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.

School children are far less likely to be obese than adults and yet only 1% of adults walk 3 miles to work. Surely we should be compelling adults to walk more to tackle the crisis more effectively and this would involve removing from bus passes from pensioners that aren't incapacitated.

Just to add, you don’t own your home when you have a mortgage. The mortgage provider does.

So you’ve chosen to send your child to a school in the full knowledge that the bus fare would be expensive. Presumably your local authority would say that, according to the statutory guidance, 1. Your daughter can walk because it is less than 3 miles and 2. You should have chosen the nearest school, which I know you consider to be unsuitable but they presumably don’t.

in London, all school children get bus passes and for that matter so do pensioners, although pensioners have to wait til 9 to use their passes so they would not be on the buses at the same time as children.

YABU to say pensioners should not get bus passes.

Because we don't have infinite money and I don't think there are many more realistic tax rises that can be made without damaging our economy and ultimately being counterproductive? This is the problem, people want confessions and benefits without acknowledging there is a trade off. It's completely unrealistic. I suggest a trade-off and get told that I shouldn't and should just pretend we can have everything without cutting anything else. It's all pie in the sky and ultimately saddles the next generation with yet more debt from our out of control public spending.

I never said I wasn't better off than low income pensioners or that my kids were prime candidates for free bus travel. I can afford it, they can go to the better school and will do great. What about the poor kids that can't afford it though?

Is your child in a state school?

Wrong again! How many is this now?

You own the property even if you have a mortgage. The mortgage company has a security interest over it.

And they can sell it when you don’t pay the mortgage. They have the title deeds. You don’t get them until it’s yours. When you’ve paid the debt back.

None is your answer btw.

Unlike you.

People getting minimum wage are better off than people getting state pension.

None of this takes away the fact that the mortgage company is not the legal owner of a mortgages house.

You got it wrong AGAIN

Or we could just not spend any money on children travelling to schools miles away because their parents don't want to send them to local ones. Easily done if all children have to go to the nearest school as happened in the 80s. That would benefit poorer children too as they wouldn't be left in a school that nobody else wants to go to.

No I didn’t and you typing in capital letters doesn’t make you right.

A mortgage is debt.

You don’t own your home until you’ve paid your debt.

False equivalency. Pensioners are nearing, or at the end of, their earning ability and must meet their own costs. Children have their parents to meet their costs.

Depends what you mean better off.

As a group are people on minimum wage wealthier than pensioners? No

Do they have more disposable income than pensioners? No.

Is their headline income higher than pensioners? No
https://ifs.org.uk/articles/are-pensioners-richer-everyone-else

Do people receiving basic state pension only have less income than those on minimum wage? Yes although Job Seeker allowance is even less so they aren't the poorest group by income in the country.

I wasn't going to bite today but how you twist info is just too much.

You are making a statement (“pensioners today are better off than pensioners in the 1970s”) and twisting it into a false one (“pensioners are the richest group in society”). Those are not the same claim.

Pensioners today are, on average, better off than pensioners 40–50 years ago. That’s correct. In the1960s–80s pensioner poverty was extremely high, many had no private pension, home ownership was lower and the State Pension was less generous relative to wages, so yes, compared to their own past, today’s pensioners are better off. That’s the “two‑thirds drop in pensioner poverty” you are quoting.

BUT Pensioners are NOT the wealthiest group in society. This is where you are very wrong:

1. Income - Pensioners have lower income than working‑age households. ONS shows working households earn significantly more.
2. Liquid money - Most pensioners have less disposable income, because they’re on fixed income and no future hope of increasing it by improving work etc.
3. Wealth vs spendable money - Older households look “wealthy” because they own homes bought cheaply decades ago, because every house rises in value throughout long ownership and you work towards this your entire life

But you can’t spend your house, you can’t use property value to pay bus fares, you can’t use pension pots until they’re drawn down.

1. Pensioner poverty still exists - You keep saying “only a small minority are poor”. But 16% of pensioners are in poverty, that’s 1 in 6. If pensioners were “the richest group”, that number would be near zero. A pensioner can be:

• not counted as “in poverty”
• but still have very low disposable income
• and still be financially fragile
• even if they technically own a house worth £250k

Because property wealth does not remove you from poverty measures. Only income does.

1. The richest group according to ONS data is actually, middle‑aged working households (40s–50s), dual‑income families and people in full time employment. These groups have the highest income, savings, and liquid wealth. Not pensioners.

You are distorting facts by saying: “Pensioners today are richer than pensioners in the past” → therefore “Pensioners are richer than everyone else today.”
That leap is completely unsupported by the data. It’s like saying: “Cars today are safer than cars in the 1970s” → therefore “Cars are safer than trains.” It doesn’t follow.

Being better off than your grandparents were in the 70's and 80's doesn’t automatically make you richer than everyone else in the present day. You are conflating several statistics.

You can’t use your bricks to pay for bus fares, heating, food, or transport. ONS repeatedly warns that wealth statistics are misleading when used to judge living standards as you have.

You are targeting pensioners here from every aspect because they’re the only group where you can point to a statistical improvement over time and then treat that as spare money that can be reallocated. It’s a classic misdirection: you are frustrated with school funding and admissions, but instead of challenging the actual causes, education budgets, transport policy, housing inequality, and catchment rules - you are picking a group that looks “wealthy” on paper because of property values.

It’s easier to argue that older people should lose a benefit than to confront the fact that the school system is underfunded and structurally unequal. So you are turning pensioners into a convenient scapegoat for problems that have nothing to do with them, and nothing in the data supports the idea that removing their bus passes would fix school transport or help poorer families. Start a post about tackling the poor funding for school kids and I am on board but don't rob and villainise Peter to pay Paul.

You'll be old too one day and then you will realise the reality of it.

These arguments work both ways.

Children are at the complete mercy of their parents' financial position. They have no ability to have built up any wealth themselves so if they find themselves in poverty it won't be their fault.

Pensioners have had a whole lifetime to build wealth and avoid poverty. They have far more control over the situation they find themselves in.

You have all these riches to look forward to then. 12.5k a year.

Agree 💯

Ha, in my dreams. There will be no universal state pension when I get old. It will be long gone.

Those children's parents have also potentially had a considerable period of time to get themselves into a good position before having children. If they haven't done so they shouldn't have had children.

So who should go to the terrible schools?

Not a whole lifetime unless they were born as adults.

You better start saving then…

I think this is one of the most messed up and illogical arguments i've ever read.

I don't like pensioners and they have too much money.They should have done better themselves.Over their lives so we should take one of the benefits they get and give it to children instead.So that their parents can send them to a better school, nowhere near their home.

What the hell.

Just force every single child to go to the closest school and believe me, standards will improve once parents realised that's what they stuck with.

Unless you have no reading comprehension, I said a considerable period of time. Unless they are feckless teen parents.

Often, parents in their thirties and forties are complaining about having no money to send their kids to school.So why haven't they done better before now.

My reply was to the OP. Not you!