School Transport

Motion as voted upon

In recent months there have been a number of appeals made to the School Transport Team with regard to access to free home to school transport. Residents have been in touch with their County Councillors and Senedd representatives asking for support. The appeals have most frequently arisen from changes to catchment allocations, historical precedents and reduced flexibility but include:

[*] Younger siblings only provided free transport to a school which is different to the one their older sibling attends because the catchments have been changed.

[*] Problems with the way GIS is used to identify the closest school with some school buses travelling through another catchment on route to school.

[*] The system used to calculate the shortest route from home to school does not consider the route that the school bus travels, or even the most practical, driveable route by car.

[*] Pupils who are neighbours and/or close friends being forced to attend different schools because the boundary between catchments is being very strictly enforced with no room for overlap.

The effect of this has been to create unnecessary stress for pupils and their parents and will in some cases, where parents have the time and financial resource, result in parents following the bus into school, unnecessarily increasing carbon footprints.

The Council calls on the School Transport and Education Services to ensure that the current review of the Home to School Transport Policy not only delivers greater clarity for pupils/student’s entitlement to free transport but also supports greater parental choice of school, where this can be done without increasing the total school transport budget.