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.

I don't hate pensioners. My parents and grandparents are pensioners and I love them dearly. I'm not trying to punish anyone. The money has to come from somewhere though. Using your logic you must hate children and be keen to punish them for being born in poor families?

I don't believe you at all. Parents with money will move. They aren't going to accept a rubbish school. I would certainly move rather than send my kids to a sink school.

A whole working lifetime.

Ahh, so if a pensioner is poor it's their own fault, is it?

Then you should have said that. Though some parents don’t work and look after their children themselves rather than claim the benefit of free childcare.

Oh, I hope so

So if wealthy parents move close to good schools and poorer parents put their kids on long bus journeys to good schools, who goes to the sink/local schools?

I'd be in favour of subsidised/free transport for children but not for the reason you are suggesting.

These are two different proposals:

One is kids are forced to go to their closest school in which case no kids will be busses in from outside nice areas to attend good schools.

The other is that free travel would mean more poor kids could attend good schools

They are contradictory policies in many ways so wouldn't be implemented in conjunction with each other. Obviously I oppose the first one, it's what others have suggested

The money to send children to school miles away doesn't have to come from somewhere though. If school catchment areas were fixed and everyone went to their local school there arguably wouldn't be as many sink hole schools that noone wants to go to.

Ok, so Im a bully and ageist for suggesting pensioners don't need a free bus pass, but you are a nice person for relishing in people being denied a state pension when they have effectively funded everyone else's for decades.

The cognitive dissonance is strong.

Surely you still have an oppertunity to build wealth and avoid poverty. You know.............just like you said in your previous post.

Again, this isn't realistic. Any parent with money will not live in an area with poor schools. They will do anything they can to avoid it. You will still have the nice areas with the nice schools and the deprived areas with the poor schools. It's just those in the deprived schools will have no way of accessing a decent school.

Come on, every single borough even in London has some schools which are better than others.

They aren't all equal, not even in affluent areas.

I absolutely do but state pensioners now currently have has this opportunity and receive a state pension and get free bus travel.

Exactly.She's saying there's no state pension for her when she's old.So why isn't she taking her own advice?Which is to build up money now, just what she's saying pensioners should have done.

She's also the author of her own misfortune.

So, just based on your proposal with the free buses, who would go to the local/sink schools?

Explain how paying for more stuff for pensioners now means I will get more stuff when I'm a pensioner. The opposite is likely to be true

Do you mean the female pensioners You know the ones The ones who wernt even allowed to get a mortgage without a mans say so.

Richmond upon thames. Most affluent borough in most of london.

Teddington School location in an affluent area, you would be hard pressed to afford a one bed flat here and 3 bed houses are about a million pounds.

Teddington school ranks at the bottom in the borough and 60% of students get gcse grades of 5 in English and maths. So another words 40% of kids don't even get that.

This is won't be as bad as some other failing secondary schools in other parts of the country but even in Richmond there are schools that aren't that great even if it's in an area where houses sell for a million pounds.

You just distorting facts to support taking money away from pensioners.

They are fixed in Scotland. If you want your child to go to another school you have to make a “placing request” to the LA. If it’s successful, you have to pay transport yourself.

It's more realistic than thinking that you could send all the children from deprived areas to good schools and those schools would remain good regardless. Also, while people may move house to avoid a really bad school they won't necessarily do it to send their children to a top performing one versus a more average one. It's not as easy as just putting them on a bus to travel a few miles particularly as houses by the top perfoming schools might be comparatively much more expensive. Money and time might be better spent helping to improve the local schools.

That is not what @PleaseDontAsk was asking You are now obfuscating because you have painted yourself into a corner

I am a nice person and if you hadn't been so thoroughly obnoxious then I would never have written it but I'm afraid that you have come across on this whole post as being entitled and brattish and a pensioner basher. If the Government had invested the money we paid in for pensions, there would be plenty enough. Blame the Government not the pensioners, we acted in good faith.

That's how it worked in England in the 80s. Also had a school bus.

Our areas are a mix of minted families, average earning families and poor families. In the main, they all go to the same school.

If a parent wants them to go to another school and their application is successful, they have to pay for the transport.

“Teddington school ranks at the bottom in the borough and 60% of students get gcse grades of 5 in English and maths.”

@PleaseDontAsk - but the fact you are quoting a 5 which is a strong pass and not a 4 says it all!

24/25 stats is only just over 45% nationally get that Pisa Level 2 plus or whatever the 5 is now considered.

Most regions and schools aren’t even quoting in “5” currency.