Parents To Pay For School Transport In Future

[suedonim]

How's this going to work then?? School Transport Bill

The govt is proposing to remove the right to free school transport, except for those entitled to free school meals. Apparently, it will reduce road congestion. Like 50 people driving their children to school takes up less space than one bus???? Methinks this govt has lost the plot!

I just wonder how long it will be before truancy cases are contested with the (genuine or not) defence that the parents couldn't afford the cost of transport. My neighbour has 3 children. It would cost £2.50 per child per day on the public bus service. She has no car and the school is 5 miles away.

From all your experiences, it sounds as though the entire system is barking. We don't have any public transport at all, Tallulah, so we're stuffed if someone else needs the car, it has to go to the garage and dd misses the bus. We used to have three buses a week - all on a Thursday morning. Go figure.......

I'm surprised SN children are treated the same way as others, Jimjams. A minor success we had with our asthmatic son was that a taxi was provided when his asthma was bad enough to prevent him from walking far. We didn't use the service much, as mostly if he couldn't walk to the busstop he wasn't fit to walk around the school with a giant backpack full of books either.

The school transport for dd2's school is now completely barmy. There used to be one bus that took academy children to school 5 miles away and collected the village children on its way back. Now, the big bus still takes the academy chldren but returns empty as it passes by the primary children, whilst another three different buses collect them. How's that supposed to save money and the environment??? Thankfully, we're about 3 mins walk away so I needn't rely on them.

suedonim- the whole inclusion system is barking. The LEA were very careful to write that his needs could be met at the local school (even though it is common knowledge amongst Ed psychs, parent partnership, autism outreach etc that this school can;t even handle AS let alone non verbal autism- they all told me "unofficially" that they wouldn't cope with ds1). Therefor by putting him in an alternative school it is my "choice" and therefore our responsibility to get him there. The only way round it I suppose would be to prove (at trubunal?) that his needs couldn't be met at the local school- or to put him in and have him fail (well them fail really). Neither of which is really an option. I just have to pray that ds2 gets a place at the school as well.