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.

If there is no safe route to the school surely there is a free bus?

Why are all walking routes unsafe?

Yes and no. Some will get it for free, some pay. For those who weren’t near a bus route, they did taxis until recently, but now parents have to drive them to the nearest bus stop.

It’s a very rural school. The lane to school is very narrow, no pavements for miles. There are quite a number of school buses travelling there so not safe for pedestrians.

Very strange that they’d build a school without safe access, and assume that all parents can drive miles for the school run every day?
This is secondary, right? What happens to working parents?

Or us there actually a dedicated school bus?

It’s been there for many years, I guess originally built for the children of local farmers. Yes, secondary. The vast majority of children get the school buses, there’s no other bus that goes there. There’s a few parents who drive their children there.

Here we go again, messing with figures to suit your take.

1.Your “only 13% rely solely on the State Pension” stat - this is from Just Group, a commercial retirement products company. They produce marketing‑adjacent “analysis” to encourage people to buy private pensions and equity‑release products. It is not an ONS statistic. It is not a government statistic. It is not a neutral statistic. It’s a modelled estimate based on survey data, not actual ONS income data.

ONS’s own figures show something very different:
ONS: 38% of pensioner income comes from the State Pension
And for single pensioners, it’s higher. ONS also shows:
State Pension is the largest single source of income for pensioner households.
So your “13%” is cherry‑picked from a commercial report, not official data.

2.Your “20% rely on it as their primary source” claim is simply WRONG - Again, this is not an ONS figure. ONS shows:

• State Pension is the main income source for the majority of single pensioners.
• Private pension coverage is highly unequal.
• Women are far more likely to rely heavily on the State Pension.

3.Your anecdote about your grandparents, its classic argument drift

When the data doesn’t support your point, you switch to: “My grandparents worked hard.” “They built pensions.” “They progressed.” & “They did fine.”
well lucky them, but that is not representative of all pensioners. Your tale is irrelevant to national policy, demographic reality, income distribution, poverty rates, mobility needs, social isolation, health access & transport policy
It’s also historically inaccurate.

Most people who left school at 15 did NOT build substantial private pensions. Women especially. Women born in the 1930s–1950s:

• had interrupted work histories
• worked part‑time
• worked in low‑paid roles
• were excluded from many occupational schemes
• were not auto‑enrolled
• were not protected by modern pension legislation

Your anecdote is not representative.

4.“Your PILs aren’t typical” line - This is where your bias is revealed.

ONS shows: Pensioner poverty is 16% - millions of people. Child poverty is 31% - also millions. Neither group is “small.”

Your argument tries to minimise pensioner poverty to justify taking away support.
It’s a false framing.

5.The real flaw in your argument - you keep trying to make this a moral trade‑off - “We must choose between pensioners and children.” But:

Transport budgets are not zero‑sum. School transport is a local authority issue. Older person bus passes are a national concession scheme. They are not funded from the same pot.

Removing pensioner bus passes does not create a school transport budget.

Your argument is built on a false premise.

Back in the day. I think children under 5 could travel free or half price on local buses.

As far as l know. Primary School Children were not entitled to free bus travel. No matter how far they had to travel to school.

You had to wait until you attended Secondary School,which was more than 3 miles away from your house. As the crow flies, to be entitled to a free bus pass.

Think people with rulers at the local education committee measuring distances using old school rulers, protractors on maps of the City.
Stone Age?

Does Google Maps have an As The Crow Flies Facility?

Nah. We got school bus passes when at school in the 80s. You could only use them at certain times and for school travel and you had to apply for them. Don't know if it was a distance thing, maybe. Didn't realise that had been stopped.

Pensioners have paid for bus fares all their working lives and now have to wait another year. I am pleased each time I travel on a bus now I have my pass. The bus fare should be free for school children so maybe you need to campaign for that. Some pensioners go out on the bus either with friends or to meet them. I would not want my free bus journeys to stop .I do see plenty of pensioners with health issues. At least they can get out somewhere due to having a bus pass. It would isolate a lot of people.

It’s not been stopped.

Possibly yes some highly paid workers in their 60s. But also retired people in their 70s and 80s travelling to see family and friends, attend social activities and make the most of life while they still can. The cost of travelling from zone 6 or 7 would make this difficult for many. And after all they have paid full fares for 40 plus years so I don't begrudge the freebie now. I also read that fare dodgers cost TfL much more than the old people. As a compromise maybe old and young and other unwaged could get say half price fares

They wont unless its the closest school or an allocated school

In my sons school case there is very little path there is now a muddy desire path beside a national speed limit road there is still no free bus because "there is a footpath we SAW it" its not official though is it 😂 i met a German student (i might be misremembering that he was German actually) last year he said all students get free travel until 21? Better system gives children independence

All under 22's in Scotland get free transport plus all age 60 plus .

Yes but my concern is that by funding the bus pass it still doesn't mean they will get a place at that school. So quite rightly all parents can now access the school cos the transport is available to all ( free or otherwise) so school now over subscribed so school then goes on distance to allocate places. So then you risk that situation that those who can afford it move to guarantee catchment. They pupils who needed the free bus pass to Access the school are unlikely to be able to move to the new smaller catchment due to house price inflation etc so they still end up excluded and yes that's bloody awful. But the bus pass isn't the game ven solution.
Yes governments are tackling the inequality in state schooling and that is the issue the risk is we loose sight of that by using temporary fixes that make people feel better but aren't a long term solution.

Yup, our village primary is the same, no pavement on the narrow road leading from the village centre to the school. Also it's a very spread out village and lots of narrow roads from the outer housing areas to the village centre with no pavements. It's also the school covering several other smaller villages, again, the roads between villages don't have pavements (nor bus routes!).

A couple of my DGC went to a village primary school like that, most of the pupils had to be driven. There weren’t many who lived close enough to walk, and no buses. A lovely little school, they were lucky to go there.

In answer to the original question - a definite NO

How do you quantify that ? What if - as has happened near where I work - white parents don't want to send their kids to a school with a large number of BME pupils - is that legit ?

Do we need to means test pensions and pensioner benefits ?

This is a VERY slippery slope...

My pension is £14082 a year so not all the same

Ooh really? I didn't know that was possible.

Why not both? Anything at all that gets cars off the road.

I expect it was a village school, built when feet were the popular mode of transport. I went to schools like that. We had school buses laid on. When I went to school in a town, we had bus passes. I don't know if they were free or not but I don't think they cost much or I would never have heard the end of it. School transport should be free to put an end to crowds of cars at beginning & end of the school day. They choke our town at these times.

My sons school was rural the bus pass used to be free then July one year everyone was told no more free bus passes parents who had already picked that school had to switch school by September (impossible) ask for flexi time from work share car rides buy a bus pass which didn't show up on time because the infrastructure wasn't in place luckily you could pay daily but most parents hadnt budgeted for this expense it was a hell of a shit show