Does anyone run a taxi/bus share to school?

[DazzlePaintedBattlePants]

Hi there,
We currently send DC to secondary on a paid for school coach - we have to pay as we are out of catchment. However the school is making noises about no longer running the service as there’s not enough demand (prices went up by hundreds of pounds a term, and loads of people dropped out). It’s not helped by the service being poor - buses frequently fail to stop and they send the crappiest buses.

I’m not 100% sure the school is getting a good financial deal, nor is it in their interest to really run a competitive tendering process. The current coach company does all the school services so has a bit of a monopoly.

i think from our village there would easily be enough kids to fill a minibus, and I think we could probably do it more cheaply (and quickly) than the official school services. We are looking at options should the school no longer run a service and this is one possibility. Will it be a complete nightmare with parents not paying their share? How do you run a contract with a taxi or bus company? Is it a stupid idea?

All advice welcome!

Not the point of the thread but Is there a closer school you could/should be using?

You’re right - it’s not our catchment school. Our catchment school is currently inadequate and has been for some time.

We are all fully aware that it was our choice to send children out of catchment and that comes with no obligation wrt support getting them there. It just seems bonkers for everyone to drive their own kids there when there’s enough kids for a bus, and given most people work it’s not always feasible. Most of us would prefer for a more commercial arrangement with a company rather than an ad-hoc lift share rota.

Do you not think if your village all used the local school it would improve with time?

To answer you actual question though if the parents are already paying for a service why wouldn't they pay for this new one?

Well, it hasn’t improved noticeably over the past 5+ years so I don’t see why my family using it would be the magic solution to sustained long term improvement. Most of us aren’t willing to take that risk with our children either.

I’m not worried about people paying for it, more about the administration involved in doing so. Currently we pay the school term and they deal with all of the bus company logistics.

It sounds, on paper, like a possible solution, but you would need to research insurances, numbers of people who would commit, what you would do if they drop out, length of contract and terminating on both sides. What would happen during the holidays? Companies might be reluctant to take on term time only contracts and have void times.

You're right that having several families transporting children individually is not the most efficient method. I don’t know whether there is any organisation that could advise on the logistics and legalities and possible pitfalls.

Not read the whole thread , I'd be more concerned with how much the insurance would cost you and would the one driving need a DBS check ( or whatever they are called these days ?)
Would the council need to know about it ?
I would imagine there would be some kind of red tape to think about , but probably doable ?

Not really an answer to your original question but could you organise a car share with other parents? We did this throughout DS's time at his school, everyone did 2 or 3 runs out of the 10. However, the school was a 10 minute drive away, harder I know if it's more of a distance.