The Real Cost of the School Run

A new analysis has revealed that British parents are spending £458 million on the school run each year.

Conducted by digital car finance lender Carmoola, this research examines the real cost of the school run, to discover how much ‘the taxi of mum and dad’ spend on trips to and from school across a child’s school years. 

As the average distance travelled to school by a pupil in the UK is 2.6 miles, parents are travelling around 5.2 miles a day driving their children to and from school. This means mums and dads are spending an average of £177 for petrol and £157 for diesel on the school run each year. Over 11 years of primary and secondary school education, this totals up to £1,947 for petrol and £1,727 for diesel.

Those who drive EVs spend, on average, around 9.75p per mile, so 50p a daily school run, equating to £97.50 a year for the school run, and £1,072 throughout a child’s time at school.

With 2.78 million pupils getting lifts to school in the UK, and 195 school days each year, the total expenditure for those making the school run across the country reaches £458 million a year.

The study not only reveals how much parents across the nation are spending but also how much parents could earn if they were to actually start driving a taxi or Uber.

If parents opted to charge for their ‘taxi’ services, they would make £15.76 a day for every school drop, or £3,073 a year. This equates to over £33k over a child’s 11-year education. Across the UK, if all parents charged the same as Uber drivers, this would equate to £43.8 million in fares each day.