the car, so they just drive you there anyway. This was how it was for me and my siblings.
3. **Private bus**: This will only happen if your town is extremely small and there is no elementary school available. I’m talking like towns with 50 inhabitants (which is not unusual in my region). The local government will pay a local private bus company to do the daily pick up (and then drop) service. It will normally be the same driver every day and there will be an assistant who’ll check on the kids who come on the bus every day. Those buses are regular buses and have the company’s logo on them, they don’t look like American school buses and the only way to distinguish them from regular buses is because they’ll have [this sign](https://señal.com.es/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/senal-v10.jpg) hanging while running a service for a school.
Option 3, aka private bus, is quite uncommon for elementary school and it’s only available for really small settlements (and even still, it’s not always available). It’s far more common for high school students, as high schools are only built in large towns and your town may have an elementary school but no high school (which was precisely my case). The system is the same as the one I explained (local government hires a yearly service from a local private transport company).
Bear in mind that you’re only allowed to get a car driver’s license at 18 and you start school based on the year you turn 6 years old*, so a LOT of teenagers aren’t legally allowed to get a license by the time they finish noncompulsory high school in late May of the year they turn 18. So even if you live in a place where a car is a necessity, like I did, you’ll probably still have to rely on your parents/older siblings or friends that may be around to drive you to school. The only teenagers who can drive themselves to school drive mopeds (can get a license at 15 as it’s not considered a proper vehicle), but high schools generally don’t have big parking lots (as basically only the teachers can drive themselves there) so a lot of them just get driven there by someone else anyway.
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In **cities**, most kids either walk or use public transport to school (bus, metro, etc). Having worked in a public school in Barcelona, the vast majority came with their parents, and only 5th or 6th graders (10 to 11-12 years old, depending on the month of birth) would come on their own.
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**You can start elementary school at 5 if your birthday is in October or later because elementary school starts in September for all children turning 6 that year (for instance, this coming September all children born in 2016 will start 1st grade, no matter their birth month). Similarly, some people start university at 17 because their birthday is after mid-September (when school usually starts).*
EDIT: Grammar and punctuation.
Young kids at 7 years of age may get accompanied to school initially if an adult can take time off work. Their father may take them to school by car if available. Later they walk or take public bus alone. Children have to return home in the afternoon because that time doesn’t align with an adult’s schedule.
In a small town there may only be one wide street with signficant traffic.
From my memory long time ago, I never had a difficulty understanding traffic lights or judging approaching cars. But I was afraid about being scolded for walking alone and made feel guilty.
I started going to school myself at 9, in earlier grades my parents took me (we walked)
If children fall out the school bus’ minimum range, it’s up to the parents to take them to school, and it’s usually done strictly by car save particular circumnstances, such as the workplace being on the same public transport line as the school, or situations where the school is literally beneath the house.
Walk, Bike or a public bus here in Denmark… some are driven by their parents, but I think it is very few.
My son started to bike on his own in 2nd grade, he was 7 at the time.
We live in a small town, pop. 3.200, and he has 1km to school.
* Walk if it is in walking distance and does not involve complicated street crossing
* take bus/trolleybus in many cases
* are driven in car by parents, also in many cases
* come with school bus in deep countryside where there are no public transportation or it is very scarce
* come by bicycle – if the route is confortable
I went on foot and so did most of my classmates, though the situation now might be different because helicopter mums need to park their car right outside the classroom door.
It also depends what type of school your are going to.
Kindergarten (x-7), elementary/primary schools (6-11) are usually within walking distance because there are simply more of those institutions. Even villages do have them.
Secondary education (10-xx) tends to happen in fewer but larger “units”. So not every village or even small town will have them and you take public transport to get there. Usually no special school buses but regular ones (with only pupils in them since no sane adult would join in… 😉
Early 2000’s, rural/suburban setting: For first and second grade (age 7-9) we walked (1.5 km I think). From third grade on, we were allowed to cycle to school.
UK
Up to 6-7 we walk them there and walk them home. After that they catch the bus, train or walk themselves
With the those below 7 we started by walking them the whole way then would gradually let them walk part of the way themselves. By age 8 they are walking the whole way themselves
> Here in the States, most people would be pretty hysterical to have their kids navigate through urban traffic unattended.
Most parents left their kids in the school even if it’s just at walking walking, no reason to be hysterical about that.
Anyways if you live in a city, you’ll have schools available at like 150-200 metters away from your home
My parents have always brought me to school by car, but that’s mostly because they chose not to send me to the closest school to my home, but to another school further away after my older sister’s bad experiences in that school. But I think that parents driving their kids to and from school was by far the most common way.
For primary school it’s mostly walking unless you lived outside the village then your parents drove you to school. For secondary school it’s mainly public buses unless you lived in the town then you’d just walk.
Like a real dutchie. One kid on my bike and the other one (or two) in a biketrailer.
They either walk or their parents drive them if they are the morning shift
School bus, walking to school alone or with parents, or being dropped off – guess some parents would use public transport too.
But the school bus here is a coach that stops in one place at a neighbourhood or a close by town and picks the kids up there. I thought kids getting dropped off and picked up at their front door in a yellow bus was a movie thing, you’ve got no idea how much I laughed when I realised it was a thing in real life.
Um living in a city, parents usually walk their kids to school (or take them by tram, car, bicycling) until around 4th grade-probably earlier if the school is close. In some villages (where all houses are close to one street) there are “schoolbuses” that belong to the municipality
Parents take them by car. (If they live close, they walk there together.)
^(Own experience in Budapest – might be different in the countryside.)
Medium sized town in Germany: the first couple of days, my mum walked with me. Then I walked alone and/or picked up class mates along the way. Later on, I cycled
School buses are not really common in Slovakia, but the normal buses can go more frequently in the morning or when the classes end, because there are more people going to work and kids going to and from school.
In cities, schools are often very close to your home either at walking distance or just a few bus stops away, in the biggest cities it may be a longer way in the bus – also because the parents have more schools to chose from. It’s normal to see little kids go by bus by themselves.
Some parents take their kids by car, more than in the past decades, because now more people have cars and the traffic is bigger too, so it is not that safe to cross some roads anymore. There is also a policeman standing next to a crosswalk in front of some elementary schools in the morning.
But even little kids can walk to and from the school alone, if they live close. Some go alone, others go with their classmates or sibling. When I was a kid, in mid 90’s, all the second graders were already going to school alone, it was the right thing to do to teach the kids to be independent. Having your parent still going with you would have made you look like ‘a little child’. We were also allowed to play outside without our parents at that age.
In Sweden you´ll get to take a “school bus” (which is normally one of the local buses but that during school hours also run by the school) if you live far enough away from the school, I think it´s something like 5 km and usually most perople have less than that to their closest school up to grade 6.
Kids normally get to school by walking, taking their bike or by being driven by parents.
Pre and after school care is big in Sweden for those children up to grade 6 who have parents who start working before schools open and work until after school is out meaning that even though trafic increases a bit just around school start there is normally never any issue with drop ofs or pick ups as children go home at very diffrent hours.
From grade 7 and upward it´s more likely to have some distance to school, but by then most kids will bike or take a public bus, some will get mopeds once they turn 15 and use that to transport themselves to and from school.
Urban traffic in the US and most lf europe are not the same
Elementary (primary) school kids get a lift from their parents or are walked to school by their parents if they live close by.
Too many cars around to trust them to not get hit.
In my town, they either walk, bike or gets a lift from their parents. I alternated between those three. I think I was 8/9 when I got home alone first time. Prior it was either picked up by parents or in company with older sister.
If rural there’s either bike or bus.
Depends how far away they live.
Within walking distance, they’ll walk with their parents.
Longer away, they’ll normally be dropped and picked up by their parents in cars.
Primary school buses are very rare, and those are just operated by the bus company, not by the school.
We had similar post few days ago. Children here above 7 are no longer required by law to be supervised. At this age having at least basic literacy skills are expected from even the least skilled pupils. The basic traffic rules are taught around this age. Figuring out how to use public transport is not such a big deal either. All one has to do is to remember one, two particular lines and the name of the used stop.
Getting to school first time by yourself is a pretty big moment in kid’s life, as it is usually the first time one is in public without an adult accompanying. Plenty of children look forward to this moment as the first moment of independence. At some point, (around 10 years of age for my neighbourhood) parental escort of a healthy child with easy, practical way to school is considered overprotective and likely negatively affecting its reputation among classmates.
In Germany, children usually walk or cycle to primary school. The primary schools tend to be relatively close to allow all children easy access. This can be different in smaller villages and very rural areas, where there may be a school serving several villages. In this case, children would usually cycle or take the bus.
In Ireland, it seems like an awful lot of them are driven to school, even to primary schools. I live close to 2 primary schools on an otherwise relatively quiet road, and there is absolutely no way I could even get my car out of my driveway between 8.30am – 9am, or between 3pm – 3.30pm. It’s plain mayhem, people parking on double-yellows, in other people’s driveways (including ours), or just parking in the middle of the road.
Walk or bike. Further distances kids have the right to school taxi or bus, sometimes more than 40 minutes per way. Because the grey wolves are increasing heavily in areas that are densly populated, kids in some areas have received “wolf rides” meaning the minimum distance to be granted taxi to school is shortened.
I walked to school myself after my mother walked the way with me for a month or so.
So she could be sure I knew the way.
So, yeah. I walked to school alone pretty much since I was 6yo.
It’s just not really dangerous.
If you teach your kid the rules (concerning cars, crossings, etc.) what do you think will happen?
This is not some Bangladeshi hinterland where kids get kidnapped the moment they are unsupervised.
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Also: If your kid can’t read enough to take the bus (which is super easy) by age 7…what are you doing as a parent?
I walked my kid to school for the first 2 years, even if it wasn’t far, but there were two pretty dangerous crossings on the way and car drivers can be assholes. But from then on, she just walked alone. Kids need to learn to navigate cities, it’s an important life skill.