Cash-strapped parents could face having to choose their children’s school based on its proximity to their home rather than its educational record if plans to axe free bus passes go ahead.
That’s the dilemma facing some families in the Holme Valley which falls under a pilot scheme proposed by Kirklees Council to manage the rising cost of providing free home-to-school transport .
Critics have described the plan, to be rolled out in partnership with the “Honley pyramid” of schools, as “perverse.”
Earlier this year the council agreed to only provide statutory support in future. This means giving travel assistance if a child’s nearest appropriate school with available spaces is more than three miles away and it is the school parents have selected for their child to attend.
The authority is looking at providing a bicycle, helmet and training in lieu of a boarding card or bus/train pass which costs around £380 a year as it battles continued austerity cuts. The council believes the scheme could save £175,000.
But after members of the council’s Labour-led Cabinet voted to further explore the impact of the scheme, others branded it “a waste of time” and said parents would struggle with the plan .
Meltham Town Mayor Clr David Haigh said many parents in his community had endured a stressful few months worrying about school transport matters and had voiced genuine concern.
He added that they had expressed worries about the effect on already tight household budgets brought on by changes as well as “a worry and dilemma that in order to get a ‘free pass’ they might have to send their children to a school not of their first choice.”
He was supported by Clr Charles Greaves, Independent group leader on Kirklees Council, who said the project could upset the balance of school places in the area.
“The pyramid arrangement means that most schools feed through to Honley High School and that is where the majority of Meltham children choose to go,” he said. “So if you want your child to go to the primary admission school - Honley - and you send them there you will not get a bus pass.
“If you send them to Colne Valley High School and you are more than three miles away, you will.
“We find it a perverse logic: to send children to one school and then measure their entitlement to a different school.
“There is a danger that this policy is going to undermine the Honley schools pyramid.
“If there is a big shift to Colne Valley High then that is going to have a big impact on their budget. The only way Honley High could deal with that is by laying teaching staff off.
“I can only assume that people are thinking Meltham parents can absorb the whole of this cost and it won’t change the direction in which they send their children.
“It’s of great concern to us and the schools.”
Tory group deputy leader and keen cyclist Martyn Bolt said the council “had no idea.”
“Today was a waste of time,” he said. “There was no further information in that report than there was six months ago. The mature thing to do would have been to withdraw the report and bring it back when it was done. Instead, they are going to work with the schools in the autumn term.
“If this is a pilot for a policy change it’s not possible to replicate it from one ward to another. Is this a way to change something that has been in place for 40 or 50 years? At the moment it’s just not thought through. They have not got the information to give to people. They have no idea.”
