Free school transport

[Sheldonsheher]

Curious someone from my daughter’s class gets free school bus to and from school. They live 1.5 miles down a country road so not that far buy not safe to walk. Does this really qualify you for council transport. I mean if you choose to live somewhere unsuitable for a child to walk should you not have to drive them yourself. Everyone else including myself have to do the school run every day and surely this is something the parents should be responsible for when they choose where they are going to live.

we live in a rural area and the catchment school is more than 3 miles away so my kids get picked up for school in a mini bus. Not going to lie - it’s awesome!

Our area you do have to be more than 2 (under age 8) or 3 miles away though. Those living closer to the school don’t qualify even though it is absolutely not safe to walk (60mph road with no pavements)

You can apply for a spot on the bus if there’s an empty space, but you could get booted off if an eligible child needed it. Every year there’s major school bus drama around the start of the year so I’m very grateful we live more than 3 miles away and so are definitely entitled to our bus spots!

My kids got free school transport coz we lived in the arse end of nowhere and the schools were miles away.

How does that affect you?

I married a dairy farmer so if you have an issue with free transport think about that when you’re pouring your milk in your coffee. Or shouldn’t farmers be allowed to, you know, farm?

I hear you, OP. It's a bit - what came first, the chicken or the egg. We live in a rural market town with lots of kids in our large catchment getting free school transport. On the one hand there are kids on working farms living 20 miles away. On the other hand you have Timmy whose parents have recently moved up from the Home Counties into a large manor house five miles out of town. Both eligible for a free bus / taxi. Yes, some kids get picked up from their door, or maybe end of the lane, by taxi each day. Then there's us, 2.5 miles away on the edge of the wrong side of town, nearly an hour's walk on the return journey due to steep hills. No buses that go at the right time except the school bus that they're not allowed to get on. I could buy them each a spot, but it won't stop for them near our house. They'd have to go to the nearest stop of an eligible child which is, I kid you not, a farm 2.5 miles in the other direction.

If I ruled the world all under 18s would have fully subsidised public transport anyway, and my kids could flag the school bus down.

I am a little bitter but I would solve it by expanding provision, and happy to pay more tax to do so! I do think it is right that those living rurally should get school transport, but so should all kids.

What skin is it off your nose really? Doesn't affect your life or your child's education in any way.

Absolute necessity for the high schools here, there's none in the village and all roads out are NSL with no or only partial paths.

Could I drop him at school, yes, but either he or my youngest (village school, walkable) would be late which obviously isn't acceptable.

The bus is free, but only for one out of 3 school choices because the other 2 fall under a different council so we would have to pay for the bus for those schools

It's also far better for the environment, other road users driving to work - one bus vs 60 cars

No brainer really

I think the council definition of safe isn’t necessarily the same as your average parents. It’s pretty much is there a pavement?

Any parent can approach the Local Authority and show why they think there is no safe route and/or that the closest safe route is over the prescribed distance.

There are rules about what counts as safe. If the road is a 60mph road with no traffic calming, I'd expect a road officer to do a survey of traffic at school run time, in term time, across a standard week.

Assessment of walked routes

https://www.roadsafetyknowledgecentre.org.uk/rskc-612/

There are guides to the assessment of walked routes.

It's about making sure it's safe for the child. That's all.

In some situations, the parents might not drive too.

The assessment is quite detailed. For example:

"Traffic flow

Where the two way (one way of a dual carriageway) traffic flow is below 240 vehicles per hour the road is assessed as safe to cross. This is based on the original County Road Safety Officers Association criteria and is equivalent to 1 vehicle every 15 seconds and allows a reasonable gap time to cross a 7m wide road at a walking speed of 0.91 metres per second. A written record of any vehicle counts should be kept."

Bear in mind that the definition of 'safe' is based on a child being accompanied by a responsible adult.

You should probably work on your jealousy issue.

Of course the responsible adult might not have time to walk 2 miles then back and get to work. So they have to drive. In this case they should have bought a house 2.5 miles instead to avoid the school run.

With a child in primary and secondary in opposite directions which child would you choose to be dropped off late/picked up late every day? In a 1 parent household that would be my reality if there wasn't a bus provided to our nearest school.

We are just over 3 miles from my dc 's secondary school so fortunately they had a place on the free bus.
I wouldnt be surprised if they started means testing this in the future. Provide the bus service but most parents have to pay.

We live in an area where a significant number of children need to be bused to school because they live rurally, and there are many different routes for each secondary schools - many of them live on farms and their parents are farmers.
Believe it or not, on the Scottish Islands some children even get ferries to school, daily or weekly (weekly ones stay in hostels during the week).

I don’t think it would ever occur to me that it should be someone else’s responsibility to get my child to school.

This will really wind you up ... there is no high school within 3 miles of our village. Most of the village kids get a free bus to the nearest school. But as my kids go to a church school in the opposite direction, the council provide them with a free bus pass to use on the regular bus routes.

Of all the ridiculous things our tax bills pay for, this really is small fry. And it's far better for the environment than all the parents driving kids to and from school every day.

It won’t be happening for much longer. The country’s almost bankrupt, there’s a massive financial crash on the way and this sort of funding will be the first to be cut.

Unfortunately that would get you nowhere in an admission appeal or a transport appeal. We once had an appeal where the mother had a genuinely awful trek between schools for her children, which was completely impractical. Neither qualified for transport because each school was under the statutory distance. It just happened that the schools were in opposite directions. We still had to refuse the appeal because it was an infant class size appeal and there is no legal wiggle room.

I'm wondering now why my secondary school had a school bus. The village was two and a half miles from the school, pavement the whole way (or you could use the cycleway that used the route the old railway line took).

I wonder now if it's because the sheer number of us was too much for public transport and they didn't want parents driving because of the congestion and the location of the school meaning there was nowhere nearby to drop off.

I'm aware of that thanks.
Twas responding to the OP saying if there was no free transport parents would simply get in the car and drive them.
But obviously lots of people can't do that. Thank goodness I live rurally and the majority of kids go on the free buses 😁
high school more than 3 miles away, primary school no pavement for 1 mile

Not everyone can choose where they live and even when they can they're still limited by house prices. Yes children are entitled to free transport if it's not safe or if they have send which makes them unable to walk the distance.

was expecting this to be questioning why all children in the uk don’t get free bus transport to school as per other countries! I think it’s madness. Everyone driving clogs up roads, causes pollution, is usually to women’s detriment etc etc. That's what we should all be questioning

I’m talking about people living just outside a built up area through choice. Because they want to. Not living in a very rural area and tilling the land or being bussed on mass from the same spot in a village to the local high school.

Where the school is is something I always factored in when considering where to live. I just never thought you could get transport in this sort of lifestyle situation including free door to door taxis !!

This is a good point I suppose I never really thought about it like that