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.

Nail on the head.

But if they are over 67 they don't pay National Insurance.

They would be means testing the parents. My children walked to see their friends most of the time. If they go to a local school friends live nearby. Parents who choose to send their children further afield can pay for the extra costs.

Am I? You are the one that's referencing Family Allowance as if it's the only or even main cost that the state incurs from children.

At high school lots of kids can't easily walk to their mates' houses even if they go to the nearest school. I went to a very local school and lots of my friends lived on the other side of town. It's the nature of the beast when you have schools with 1000 plus pupils

The irony!! You are only able to get your children into a good school further afield because the "poor kids" can't afford the bus fare to travel there too. If they did the catchment area would be smaller.
As for "literally trapping kids" in crap schools, why do you think they are crap?

Your local school must have had a wide catchment area then. I live in a city and usually children live within two miles of each other. Regardless parents can give them a lift.

Because their attainment and Progress 8 scores are bad. They have well known behavioural problems.

I don't think it's ironic. I don't dispute that kids like mine might miss out if we facilitated poor kids to travel to better schools. I was once the poor kid. I've lived both sides of this coin. I know the impact of having your options and opportunities limited by something as small as not being able to afford a bus fare.

I actually now think you are being condescending, the majority of these children have no hope, how dare you. I work in one of these deprived area, these children are bright, talented and funny. Are some their home lives ideal no, will they go to a brilliant secondary school no, but they will work hard and achieve. They will face adversity and come out stronger, more resilient and compassionate, they will be empathetic and proud. They will face things your privileged children cannot even image. If you think free travel will improve there lives, you are showing just how privileged you are.
Most of these children are well loved and their parent absolutely do their best.

We’re in Scotland where kids have free bus travel. My kids and all of their friends now take the bus for about 5 stops instead of walking, filling the bus up unnecessarily and meaning they get less exercise. It would be really interesting to see the extent that free bus passes have driven up obesity here.

It was a regular suburban school. Catchment was around 6 miles from end to end so someone living on one end of town was quite far from someone on the other end of catchment. Not everyone has cars or parents available to drive them.

I was one of those children. How patronising to suggest we all come out stronger, more empathetic and more compassionate. Actually we came out with grades that didn't reflect our potential and have had our opportunities and options limited in the longer term. Free travel to better schools would absolutely have improved some of our lives.

Don't lecture me on all of this as if I don't know. I know!

how does that work with people with chronic conditions, or those that need life saving medications? The obvious one is type 1 diabetics who are entirely free of blame for their condition but who will die without insulin. Are we really at the point of charging people for being ill?

So they could meet in the middle at the weekend just by walking. My children thought nothing of walking three miles to somewhere but I don't know many elderly people who can do that.

You are welcome! I thought this thread was about education.

What about the evenings when you would go back to each others houses? Not many parents want their kids just hanging around in groups in the centre of town completely unsupervised. Yes, it happens but it's not ideal for anyone.

Why do you think the attainment and progress scores and behaviour is bad though?! What do you think will happen if all the children at a poorly performing school go to a school with good results?

Ironically if I had access to a better education when I was younger then perhaps I wouldn't be making these silly typos. Still, let's not worry about that. Keep the poor kids where they belong and poke fun at their crap education whenever you can by pointing out irrelevant errors. As long as it makes you feel superior.

Poor Progress 8 scores mean that a child is likely to not meet the potential they have shown when they left primary school. How is that not a bad thing?

Have you ever been to a bad school? Do you think they attract the best teachers? Do you think it's easy to achieve your potential there?

All the children from a bad school won't be able to access the good school as there aren't enough places. Providing free transport simply means that the places that are available aren't simply filled with those kids that can afford the bus fare.

Asthma is another chronic life-threatening condition but that doesn't qualify for free prescriptions. So yes, they are charged for being ill (unless they qualify for free prescriptions under a different exemption).

Not every state school is 'crap' and not every child who goes to them is 'poor'.

I’d go much further: everyone regardless of age or income should be able to use buses for free.

The benefits are obvious:
(i) Reduced road congestion and fewer hours lost to sitting in gridlocked traffic.

(ii) Reduced air pollution from taking cars off the road.

(iii) A marginally more healthy population as people would become more active through having to walk to / from the bus stop at the start / end of the journey.

It would pay for itself.

In Amsterdam, transport from the centre to the suburbs is provided free to the local people, but our government is intent upon squeezing people dry for money.

We need to be weaned off jumping into cars outside our houses and driving to the door of our destination. It’s lazy and unhealthy.

Newsflash! I know that. Have you even read my posts?

I think all school children should definitely get free bus travel - I was a bit shocked when I found they didn’t get it everywhere in the country!

Its a tough one with pensioners as the group does now include some of the richest in the country. I’m not sure if means testing it is the answer as I can imagine a lot of older folk not getting round to doing the forms due to a genuine inability to do so and therefore missing out.

Plus a lot of better off pensioners probably don’t want to use buses anyway! The pattern seems to be that it’s a bigger task to pry some older drivers out of their cars when they’re genuinely unsafe to drive, so taking away free bus travel sounds like it will only make this problem worse. And means testing itself costs money!

To quote you - 'millions' of times.