We are continuing our series on finding great new schools and one of the factors to consider is distance i.e. how far is the school located from your home. We often either ignore a school's distance from home or tend to look at available transport options (bus, auto etc) as long as a school is good. But we believe that there are reasons, beyond obvious, why the distance must be an important consideration in your school search and why a school too far from home must not be your top priority. Let us look at some of those reasons here in this article.
Longer distance means longer travel time for the kids
This is the obvious reason. The further away you stay from a school, more will be the commute time, that means waking up very early and coming back very late for the lunch too. The home-school-home time can easily stretch to 9 hours. This is a lot for a young child given that many adults only work 8-10 hours a day.
School hours are not the only demand on a child
A kid after coming back from the school has to play and then do his/her home work and even prepare for upcoming exams and quizzes. If the school hours themselves stretch too long, how can we expect the child to have energy for other equally important things
School is not only for classes
Schools these days also offer great sports fields, swimming pools and trainers. If the school is located in proximity to your home, it is possible for the kid to go there for sports lessons or pursue some other hobbies during evening. However, if the school is located too far off from the home, then another long commute is not possible in the same day
Far off schools can become expensive
As parents, costs and expenses on education of our kids are our top priority. Everything else can take a back seat but we never compromise on our kids. However, there are some expenses which can be avoided and are not really contributing to the well being and growth of our kids. Transport is one of them. If the school is located even 10 km from the home, commute can easily cost upward of 1000 Rs a month, depending upon the mode of transport. If the child's school fee is 2500 Rs a month, then the transport is 40% of the fee!!! Is it sensible spend?
Hope these factors are of some help when you next go on your search for a new school for your kids. Good luck