Tag Archives: buses

Pay your bus fare to learn

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The government has responded to the House of Commons Select Committee report of earlier this year about bus services in England. I am sad to see that not only will free transport not be available nationally for those under the age of 22, but the government doesn’t even seem prepared to concede that there is an anomaly regarding free transport to school or college for those aged between 16-18.Buses connecting communities: Government Response

Recommendation 15

The Department’s review of the English National Concessionary Travel Scheme should consider piloting a free bus pass for under-22s, valid for travel at any time of day. This would support access to work and skills opportunities for younger people and help embed long-term public transport use.

Response from the government 

The Government recognises the benefits that free travel for under-22s could bring. However, we are operating in a challenging fiscal environment and the future funding for bus services has already been allocated through the Spending Review, with no funding available for such a scheme. Expanding concessionary travel would therefore be unaffordable within this SR period without diverting funding away from maintaining current bus service levels.

I read the dead hand of HM Treasury here. Perhaps the Select Committee could also have sent the recommendation to the Department for Education for their views, although I suspect the answer would be the same. Local authorities serving rural areas cannot afford to subsidise 16-18 travel as might be the case in the large urban areas.

My previous post showed how out of line education in Oxfordshire is compared with other key indicators for the districts within the county. Should the NHS pay more to support children with SEND? | John Howson This is a missed opportunity by the government to improve education for those in rural areas living in poverty. Sadly, it seems like a missed chance. Both a lack of ambition and a lack of resources seem to be the reasons.

Extend education free travel to 16-18 year olds

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One of the irrational features of our education system in England is that although the ‘learning leaving age’ has effectively been raised from 16 to 18 by the government, although no legislation has been passed enforcing the change,, the provision of free transport for those that are able to access such a service during their education up to age 16 hasn’t been extended by the government to include such travel for the time when they are 16 to 18 year olds. There is no free right to transport to education for this age group. This is an anomaly that has consequences, especially in a time when there is a cost-of-living crisis that is hitting the least well off much harder than the more affluent families in our society.

One way this anomaly may manifest itself is in the percentage of 16-18 year olds classified as NEETs (not in Education, Employment or training). The Office for National Statistics (ONS) published an update for this group this week, showing a rise on the quarter. All data related to Young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), UK: August 2023 – Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

The publication of the ONS data prompted me to look at the DfE data published earlier this year NEET and participation: local authority figures – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) What especially interested me was whether there was a difference between rural and urban areas in the percentages of NEETS. A simple crude measure is to compare the London boroughs – where TfL has supported travel for this age group – with the remaining non-unitary council ‘shire’ counties that have large tracts of rural areas where young people receive free transport up to school up to the age 16.

A quick check of the NEET data revealed that there were more than three times as many ‘shire’ counties in the worst 50 local upper-tier authority areas compared with the number in the best 50 authorities. By comparison, 31 of the London boroughs appeared in the top 50 local authorities, and the remaining boroughs only just fell outside of the top 50. All London boroughs were in a better position in terms of NEETS than Oxfordshire. On this basis there is at least a discussion to be had about whether providing transport post-16 enhances education opportunities and thus life chances?

The problem is complex in the rural areas partly because, post-16, some students opt to move to a further education centre that offers the course they want, but may be further away from the school that they attended.

The answer to the question of providing free transport is dependent on how much the accident of geography – whether you live in a rural area or a conurbation or town – should affect you chances of an education to age 18?

Perhaps the DfE could survey its own civil servants to see how many experienced this problem as teenager, and how they overcame it?

Home to School transport

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What level of transport from home to school should the State provide for parents? At present, this is an area of policy that rarely seems to be reviewed. For instance, when the learning leaving age was raised to eighteen, the rules on free transport to school were not changed. As a result, many pupils that receive free transport up to age sixteen, and the end of Year 11, no longer qualify for free transport in Years 12 or 13, even if they remain at the same school.

Yes, some local authorities do pay for SEND transport for post-16 students, but it is not a requirement to do so. TfL still provide generous free transport for young people resident in London, although the Elizabeth Line beyond West Drayton to Reading isn’t included.

The question must be: if young people in London can qualify for free bus and tram travel, why must those living elsewhere in England depend upon local rules set by the upper tier local authority? The answer, of course, is that local authorities must fund the home to school transport budget, and it needs to compete against all other priorities, whereas in London, the transport authority, TfL, foots the bill for transport costs.  

Most authorities now only pay for transport over three miles (2 miles for pupils under eight, but above statutory school age) to the nearest school if selected first at the time of the admissions process. There may be different rules for selective secondary schools, and some authorities won’t pay for travel to these schools if located in the area of another authority despite the fact that most are now academies.

For instance, Essex County Council and Castle Point Unitary Authority state that:

Grammar (selective) school

Children from low income families qualify for school transport if they live 2 or more miles from the selective school.

School transport will also be provided if the selective school is closer than the nearest maintained school or academy and 3 miles or more away. School transport: Who qualifies for home to school transport – Essex County Council

This means that many parents have to pay to send a child to a selective school unless they qualify as a low-income family.

In rural areas there may not be bus services, and local authorities will only pay where a road is deemed unsafe due to traffic. Any alternative route less than three miles, even if an unlit footpath across fields, often doesn’t qualify for free transport unless an appeal panel is willing to go outside the rules.

In their 2023-24 budget, Oxfordshire has a figure of around £30 million for home to school transport, so it isn’t an insignificant issue for rural counties. The bulk of this was for transporting pupils to mainstream schools and not for SEND transport.

So here are some policy suggestions for discussion

  • Raise the current age level for transport to the same school from 16 to 18
  • Ensure SEND transport to both schools and colleges
  • Negotiate student fares with both bus and train operators as similar rates for same journey
  • Merge school transport with active travel policies to encourage car pooling or use of local community transport
  • Pay bike vouchers to encourage cycling to school
  • Review national guidelines on what constitutes ‘safe routes’ to exclude footpaths or bridleways for inclusion and only include roads
  • Create a national policy for travel to selective schools funded by central government as these schools are no longer ’local’ schools
  • Prevent state schools from running their own buses
  • Ensure any child offered a paid for place has the place available for a whole school year.
  • Amend the mileage rule to cover all sites for split site schools

The present distance rules were set many years ago. Is it still acceptable in this modern age to use a three-mile limit or should it be reduced?

Finally, how should any changes be paid for? Should there be a national scheme, as for the bus pass for the elderly, and should the rules be more favourable for London than for rural areas, especially where house prices may be more expensive in the rural areas than in London, and salaries don’t take this into account?

Please sue the comments section to discuss.

No room on the bus – unless you pay

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What the point of the Conservative Party creating more places in selective schools if pupils cannot get to them? As regular reads know, I am not a fan of selective schooling, but where it exists such schools should be available to all.

After two general elections fighting Banbury for the Lib Dems, I have moved on to fight Castle Point in Essex this time around. This has brought me into contact with the selective system there, and the unfair rules about school transport.

Canvey Island forms a large part of the Castle Point constituency, and pupils living on the island are refused free transport to grammar schools. This is because Essex County Council’s home to school transport policy only pays for travel to a pupil’s nearest school.

As there is no selective school on Canvey Island, parents are forced to pay for transport if their child secures a place at a selective school. Many parents cannot afford to do so.

The rules are that if the journey is more than three miles local authorities must provide free transport to and from school. By restricting the rule to the ‘nearest school’ in a system where selection is in operation Essex County Council discriminates against pupils taking up places at such schools.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that some time ago Southend-on-Sea became a Unitary Authority, separate from Essex County Council, and this is where the nearest selective schools are located. Add in the academy factor, and this is a real mess for parents.

There is no point in the Conservative Party announcing more selective school places and then denying parents and their children the opportunity to attend these schools because of the cost of getting to and from schools.

The approach of Essex County Council to funding home to school transport isn’t unique, but it does demonstrate a callous lack of concern for social mobility as far as many pupils are concerned.

Will the Conservative Party nationally change the rules on transport to make it clear funding should be available to the nearest including any school that offers places following selection test to pupils that the school is the nearest school of that type a pupil could attend?

Of course, making all schools non-selective would be a better option, but that’s not yet on the cards

Don’t forget rural areas

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When Chris Grayling was the Secretary of State for Transport he announced a new rail saver card for 16-17 year olds. From September, this group will now have access to some of the cheapest peak time rail fares, not only to travel to and from college and school, but also for leisure use.

The DfT, now under new leadership, recently issued a press notice about the new card https://www.gov.uk/government/news/over-one-million-people-to-save-hundreds-as-new-16-17-saver-launches-cutting-cost-of-rail-travel-for-teenagers There must be questions about the claim of the number of young people that will benefit, especially in the absence of any indication that you don’t need to buy the card if you live in London and just travel to and from school or college. This is thanks to TfL arrangements that have increasingly taken many suburban rail lines into the overground network. The annual saving of an estimated £186 is good news for those that use the train, but not for all young people.

My concern has always been that this initiative does nothing for young people living in rural areas some distance away from rail lines and that cannot use them to access school or college places. In Oxfordshire, Witney, Burford, Wantage, Farringdon, Chipping Norton, Watlington and Wheatley, along with a host of other towns and villages, don’t have direct access to a railway station. Why hasn’t the government done a similar deal with the privatised bus companies to help these young people?

Alternatively, having raised the learning leaving age to 18, why hasn’t the DfE responded to this initiative by looking to change the home to school transport regulations so the upper age limit for free travel is 18 and not 16. This would come at a price to public finances, and would be more expensive to the public purse than a deal with bus operators, but to do nothing is a slap in the face for young people living in rural areas, especially if the Department for Transport is also interested in making it more difficult for them to use their own transport to reach schools and colleges, and has done nothing to make cycling safer.

This anti-rural area bias is just the sort of issue that might tip the balance in a few rural constituencies, were there to be a general election in the autumn. My Lib Dem colleagues could well mount campaigns along the lines of ‘Tories Take Rural Family vote for Granted’ and see what happens.

I haven’t seen any response from the National Union of Students or any of the teacher associations with members in rural areas. Neither have I seem the Local Government Association take up the cause of young people in rural areas. There is little time to change the situation for September, but I hope schools and colleges, where some pupils can benefit from the new card, will take action to ensure other students don’t drop out of education because of the cost of travel to school and college on top of all the other costs of studying faced by that age group.

Bad deal for rural students

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The fact that student living in London are provided with free travel to school or college by Transport for London has always been great for them, but I felt unfair on those living in the rest of the country. Free travel is also a great help to the family budget. This benefit to London sort of mirrors the complaints of the f40 group about how schools are funded across England.

The announcement by the Secretary of State for Transport on the 2nd January 2019 of a new railcard for 16 and 17 year olds just adds insult to injury for many young people living in rural areas. The new railcard isn’t an initiative from the rail industry. The department of Transport press release is very clear that the 26-30 year olds railcard is an industry initiative backed by the government, but that the card for 16 and 17 year olds is a government initiative and, therefore, can be seen as a political move.

Indeed, the press notice points out that the new card for 16 and 17 year olds includes half price for peak and season tickets, something not generally available on other railcards.

To rub salt in the wounds, the press notice goes on to announce that the ‘railcard could cut the cost of travel by hundreds of pounds a year for young people and their parents [sic], making it cheaper to get to school, college and work’. All very well if you live near a railway line.

At Oxfordshire’s Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, I asked a question about how the card would affect those not living near a railway line? For many, once the card comes into operation and the £30 purchase fee has been discounted, rail travel will be half the price of a similar bus journey, even assuming there is a bus after the rounds of cuts to such services.

The withdrawal of the Education Maintenance Allowance for 16-18 year olds in England by the Coalition and the refusal to change the rules on home to school transport after the raising of the learning leaving age, was an unfair allocation of resources that penalised students not able to walk or cycle to school or college.

Doing something for those that have a handy railway, but ignoring everyone else in rural areas, is an own goal for the government that may well feature in campaigning for the district council elections this May in the worst affected areas.

In Oxfordshire the 16-17 year olds in Wantage could well be paying twice the price of their college buddies that live in Didcot in order to attend classes, because the County has never progressed the re-opening of Grove Station that has been an aspiration for more than 20 years.

Similarly, those 16 and 17 year old student living in Charlbury will benefit if travelling to college in Oxford, but those living in Chipping Norton or Burford won’t when travelling to Witney.

Time for a rethink Mr Grayling.

 

A cost to rural living

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As a Lib Dem county councillor in Oxfordshire I was interested to read the comments of the County Councils Network spokesman for education and children’s services, about the under-funding of rural counties in relation to home to school transport. Incidentally he is also Conservative Group leader on the Oxfordshire County Council that implemented changes to transport arrangements some years ago for most pupils and has recently consulted on changes to home to school transport for pupils with special educational needs where the transport is not included in their Education and Health Care plan.

Over the past few years, I have continually pointed out in the Council Chamber that parents living in London don’t have to worry about the cost of home to school transport because TfL offers largely free travel to young people living in the capital. We now know something of the cost to local authorities of home to school transport, even after they have transferred as much of the possible costs to parents by retaining only their statutory legal services in regard to the nearest school and in most cases no longer paying for travel to the school of choice. I commented in an earlier post about the effect such a change could have in local authorities in July 2013 with a post entitled ‘Not a transport of delight’ and in October 2016 about transport to selective schools and secondary modern schools located next to each other in a post entitled ‘Tories and Grammar Schools’.

The County Council Network noted today that 29 out of 36 county councils had reduced their expenditure on home to school transport between 2014 and 2017. I expect the other seven will probably be forced to do so in the future. Between 2014 and 2017, services were scaled back, meaning that 22,352 pupils less in 2017 were receiving home to school transport services compared to three years previously.

The data shows some large regional variations in the costs of subsidised school transport, with home to school transport in highly rural North Yorkshire costing £207 per head, significantly more than in such Yorshire urban areas as Leeds (£15), Bradford (£30), and Wakefield (£23); Hampshire’s per head average of £62 is much more than in Portsmouth (£6), Southampton (£12), and Reading (£23). In every region in England, county councils are the ones that are paying significantly more per-head than metropolitan and city councils.

Even more iniquitous, yet not mentioned by the County Council Network press notice, was the fact that when the learning leaving age was raised to eighteen from sixteen the right to free travel wasn’t also altered. I don’t know whether it was an oversight or a piece of mean penny pinching on the part of government, but it is not fair on those living in rural areas, especially where the local school only goes up to the age of sixteen. If the local bus service has been axed as well, then the cost may be significant to families. I know that there is provision for a hardship grant that replaced the Education Maintenance Allowance abolished by the Coalition, but its existence is neither well known nor understood.

With rural primary schools under threat due to budget pressures, home to school transport is an issue that may force its way up the agenda over the coming months.