The school run didn't always look like this
Every school day, roughly 200,000 primary school children in London are driven to school — around 480,000 car trips across the city, morning and afternoon combined. It barely registers as a choice anymore.
But it wasn't always this way. Eight out of ten 7- and 8-year-olds walked to school alone in 1971. By 1990 — less than a generation later — that had collapsed to almost none. Somewhere in that stretch, the school run stopped being something children did, and became something parents do.
Nationally, the shift shows up clearly in the numbers: just 15% of primary trips were made by car in 1975. By 2019 it peaked at 47%, easing to 40% by 2022 — the most recent figures available.
But the real story is distance, not preference. Pupils at local, catchment-based state schools mostly live close by — 79% travel under a mile. Independent school pupils don't: 43% travel two miles or more, since selective and faith schools draw from far beyond the local area. That gap alone means a private school pupil generates roughly twice as many car trips as a catchment-school pupil — not because their families drive more by choice, but because the journey itself demands it.
Traffic fears, changing norms, and shifting policy all played a part too. But distance is what turned driving from a convenience into a necessity for exactly the families independent schooling serves.
Driving your child to school was never really the anomaly. It's been the norm for thirty years. What's changed is who's doing the driving, and how much structure sits behind it.
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