Can I please ask you how they are in themselves? Do they do much in school or out of school? Are they tired a lot? Do they get in trouble at school much?

And lastly

Why don't you move nearer to school?

According to 11plusparents,

I've no idea where s/he got that statistic from, and when I asked I got no answer. If it's true, then there are thousands of children making that sort of journey.

To be honest for many children in London 3-4 miles on a bus can take that long.

I think we would fall into this category. DD leaves the house at 7.40 school starts at 8.45, school finishes at 3.45 and she arrives home at 4.45. We are less than 4 miles from school but that is the best bus to get her there and back, the other options involve more time and more walking.
She does after school activities 4 nights of the week and both days at weekends, she is finding it harder than when she was at primary but not ridiculously so.
Moving closer? We like where we live.

This question is asked so often. I have been on this board for about 5 years now and have come to the conclusion, sadly, that a lot of parents really don't care how their children cope; it's the parents themselves who want the 'glory' of their dc having been accepted in to a prestigious school. Sad but true.

Absolutely. For a faction, it's dinner party snobbery.

That's a sweeping and derogatory statement, that I don't see you have a basis for. Personally I'd far rather my son didn't have to travel, but I also want to avoid him having the experience I had of being in a secondary school where it was uncool to be clever or work hard, and I was bullied. We're going for the best schools we can with the easiest commutes possible. Moving is not an option due to work and our other child's education; hopefully moving closer in for sixth form will be.

The basis is the hundreds of questions asked here every year by parents who have a very different attitude to yours. Going for the best schools you can with the easiest commute possible is what the majority do and is perfectly sensible. The people piggys are referring to are only interested in what they perceive to be the best schools, regardless of the commute. That's why there are questions about which schools have the best GCSE/A-level and even Oxbridge statistics, from parents of 10 year olds, even though the schools they are enquiring about are long distances away. That's why in a region like Bucks, we see lots of questions every year about how to obtain a grammar place from many miles away, even when the poster has good and outstanding options in their local area. That's why every year we see hundreds of questions about travel plans, people looking for car shares and so on, because their preferred school is simply not a viable journey away.

There is undoubtedly a faction for whom the perceived status of their chosen school is more important than the overall experience their child will have, including travel.

I think though that this is largely a south-east problem and particularly one where there are grammar schools. I have seen this year for the first time really an almost-hysteria developing in some areas of this forum where parents are prepared to countenance all kinds of ludicrous journeys/house moves etc for the sake of a school. In some communities the idea seems to have taken hold that grammar schools are fundamentally different from 'normal' schools and that a child's life chances will be dashed forever unless a place is secured in one of them. If the poor kid then fails to get a place, the parents are looking for massive bursaries to get them into private schools, despite there being no evidence that these places are generally any better than the 'normal' schools they are desperate to avoid. I am not sure you are right that it is about showing off or status (though don't know Bucks well enough to be sure) but more about the horrors of having to go to school with less intelligent children or those who have no manners and smell (or whatever it is that people think goes on in ordinary schools). This forum isn't typical at all of UK society and you only need to see which areas are always buzzing and which have almost nothing going on to see why I think it is largely, though not exclusively, centred around the London commuter belt.

Where I live in Gloucestershire we have opt-in grammars and while there is a minority of grammar-fixated parents, it really doesn't seem to be the same here as it is down around the M25. In fact the madness here seems more to come from those trying to gain access to the schools from afar, believing erroneously imho that going to a grammar school in Gloucester is somehow better than a comprehensive in, say, Bristol, even if that involves 4 hours of travel every day.

And outside our area, for example where I did my teacher training and early experience (north east), no one I met would dream of commuting their child for miles and hours a day. But there aren't any grammar schools there.

Disclosure: journey time from home to school for my remaining school child = walk, cycle or a lift to bus stop (12-15 mins walk, 5-7 mins cycle or 3 mins car), bus journey around 20 mins depending on traffic. Gets to school very early though (810-15 for am 830 start) so spends time socialising once there.

I think time of commute is almost less important than how the commute works (although I absolutely agree about the futility of some of the crazy commute suggestions we have seen on here).
In our own case, we live 2 miles from the school but used to live 5 miles from the school.
When we lived 5 miles away it was 40 minutes door to door (5 minute walk, up to 40 minute bus journey depending on traffic but sometimes they would arrive at school 20 minutes early).
Now we live 2 miles away it is either:
30 minutes walk
or
15 minutes cycle
or
leaving home earlier (one hour before school starts) to walk 8 minutes to the bus stop for the 15 minute bus journey but the bus only comes at that time so they generally arrive early (again depends on traffic. Last week the bus was 30 minutes late to their bus stop twice).

So technically their commute now can be longer than it was when we lived further away but feels very reasonable. I would be less happy if they had to travel miles, changing buses etc even if it took the same amount of time.