The wise people tell me that you might be able to, prh47bridge. I'll be grateful for anyone else's input too.
My question is this - what responsibility does a local authority have to get a student to school or college on time?
To set the scene:
We live in a village to the south of the city. DD attends F/T post 16 college two bus rides away on the north edge of the city. The college is the nearest suitable one offering DD's course or any course of its kind. The LA have confirmed by email that they'll provide her with a bus pass to college so I take that as acknowledgement of this fact (I'm waiting for the pass to be sent out to us).
If the two buses ran to timetable DD would get to college on time. Invariably they don't.
There is only one bus serving our village (bus 1). It's timetabled to leave here at 7.30am and arrive in the city centre in time for DD to walk to another stop and transfer to another bus to college. Invariably bus 1 arrives late to the village, gets caught in traffic and arrives too late for DD to transfer onto bus 2. Very often it's so late that DD misses both the timetabled connection and the following connection fifteen minutes later.
The college have her on two weeks trial and won't enroll her unless her timekeeping improves. They don't seem to be able to accept that this is out of her control. She's been instructed to "take an earlier bus" although we've both told the college that there is no earlier bus! There is nothing she or I can do about bus timetables or volumes of traffic!
We'll be grateful for the bus pass when it arrives. We really will! But that doesn't help much if the bus isn't getting DD into college on time and the college are indicating that she won't be enrolled unless the buses speed up and the traffic jams disappear!
I don't know where to turn to or where to start. DD has had major issues about education (bullying, leading to self-exclusion and ill health) and her just getting up and getting on the bus willingly and happily is a major milestone. Last term she was dreadful but this, a new and far more appropriate course, is seeing a great change in her confidence and outlook. This course is perfect for her. She's got real talent in the subject and the last thing I want is for her to have her confidence destroyed again or for her to be refused the place because the bus is late despite that she's leaving on time.
So far DD's found in the bottom of her bag a couple of last week's number 1 bus tickets to prove that it got into our village late to start with and as she disembarked from bus 1 this morning she got a printed ticket (with the time and date on it) from the driver to prove that it was considerably late getting to the city terminus from where she has a walk to bus 2's stop. She plans to continue to get proof of bus 1's persistent late arrival at destination next week.
I don't know what else we can do. Who do I speak to? The LA because they're basing their transport provision on the timetable and not on the actual service? The college?
Is there anything I can refer to, to remind the LA of any responsibility they may have (if they have any at all) to provide transport which will get students in on time? All I can find online is this badly worded (deliberately ambiguous?) quote from their post-16 education transport guide.
"What are the normal travel arrangements?
A. The LA undertakes to provide a return journey for entitled students to and from school or college, for travel at the beginning and end of each school / college day during official termtime at the most economical cost to the LA."
Travelling "at the beginning of each college day" is not what's needed. DD needs to travel before the beginning of the college day so that she gets there in time for when the college day starts!
I'm all done in with the worry and would be very appreciative of some advice. Thank you.