£430 for one term of college bus fare

[Caerulea]

We've one secondary in our catchment & it has no 6th form so kids have to go to the nearest college which is 15 odd miles away - 1 hour 40 by bus.

We've just paid £430 for ONE TERM of bus fare!

The full year, if you could pay all at once, is £950.

If we do it termly it's going to be around £1.5k.

Daily would be £9

Isn't this just wrong on so many levels? Why are there deals at all & not just a set price? This is a low socio-economic area with low academic achievement & very rural. It's almost double what the first term was last year for DS2

It's definitely not cheaper but at least they'd have a car for independence & can split costs with friends for fuel & stuff.

(and I'd not have to drive him literally everywhere cos there are so few buses & his friends live in other villages 😭)

But yes, it should be bloody free. It really should

That's a ridiculous amount of money. If the bus passes can't be free they should be heavily subsidised.

Bloody hellfire! That's just appalling!

I wonder if there's little hoohah about this as it's worse for us bumpkins? We don't tend to have options & lots of available schools & colleges, so it just really smarts to get shafted for the little we do have access to.

Good luck with the apprenticeship schemes, presumably it's something they really want to do?

Wow we must be extremely lucky that we have only had to pay £10 for my DS college bus pass that will last him till the August following his 18th birthday. This allows him free travel on the college buses but also on any bus services within the county 7 days a week.

£9 A DAY??

We have to pay £1000 per year and I've got two in college. So frustrating! It's completely thrown out budget.
It's also clear why this college is a good one - basically only 'nice' families who can afford the pass can send their kids, so it's like its own mini private school.

Not the point but 1 hour 40 to do 15 miles?

I live quite rurally and I'm now thinking I need to potentially account for these transport costs when DD9 goes to college - better start adding more to her pot!

Agree, it should be free if no pubic transport available

Yup, if I were to drive it would be 20-25 minutes. The bus has go via multiple villages & hamlets to gather all the kids up. It's not remotely direct. So they leave at 7:30 & get back home at 5:45.

There's only one bus too, so if your timetable has only one lesson on a day then you're there till the one bus leaves. This does wonders for attendance.

I dread to think what it will cost by the time she goes! Hopefully someone will notice how ridiculous this system is the disparity between rural & basically everyone else.

The previous scheme did allow ds2 access to other buses but it's just occurred to me that this one won't.

Not that it makes any odds cos there are barely any other buses anyway. Once holiday season is finished the bus service gets cut right back & we lose Sunday buses altogether

It baffles me how they want people to use public transport more yet can't provide a service that allows people to do this.

£850 for the whole year up front, and that only covers one specific route to this specific college, no other buses at all.

No school 6th forms in Hampshire, everything in larger towns, all buses from our village are £3 each way, when the government introduced maximum fares Stagecoach got rid of returns, so getting dd to college is £6 a day. There’s apparently no obligation for councils to get 16-18 year olds to education unless they’re qualified for FSM. We could pay £950 for an annual pass, but she’s out so many days it’s cheaper to pay daily. Also ridiculous that the 16-17 rail pass expires on their 18th birthday so effectively not worth the admin fee for autumn or winter born kids in year 13. Surely an 18 year old in year 13 has the same need as a 17 year old?

It could however be worse, Isles of Scilly have no post-16 and get no government support even though they have to send kids to board. Falkland Islands government pay for their 6th formers to board in the UK.

Yup I'm facing the same in a couple of years ds2 has been sent to a special school out of area (i wanted in area but they said no A LOT) he will get transport until he is 16 then it will cost me thousands for two years then it will be free again however if I pull him from the school he can only get two years somewhere else not three it makes zero sense i might actually need to move areas to continue my sons education

And driving isn’t easy, tests have to be booked 6 months in advance, dd made an error and failed so now at least another 6 months until she can try again (which puts huge pressure on the test).

Wow that’s bad. I’m in Surrey, just, so have to pay for bus £1.75 I think per journey (actually could be less for DD as she has a 16-17 Oyster) but if we lived half a mile over the border and in London it would be free. She could attend a 6th form within walking distance though. Shocking you have to pay so much when you’ve no choice on distance. What about kids from very low income households?

Do local buses not have the £1 a single journey for 21 and under?
We never got free bus travel 11-16 even though we lived just under 3miles away, nearest school.
But local nearest college they receive a free bus pass, but the sixth forms centre you have to pay.
What about an electric bike or 50c scooter .

We had to pay for dd’s bus travel for service in catchment from year 7. There were schools closer but not in catchment and not schools dd would have wanted to go to. Apparently to qualify to have the bus fare paid, we would have had to apply for the closer school(s) and have been turned down. Then if dd had still been allocated the catchment school, only then would the council have had a duty to pay.

I’m therefore not surprised that you have to pay for transport. And catchment doesn’t apply for post 16.

So here's the funny thing -

It's the nearest biggest town, it's 18 miles away (thought it was slightly less) & by ordinary bus it takes....2 hours & 55 minutes & two buses & is £6 return, no concessions. You basically have two travel two sides of an equilateral triangle to get there, there's no direct bus. We're not some backwater, secret village, either, the whole bloody country knows this village & it has a massive tourism draw. But it's like living in the dark ages.

As for mopeds etc - these roads are dangerous for experienced riders, let alone novice ones. I'd sooner drive himself than put him on a bike.

354 quid per term, so just shy of a grand a year, for me to send 17 yo dd to the nearest school on the bus. We still don't know if she's got a seat as the ks3 and 4 students get places first and they won't tell us for 3 weeks into the term, telling me that it'smy responsibility to get her to school. Fine, if I actually could do that but I need to get to work! If she was FSM it would all be fine, orif we claimed benefits. There's no bus services as we live rurally. Ds goes to college, and that's 500 quid a year. It's bloody ridiculous. This is cambridgeshire.

That’s shocking!
Our bus service isn’t great, but it’s not that bad.
No chance of getting people out of cars unless it’s sorted. I wouldn’t spend that amount of time on the bus. They are so disjointed, bus services.

I’m surprised then isn’t more outcry re cost of 16-18 transport to compulsory education. If the parents say we simply can’t pay then presumably they’ll be out of education.

That's terrible OP.

I grew up in a very small village in a rural area. The nearest secondary school was five miles away and only went to 16. If you wanted to stay on to Sixth Form you had to go to the Sixth Form College about 15 miles away. The bus service in our village was practically non existent - a (small) handful of buses on Tuesday and Saturday only.

However, I was lucky. This was the 1970s so if you lived more than a certain distance from the school, 2 miles I think, free transport was provided. My journey to Sixth Form was about 1 hour and 30 minutes each way but didn't cost me a penny.

When the government put in the new requirement that students are required to be in education or training until 18 they didn’t update the requirements for transport to the places of education,

this was presumably deliberate.

so no, students are meant to be in education or training from 16-18 but there’s no requirement to provide any kind of transport

most colleges do run some kind of bus system but it’s very much up to them and it can be ridiculously expensive.

mine went by train (next town over) and I dropped them at the station each morning o my way to work. The canteen did quite a good breakfast so they had breakfast each day at college.