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.

Pensioners currently have free bus travel.

School children don't.

Arguably the policy at the moment is ageist against kids, yet you suggest even proposing a change is ageist in itself.

By you alone.

As an aside, I'm surprised that any child is getting into the 'best' school in the area (and you have admitted that your choice is the best school for academic achievement, not for anything specific to your child that it offers) from so far away. My local school is the 'best' in the city, and every year there are dozens of kids in the catchment area that don't even get a place (usually the last place offered is about a mile from the school).
Also, the city I live in actively makes car use a pain in the arse, so OAPs are actually encouraged to use buses instead of their cars.

Well, when you're a young person, before you even have kids, you start a pension scheme. Back in the days of the current and near current pensioners that was not mandatory and the state did not help apart from tax relief on contributions and employers did not have to help. Nonetheless, a lot of pensioners decided to invest in their own private pensions because the state pension at that stage was looking very woeful.

Then, when they had kids they got child benefit. They didn't get any paid childcare, that was down to us to find, as was nursery. A scheme to allow all 4 year olds three free months of nursery (15 hours a week I think) was just coming in so that was the only freebie we got. So as well as paying for our pensions, our mortgages at stupid interest rates, we also had to pay all our childcare costs and nursery costs ourselves.

When we got closer to retirement sensible people, having paid off the mortgages, bunged loads more money into their pensions to provide for their own future and took financial advice on what they could do with their pension pots. Built into this advice are the various stages of retirement, the fun stage, the older living stage and eventually the pre death stage. All these things were costed out and money from private pensions, state pensions, prescription benefit and bus passes were factored in.

The fun stage includes a car, holidays, eating out, etc. The older living stage includes a cleaner, gardener, giving up the car and using the bus pass and then the pre-death stage, well, I don't think any of us want to go there but home helps, assisted living, etc.

These people were sensible, they did without while working to prepare for their futures and set themselves up despite not having had the financial childcare benefits given to parents these days.

Now you want to begrudge them a free bus pass as well. Wtf are you like?

@PleaseDontAsk - that is not going to happen. There are now Ofsted regulated online schools for under 5k a year with excellent teachers (who can’t be bothered to teach difficult kids either and prefer online). The middle classes working from home will start opting for those instead. We already know several families with elite athletes who have done so and at least one parent is a teacher. So instead of finding your own tutors, you now have these good heads setting up online schools and providing a tailored education at a fraction of the cost of in person private school.

@Itchthescratch lots of people have said that free bus fares are only claimed by the bus company when a pensioner has used the bus. So the pensioners you are referring to are likely not using the buses. They will drive if they are able to. So you are suggesting getting rid of something that less affluent pensioners can use.

Not all pensioners are of the demographic of your family. My grandparents never had a car, nor were they wealthy. They never owned a property either. So they didn’t have pots of money. They definitely needed to use the bus.

Taking the free bus pass away just seems spiteful. We already have the lowest state pension in Europe.

You already get lots of perks like free childcare & standard of living for lots of young people is actually pretty good. My children definitely have a more enriching life than my Grandparents & Parents did.

Yes, but many people usually just stop driving rather than surrendering their license. You can already get a free bus pass if the DVLA say you can't drive for medical reasons.

School children do. To their local school. Within the rules.

The vast majority of children aren't eligible.

Well it would only be a small step extra to surrender the license and would be good from a safety perspective surely?

Also the motor insurance industry is based on profit alone so if there were an uptick in accidents involving pensioners - to the tune of anything similar to young drivers- they would quickly quadruple the mandatory insurance price and lobby for GP sign off for competency to drive every few years.

Asking a child to walk less than a mile to primary and less than two miles to secondary isn’t a human rights violation!

Nailed it!

Personally, if you are going to fund this - why not take away those massive tax perks for all those huge brand new SUVs that are all the rage currently and completely unnecessary and redirect the tax salary sacrifice to green home improvements instead, electric bikes, cycle lanes etc.

* Licence (noun)
license (verb)

Statistics prove that child poverty is much higher than pensioner poverty. There is no evidence to suggest that the standard of living for children is on average higher than pensioners.

We have covered the fact that the scheme runs on the basis of recompensing bus companies for journeys a million times. We have also had posters like you insist that only poor pensioners use the passes and others that contradict this through stories of relatives or people they know. We know that these journeys cost the government £1 billion when combined with disabled users. This isn't an insignificant sum and considering only 12% of pensioners live in poverty, it's highly likely that lots of non poor pensioners are using buses too.

It's 3 miles. Wrong again!

Surrendering a driving license is a big step and i understand why people don't want to do that. Don't you? A lot of the time people just drive less and less rather than stopping at once. A free bus pass encourages this.

Super useful. Great to see the ad hominem fallacy in action.

In Scotland it’s two. And one for primary. You’re wrong again.

No it's all about how to pay for it- OAP's have contributed all their working lives, children have not contributed at all and their parents have only contributed for a few years, why should OAP's have their entitlement cut to pay for travel which should be being paid for by working age parents. OAP's had to pay for their children's travel- who died and made the current generation so entitled?

I do understand this. Of course I do. I have elderly grandparents that had to stop driving. The reality is though that most old people stop driving around 75 not 65. Health changes mean that it's unsafe to drive and they instinctively feel this. I'm not sure that allowing them to keep their license and ease their way into bus usage is great from a safety perspective

Lots of OAPs haven't contributed enough to cover their own costs let alone anybody elses. Studies consistently show this. The young today will be footing the bill for today's pensioners and will more than pay their share.

I'm obviously not in Scotland. None of this thread would make sense if I was as they already get free travel

Health changes aren’t necessarily permanent. For many it is a simple cataract operation on both of their eyes.