School children should receive free bus travel before pensioners?

[Itchthescratch]

My child is starting a school where it will cost around £2k for bus travel. This school is local and one of the closest schools to us. The other schools close to us are much worse in terms of opportunities and academic outcomes. I can afford the bus fare easily but I worry that some poorer families will really struggle to send their children to the higher achieving school because of the cost.

I understand that there isn't an endless pot of money but surely it would make sense to give school children free travel ahead of other groups like pensioners? School children are statistically much more likely to suffer from poverty (child poverty is almost double pensioner poverty)and it seems crazy that we aren't supporting social mobility whilst we let all pensioners travel for free on buses.

£1 in South Yorkshire too.

In Scotland under 21's get free bus travel.

But yes I think bus travel should be free for children getting to school. Just the same as I think they should be getting free school meals.

I don't know what to say to you! Take defence for an example, suddenly it's a priority and needs lots of money. The other departments need to make cuts. They don't get to keep their funding because they exist for different policy reasons. Every policy and commitment has different outcomes and purposes. This doesn't mean they aren't competing.

Providing children with free bus passes has been proven to deliver health and other advantages. We are now funding the impact of not having these passes already.

The money for any new commitment has to come from somewhere. Does it have to be from pensioner travel? Absolutely not, but I think it's the most obvious trade off to make.

How on earth do you think that more children are in poverty than elderly people?

There's another thread about free breakfast. For all school children and free child care.I mean, do you parents actually want to pay anything for the children you had?And if you can't afford to have kids, why do you

I would never have had children at a stage where I couldn't afford to pay for a bus fare to get them to school.Why do people do it.

Trade it off against child benefit?

where are bus fares £1?? midlands here bad a single is £.150 for a child, so there and back would be £.280 for a child day saver. £14 a week, certainly not £5! £547 over a year if you can't afford to do more than pay daily and that doesn't cover holidays. £120 a term so £360 a year if you can manage that up front and it covers holidays.
I wanna live where you live!

Closest school for my children, 1.8 miles as the crow flies, much longer to actually travel there £1 each way with a travel card so £4 per day, £20 per week, £780 for us per a academic year. Sometimes they walk, bike, scooter.

I think it should be free for school age children travelling to and from school. However I also believe pensioners should continue to be provided with bus passes. I think it gives more opportunity to get out and about which is extremely important, especially if living ok their own. Many wouldn’t travel in an attempt to be frugal which could potentially lead to isolation etc.

I know! It’s bewildering.

NRTFT, but as I understand it, pensioners get free bus passes to encourage them to use public transport, when really they are getting too infirm to drive safely? It’s about overall safety for society!

The teachers in that school I was talking about are / were some of the hardest working teachers that I've ever come across. But when there is no support from parents for low level disruption etc it escalates into bigger issues. They're teaching students without equipment/breakfast / anywhere to do homework. No matter how hard those teachers work, they are not going to get the results.

Many of those teachers stay because they want to make a difference to those children. I now do private tuition and see the exercise books from some of the so called better schools and they're full of Ofted jargon that mean absolutely nothing to the children. They are taught to pass exams, they're not taught for understanding. I see the same worksheets for the kids aiming for an 8 /9 given to the students doing the foundation paper.
They're not better teachers in those schools. They're teaching students whose parents support their education. That is the difference

That isn't true. Routes are not measured 'as the crow flies' but by the shortest available walking route. Nobody is going to be sending children through a farmer's field to walk to school.

In Scotland young people over the age of 12 can apply for a Young Scot card which entitles them to free bus travel, among other things. However the application process is not that straightforward so I worry that some kids who lack parental support would not be able to complete the application so would be limited in their freedom, which could impact their education and job opportunities.

You must be exhausted with the speed at which you keep moving goal posts to distract from the lack of logic.

But logic is rarely much in evidence when arguing identity based politics.

Then we really have to disagree.

You’re still treating public spending as if every department sits around one big table dividing up a single pot, and that’s not how budgeting works. Yes, everything ultimately comes from taxation, but individual schemes aren’t in direct one‑for‑one competition in the way you’re describing. If they were, we’d have to argue that funding for potholes comes at the expense of cancer treatment. It’s simply not how budgets are structured.

Defence doesn’t “take money from” transport. Education doesn’t “take money from” health. These areas have separate allocations, separate statutory duties, and separate funding mechanisms. They don’t all fight over the same pound.

And again, one of the main reasons that pensioners gets free bus passes, and I have said this many times already in various forms, because it prevents isolation, maintains independence, and reduces pressure on health and social care. Removing it doesn’t magically create a school transport budget, it just creates a different problem somewhere else.

You’re making a very big assumption that “most 65‑year‑olds can walk a reasonable distance”, and that simply isn’t borne out by reality. A huge proportion of people in their mid‑60s and early‑70s have mobility issues, chronic conditions, arthritis, COPD, heart disease, or have stopped driving. Many can walk short distances, but not the long, hilly, or multi‑stage routes required to get to shops, GP surgeries, hospitals, or social contact.

Its not the obvious pay off at all.If you remove or restrict their bus access, you don’t just save money, you create pressure somewhere else:

GPs and hospitals see more patients because people can’t get to routine appointments.
Social care picks up isolated older people who can no longer get out independently.
Mental health services see increased loneliness, depression, and cognitive decline.
Emergency services deal with more falls because people are forced to walk further than they safely can.
Carers and family have to take time off work to drive them everywhere.
Local communities lose volunteers, grandparents doing school pickups, and informal support networks.

The older person’s bus pass isn’t a luxury. It’s a preventative measure that reduces isolation, maintains independence, and reduces pressure on health and social care budgets. Removing it doesn’t magically create a school transport budget, it simply shifts the cost into other departments, often at a higher rate.

You are basically saying that sending the elderly with deteriorating health and potentially memory are more able to walk instead of using buses and that there are no risks to asking them to do so in extremes of weather. Many are isolated and lonely and have no assistance. Kids by nature, generally at least have a parent and good health (there are exceptions). So no its not the obvious trade off, its an absolutely idiotic suggestion.

Anything is possible. Child poverty is a lot higher than pensioner poverty and they are the richest group in society so I know who I would target with savings

Not many 65 year olds can't walk a reasonable distance. It isn't an elderly bus pass that comes in at say 80 or even 75. There isn't much of a mobility argument for younger pensioners.

This is simply not true for many older people.

And there we have it. Politics of envy strikes again.

The wealthy pensioners (and they are definitely not all wealthy) won’t be the ones relying on bus passes.

Providing children with free bus passes has been proven to deliver health and other advantages. We are now funding the impact of not having these passes already

Data to back this up? And what type of bus passes were covered in the research?

Or are you thinking of the data on bus passes for older travellers?

You seem to be arguing a mish mash of school quality (national issue), school bus travel (local authority issue), an insistence that this generation unlike previous cannot walk three miles to school, false understanding of income demographics and confusion over how and why some regions provide bus passes over a certain age (check it out and you will immediately see why swapping for children’s passes won’t work).

Zack - is that you?

No it doesn't make sense to prioritise children, plenty of pensioners live in poverty- they have contributed all their working lives, why should they lose their rights to free travel because people decide to have children they can't afford? Child poverty is just an aspect of adult poverty, talking as if it is a separate issue is just nonsense.
Means testing is not too expensive, but it means a bigger civil service which no goverment in living memory has been tolerant of- it's a choice not an absolute.

Pension age is 67. The great majority won't be able to walk anywhere near as far or quickly as a teenager.

I didn’t say he had to walk through a farmer’s field.
It’s a very steep, rocky path which becomes treacherous in wet weather and most of the winter.
We’ve questioned it with our local council and have been told it’s a suitable walking route.

Nobody walks to school that way, they all pay to use the bus.

Exactly. Not every pensioner automatically gets a free bus pass when they reach their pension age. The costs only come into effect when they actually apply for one. Many pensioners who still drive won't need one so won't bother applying.

Numbers with sources of the data?

Less than 10% of pensioners have an income which troubles the 40% rate of tax, a third of pensioners live in fuel poverty. Meanwhile if you want to play identity politics the current millennial generation will be the richest in history (if you use the same nonsensical counting method as the lobby groups).

Incidentally you may choose not to believe there is a cut off for savings against means testing benefits - nor did George Osborne and it cost him.

A region of Yorkshire

I suggest you join us oldies on our weekly walks, bet you’d struggle to keep up with us.