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.

Blackpool buses have a weekly child pass at £13 for 7 days travel. 39 weeks X 13 = £507. I've assumed Blackpool as that's where you keep referencing.

The cost of free school travel comes from the Council budget and the statutory requirements for giving bus/public transport passes are the ones linked above.
For Greater Manchester the costs to the local council is just under £500 per pass per year or about £13 a week. At one stage Manchester Council was issuing about 1200 passes per year. That's over half a million quid. Or the cost of 10 social workers. Now they apply the statutory rules and only give passes to those meeting the government set criteria. This means if you apply for a place at further away schools for Year 7 the costs are borne by the parent/carer.

The Government guidance for a reasonable travel time for a secondary school child is 90 mins.

See this line of argument is pretty ridiculous in the context of the fact that any individual's ability to equalise the state education system is going to be very limited. You are asking me as a working, busy parent to sort out the huge structural and systematic issues that have led to the frankly terrifying amount of inequality baked into the state system? Nice try!

I can afford the £2k. My kids win as they will continue to win if we keep putting premiums on accessing decent state resources. It's not my kids I'm worried about.

I’m a pensioner so I have free travel, but pay £ 600 a year for my grandchild’s bus fare. I’d happily exchange my free bus pass for one for her.
I think bus travel to school for children should be free.

I don't live in Blackpool.

I live on the Scotland. I did not realise in England you had to pay to travel to school. All children in Scotland get free bus travel. Also if you live more than 2 miles from your catchment school you will get free school transport, so my children also get a free school bus. If you live under 2 miles you're expected to walk.
It's only for your catchment school though if you want to go to a different school you need to make your way / use public transport.

The overwhelmingly dominant driver of school exam results is parental income and education levels. Good schools (defined by exam results) are generally good because they have a privileged intake. That privileged intake is mostly based on location (expensive catchment area). Some children from cheaper areas might travel in, but because it’s difficult and expensive those tend to be children with keen parents who are willing to make sacrifices for their children’s education. OP’s family is probably in that category. Certainly they’re rich enough to be able to spend £2k on buses! I bet the school OP prefers has lower free school meals numbers than the “bad” schools nearby.

The problem I have is with OP’s claim that she wants more social mobility, and free bus fares would help with that. OP has (probably) chosen to send her child to a school with other privileged children. Social mobility would be doing the opposite. If bus travel were free everyone would want to send their child to the good school, and the catchment area would shrink dramatically. OP’s child probably wouldn’t get in.

In other words, the fact that bus travel is expensive is probably the very thing allowing OP’s privileged child to go to the privileged school with other privileged children.

You can want social mobility or you can want your privileged child to cluster with other privileged children at the “best” school. But you can’t want both.

I walked 3 miles to school every day as a DC from 11 years old and 3 miles home again. It didn't hurt me. When I was a child far fewer people had cars and my parents couldn't afford bus travel when it was within walking distance. Over time I sped up and managed it in about 1 hour and 5 minutes. Most people pension ag now will have done their fair share of walking as DC as not many had cars then.

Studies haven't found this to be the case. Total walking duration and number of short distances walked remained stable.

Perhaps if you're concerned though then we should stop the pensioners having free travel as they too would often benefit from walking more?

Some school children need free school transport, some pensioners also need free transport. If you could solve the problem for the government how they make if fair for everyone I’m sure they will be happy.

Depends on the area. Greater Manchester is £1 single. West Yorkshire is £1.60 for a journey over a mile. Both have an all day ticket of about £3. Liverpool City Region is about £2 for all day bus travel.

In Scotland every one under the age of 21 and over the age of 60 received free bus travel.

But we get to pay higher taxes for it.

Don’t make this in to an anti pensioner thing. It’s ageist shite.

Oh, stop your nonsense 🙄

He obviously wasn't living in a village with one bus a week. My local bus until recently wasn't that bad but it ended with a 15 minute walk up a steep hill,murder with a week's shopping. We now have a closer service due to a new housing estate. I rarely used the old service, I use the new one maybe once a week or maybe every two weeks. I can't imagine my journeys cost much compared to children using buses five days a week at peak times. You'd probably have to take free passes off several pensioners like me to fund one child. Then you have pensioners like my husband who never use buses. I wonder how costs would compare.

Pensioners get their free bus pass when they hand back their drivers license.

Maybe. Rather than piggybacking both when the claim that they need the bus pass is they might be too dangerous to drive. But we have no space to retest.

Equal to the children who cannot drive then getting free government funding travel.

Why can't they cycle?

I find your argument strange. I, like everyone else, can only work in the system we find ourselves. I do think the system is ridiculously biased against children and particularly poor children. Equalisation would mean that I would lose some of my privilege but I'm not necessarily against this if it truly meant that things were fairer.

I have been the poor kid stuck in a crap school. I know what it's like.

If they gave children free bus passes the same as pensioners they wouldn’t be able to use them until after 9am so they’d be useless.

There's no such thing as free bus travel. School transport is already at the point of bankrupting some local Councils. My local council spends 1 million pounds per MONTH on school transport!

Children receiving FSM already get free transport to their closest school with spaces, above a certain distance away, other children qualify if they live more than 3 miles away.
If a parent makes the free choice to send their child to a different school, they need to arrange transport to get them there.

Its their reponsibilty as a parent, it is not the state's responsibilty to fund their choices

What nonsense? I am quoting actual studies conducted on the free travel afforded to young people in London. Or the fact that the health benefits from walking seem to only relate to young people according to some when the research suggests the exact opposite.

I think you will find that most pensioners who can afford not to hardly use their free bus travel. I don’t.
I am fairly sure that most children get free transport to their nearest school if that is where they go. They also get free bus travel here if they have been allocated a school they didn’t choose.
I do not believe in children being free bus travel for everywhere. I was talking to a London bus driver who said that since children have been given free passes in London they have to put up with really bad behaviour from them.

Children do not get free travel to their closest school or to one they haven't necessarily chosen. I think you need to look into the rules.

Trains are free for kids in Wales too (on TFW anyway). England is such a bizarre place.

Anyway, I'm glad i live in Manchester because free travel for all kids and young people is really picking up pace now. Free buses for college students now and all children too from Jan 27. Exactly how it should be.

For those asking how much bus travel is for kids in England, in our area it’s £3 for a single fare, £5 for a return. My son walks to our local school. It’s not a good school. I believed all the hype about good kids will do well anywhere. But when the majority of lessons are covered by subs and there’s been 5 headteachers in 2.5 years then the kids are just not learning anything. To get the bus to a school out of town would cost well over £1000 a year per child so many families feel they have no choice but to stick with the local school

I’m not a boomer and I have kids just coming out of the education system!