To think the 3 mile rule for school transport is unfair and not fit for the current time?

[WellThatsMeScrewed]

My eldest does not get transport to her secondary school because we live 2.89 miles away from her secondary school. Supposedly she can walk this.

It would involve crossing 3 lots of dual carriageways, walking along a unlit busy road.

It’s just not fair.

The 3 mile rule is from some archaic time where there was hardly any traffic.

At secondary school age they should be able to cross dual carriageways or walk along unlit roads safely

Women and young girls of all ages can be unsafe walking in unlit roads. I would not want my DD walking that far in winter months along unlit roads

I have checked this out too on Google maps. My son's safest route goes over the two mile radius, but as the crow flies (fastest route but through wooded areas) is shorter. It should be risk assessed.

Catchment has nothing to do with it. People are entitled to transport if they are outside the relevant distance limits and the school is the nearest suitable school. That would apply even if the school is across the border in a different borough.

That's irrelevant in terms of legal entitlement. All that is relevant is walking distance to the nearest suitable school using a safe walking route.

Not true (in England at least). Each child is entitled to transport to just one school, provided that they also meet the criteria of distance or unsafe walking route.

I agree with this.
It's not the distance that's the issue. and there is always going to be some who think it's unfair no matter where the limit is. But in this case it's the route it's self that seems unsafe. That's the angle to challenge it on.

The distance for admissions is never calculated as the crow flies in our area. I've always understood that that is partly because there is a river running through it, and it would be ludicrous to claim a school on the other side of the river is the nearest school when actually the journey via the nearest bridge is at least 5 miles.

That is exactly what I said?

Though, if we want to be really picky, we should point out that children unable to walk to school due to disability/SEN may also be entitled to transport even if they live closer to the nearest suitable school than the statutory 2 or 3 miles.

My LA only pays for transport to the closest school, which is rather cheeky as this school isn’t our catchment. Of course this fact isn’t widely publicised and came as a surprise to me. The only way therefore to get paid transport is to apply to the closest school, get rejected and be allocated a place at the catchment school. But what happens if the child gets a place? The child is not going to want to go there. As a result, all parents, apart from those on low incomes, must pay.

All this to say, the parents may already be paying op.

Most secondary school kids get the bus to school 🤷🏼‍♀️

YABU OP

I do know of a local village who successfully got transport for the kids to get to the town because the (less than 3 mile) route was over the fields, which is obviously completely unrealistic. Some of the time the footpath might have been passable, but for a good chunk of the year it would be dark, ploughed over or just a muddy swamp!

If the actual walking route avoiding the airfield is more than statutory walking distance from the relevant children's homes, they should be getting home/school transport and the parents should be challenging any refusal. Local authorities aren't entitled to assume people will walk through private property, let alone somewhere dangerous.

Likewise you should have challenged the refusal of the transport for the school 2.2 miles away if the reality was that the safe walking route to the theoretically closer school was actually over 2.2 miles. It sounds as if you would have had a cast-iron case.

It isn't cheeky as the law doesn't refer to catchment at all, it just refers to the nearest suitable school.

Bus? Cycling? Find another family and offer to contribute to petrol costs?

Three miles is 45 mins walk for a secondary school child. I used to do it, with a train journey in the middle. As long as she is suitably dressed and has a phone, she should be fine.

Have you only just realised this?

Surely you knew when you applied for her place...

Either do what others do and do pick-ups/drop-offs yourself or move her to a school where she gets "free" paid for by others transport.

What do your neighbours/her friends plan to do? Could you share the "parental taxi service"?

There's a finite amount of money and I'd rather they spent it on social care or repairing the roads than giving every pupil free transport to school. I think the '3 mile rule' is a fair one. Maybe they should reduce it to 1 mile so you don't feel so aggrieved. At that age, they should be capable of walking or cycling to school, or you will have to pay for transport, or maybe a group of parents could come together to lift share. And all four of mine missed out on free transport too.

I agree to some extent- yes everybody used to walk long distances as standard "back in the day", no 3 miles isn't a huge walk, yes it probably is very healthy but let's be honest how many adults walk 6 miles a day, 5 days a week? Often in the rain and the dark? Let alone expecting an 11 year old carrying a the ridiculous amount of stuff they do to do it on their own.

I used to live less than 2 miles (all uphill) away from my work-I always started out with the best of intentions to walk but I got fed up of losing half an hours sleep every day, walking in either soaked to the bone or sweaty, having to carry spare shoes etc. Tbf the walk home was absolutely fine but there wasn't an option to get public transport one way.

When the rules were introduced there were probably fewer cars on the roads, so routes were safer and crucially a lot more kids would be walking whereas now the majority get driven.

Otoh Council funding has been cut to the bone, funding school bus places is expensive, and most parents made the choice to either move somewhere miles away from the nearest school or to somewhere where they knew their child might not get into their preferred school and might have to go to a further one, so its not unreasonable to expect them to ensure their child can get there.

I know not many teenagers do, but walking six miles a day would improve a lot of children's health.

People seem to be missing the fact that OP isn't objecting to the distance, she's objecting to the unsafe nature of the route, which is perfectly reasonable and indeed a valid legal reason for claiming school transport.

It is not irrelevant at all. They live within 3 miles and the route has been assessed as safe. In OP opinion it is not safe so an alternative is using a bus if they feel that is safer.

You live in a strange place if there are two dual carriageways but it's in isolated countryside and the roads are very busy bit also unlit?

Is there some exaggeration going on by any chance?

Like fuck would my eleven year old child be crossing a dual carriageway by themselves. My god.

So was this school not on your preference list? If it wasn't then worth appealing. I don't think you have a right to free transport if the school was one of your preferences, certainly not in my LA anyway.

I agree with others saying challenge it. We are just over 2 miles from secondary school but all the children get free bus pass after it was challenged as there is a road with national speed limit with no pavements and walks over unlit farms and woodland. They now automatically give anyone from our village a bus pass after judged unsafe

It was 5 miles when I was at school. Our garden fence was the boundary! So we paid for the bus to school.