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.

Definitely don't limit it to people on bloody pension credit as that is so unfair on pensioners who are literally a few quid over the cut off for that because they worked all their lives. People like that miss out on so many freebies the pension credit people get and end up much worse off.

You said distance was measured 'as the crow flies' which isn't true.

I’m a pensioner and I agree that if anyone should be prioritised for free transport it should be children.
Most pensioners aren’t super rich though. Your mother’s income is unusually high.
People on here seem to know a disproportionate number of very rich pensioners.

Op, I was a manager in the bus industry for many years. It’s not clear from your posts if you understand the mechanism for reimbursing bus operators for concessionary travel. There are several methods and bus operators don’t receive the full fare. Local authorities are responsible for funding this travel, hence the difference in restrictions around travel times etc. Local authorities in seaside resorts popular with elderly visitors will have a much higher bill for concessionary travel than no touristy areas.
Closed school bus services are not eligible for bus service operators grant meaning that they don’t receive the same subsidies as open services.

I wish the Govs -uk and Scottish would stop all these vote buying ‘gifts’ - just work at getting the economy going and people in decent jobs - all these freebies!

I am disabled so I will struggle thanks. My children walked extremely fast as teenagers and also now as young adults so certainly would not struggle to keep up

It was free during August but in general kids are free until aged 5.

Each department has to fight for funding. That's exactly how Spending Reviews work. Who do you think allocates each department's budget? The government has a finite pot of money and it is often literally the case for example that funding one department more for a specific initiative will mean other departments see a drop in budget. So the Department of Health recently got an increase of 3% for initiatives including modernising IT systems and this directly resulted in cuts for the Department of Transport and Foreign Office.

For the millionth time, all decisions have trade offs. Studies have shown huge benefits for children and young people that have free bus travel. The benefits are also beyond the obvious, include elements like mental health improvements and access to opportunities that can have an impact that lasts many decades. We have a crisis with NEETs and going people on general and this is causing all kinds of problems.

The idea that pensioners are the only or even the most vulnerable group in our society is very questionable. My parents are both pensioners and neither are vulnerable in anyway. Nor are any of their friends. They are absolutely more able to get to places than my 11 year old daughter. They have a car for starters. Why on earth are we offering them free travel and denying kids that desperately need it?

Well the point is that some do use public transport, and it’s a life line for many. My point is that as the free bus travel for pensioners is under used, then maybe there’s enough in the pot for kids to get free travel too. Why does it have to be ‘either’ ‘or’? But we should also question why there’s increasing calls from parents to subsidise their children when they clearly can’t afford to have them. A post this week about free breakfasts for every child at school and now free bus travel. If you can’t afford to feed your child cereal in a morning which costs pennies, or you can’t afford to get them to school, then maybe people should be questioning whether they should be having children at all…

Are you including the over 70s who may fail the new driving assessments they have brought in. Because they will need public transport
OR they could try and dodge the assessment and carry on driving Which would you prefer.

The statistics are easy to find both on wealth by age and also on poverty by age. I don't need to supply sources as it's readily available in government statistics. I'm not your secretary

It shouldn't take an 11 year old more than an hour to walk 3 miles.

Unless parents are bypassing local schools through choice, there'd be lots of schoolchildren all making the journey at the same time.

Schoolchildren in other countries manage in the dark mornings.

I think a solution we could all agree on is that a bus pass is handed out when you surrender your driving license?

That way those that can drive and don't need the pass don't get it and those that can't drive any longer and will be more reliant on buses can use them for free b

I don’t have school age children anymore, but when my three were I remember this challenge. With all the focus on attendance, I cannot believe that there are Not more plans to make it more reasonable for families with school age children to receive some sort of benefit for this? Maybe I’m being naive

I wouldn't walk a 3 mile journey mostly in the dark on quiet roads. I certainly wouldn't ask an 11 year old without a smart phone to do this.

If they are bypassing crap schools then is that so terrible? Why do they have to send their kids to rubbish schools because they can't afford to live in nicer areas?

Yes, sure. I assume the same would apply to children - they only get a free bus pass if their parents don’t have a driving licence? Given it’s the parents’ responsibility to get their child to school.

@Itchthescratch And just to clarify yet again, why you are comparing apples and oranges

An OAPs bus pass itself has to be applied for, and many retired car drivers do not apply for one. When they do, there is a small admin cost to produce it but the card doesn't give operators money in itself . This cost is minimal - pennies per person per year when averaged out.

Every time a pensioner uses the bus, the operator is reimbursed, this is the key point you do not seem to understand, bus companies are paid per journey, not per person holding a pass. And certainly in my area you can only use it off peak. You have to pay full fare for peak travel. And school kids generally travel peak on a morning.

The bus co submit data on concessionary journeys, and the local authority reimburses them based on the number of journeys taken, the distance, the operator’s fare structure, agreed reimbursement formulas. So the funding follows actual usage, not the existence of the scheme.

The reimbursement is designed to cover “no better, no worse”. Operators are meant to be compensated so they are no worse off than if the passenger paid but no better off than if the passenger paid. It’s not a profit scheme. It’s not a lump sum. It’s not a fixed pot. It’s a usage‑based reimbursement.

If pensioners don’t travel, the cost doesn’t occur. This is the part that destroys your “competing priorities” argument. A pensioner who stays home, walks, uses a car, taxi or who travels at peak times …doesn’t cost the bus pass scheme anything that day.

It’s not like school transport, where the council must contract a whole bus route regardless of how many children use it.

School transport is a fixed cost - pensioner travel is variable. School transport requires: contracted buses, guaranteed routes, guaranteed drivers, fixed timetables, statutory obligations. It’s a fixed, upfront cost, which is why it can reach £2k per child. Pensioner bus travel is variable - the cost only occurs when someone actually boards a bus.

Your “one pot” argument doesn’t fit the mechanism no matter how many times you insist or repeat it. But the mechanism you are arguing for (fixed national funding for school transport) is not how concessionary travel works.
Concessionary travel is usage‑based, reimbursed per journey only, partly funded nationally, partly funded locally and designed to prevent isolation and reduce health/social care costs. It’s not a fixed budget that can be “taken” and “given” elsewhere.

So pensioners are only subsidised when they actually travel. If they don’t use the bus, no cost occurs beyond the tiny admin fee. This is completely different from school transport, which is a fixed contracted cost whether the bus is full or empty.

So again - its not an obvious trade-off at all because based on the above, if the sums do not add up. You are comparing apples and oranges.

Agree. The point also is that people don’t choose to get old to the point that public transport is their only lifeline to getting out of the home. Yet people do choose to have children - which is a lifestyle choice. Getting old isn’t. Don’t have kids if you can’t afford to financially support them

Not it's not. It is the walking distance via a safe route. The government guidance issued May 2026 is here. Page 11
www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-to-school-travel

Apologies, ‘as the crow flies’ is what we use for admissions criteria which is a policy I’ve been reading more recently.
However, it doesn’t change my point that the shortest walking route isn’t always appropriate. It certainly isn’t for the kids living in our village.

I have been trying to explain this point but its not going in.

I’ve just acknowledged this.

It's always been the case though. Parents having kids they can't afford. The problem is that now the cost of living has risen so quickly, people that thought they could afford kids a decade ago and chose to have a baby are now struggling. It's hard to predict the future. Certainly not many people would guess that it would cost £2k to bus a kid to a decent school. Yes, you could send them to a crap school but is this what we want to encourage? As someone from a poor background I think social mobility is really important.

Good to know that you will be encouraging your children into care work!

Your “one pot” argument doesn’t fit the mechanism no matter how many times you insist or repeat it. But the mechanism you are arguing for (fixed national funding for school transport) is not how concessionary travel works.
Concessionary travel is usage‑based, reimbursed per journey only, partly funded nationally, partly funded locally and designed to prevent isolation and reduce health/social care costs. It’s not a fixed budget that can be “taken” and “given” elsewhere
Right, because you don't seem to understand. Not every child gets the bus to school, not every child that gets the bus gets the bus everyday and not every child that gets the bus everyday gets a school-only bus. In fact only 11% of children use a school-only bus service to get to school each day. So actually for the other 89% of children it would work exactly how the pensioner pass works.