Parents of school-age children may well recognise the precarity of rural home-to-school transport. When Paul Dale got in touch from School Transport Action Group, set up by parents to fight a new policy from North Yorkshire Council, I knew where he was coming from.
Not long after parents received confirmation of their child’s chosen school place last year, North Yorkshire Council dealt a blow, affecting all parents in the area, too.
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A dividing line was drawn through a village in order to distribute free bus passes to the child’s nearest school only, not their catchment school of choice, which, in one case, is just six metres in the other direction.
Kathy Walker told The Yorkshire Post, “It’s been a real shock.” Her sister, a GP in Selby, is contemplating reducing her hours so she can drive and collect her children from school.
Paul Dale calls the seven-year decision “an attack on rural villages”. Councillor Andrew Lee, who voted for the policy, offered some hope, explaining “the council is under a lot of pressure to make savings… but we need to make sure we’re not just following policy for the sake of it.”
As a mum of three (now post-school) children, a former secondary-school employee and school governor, I know this frustrates schools as much as families. But it’s not the only challenge around rural-school transport provision.
If a school is over three miles away (usual for secondary schools in the countryside), transport must be provided by law. But it doesn’t help the child who lives 2.9 miles away on roads without pavements or convoluted, muddy footpaths that extend the miles.
In 2023, three days before the start of the new school year, we and around 100 other families in outlying villages were informed the school transport provider had pulled out, citing unviable fuel costs. A replacement couldn’t be found.
Our daughter and other village children, some new starters aged just 11, were advised to walk three miles to the local railway station, along unlit, dangerous roads, to catch an early train, then walk a further mile to school.
Other parents were offered 40p per mile for petrol, but only when the child was in the car, not for return journeys to and from a village 10 miles away, making the journey untenable for those without a car, or whose employment wasn’t flexible, or the many parents on a low or single income.
A replacement service was sorted after a month, but it caused chaos in school and shook the confidence of children and parents over those most basic contracts: being able to attend school and be a working parent.
When the school transport offer doesn’t provide an ‘early’ or ‘late’ bus, many rural children are cut off from extracurricular and enriching activities, events, clubs, matches, exam-revision or homework support that they also can’t get outside of school.
Nicola Garrard, teacher and author of the brilliant novel On the Edge about the consequences of rural, coastal poverty, says “after-school clubs and sports cost parents petrol money they don’t have, so those kids miss out”.
And post-16 education, where free transport isn’t provided, sometimes means acute disadvantage for those living far away and on low incomes. It costs Garrard’s 17-year-old daughter £150 a month to travel to college, alongside pensioners with free bus passes that they don’t always need.
Public transport is long overdue a shake-up over who it serves and the problem is greatly exacerbated in the countryside. It should offer a gateway and opportunity for young rural people and it fails them, at school age and beyond (a subject for another time). It’s a loss and indictment to wider society, leaving many stuck, frustrated, dependent and isolated, when they’ve so much to experience and give.
