Home to School Transport - Charlbury is affected!
| Helen Wilkinson |
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Tue 26 Nov 2013, 11:40 Information from OSBAG. - Primary: your parents may find that, although they are still in the catchment area for the same secondary school, they would be faced with a £600 bill for transport if these changes are voted through. For some primaries you may find your own catchment area is affected if it includes any families who live within it, but are geographically closer to another school. Secondary: under option B.1, your current year 7 would be faced with charges from the start of year 11! How awful would that be for parents who cannot afford to pay and are not available to drive their children to school. They would be faced with having to change schools, right in the middle of their GCSE's. For Sixth Form students the prices are set to increase under these proposals to up to £700 per year. This is at a time when it becomes compulsory for them to stay in education or training until they turn 18. Another major change under the new proposals is that sixth formers living more than 3 miles from their nearest provision will pay the higher bus fare (currently £492) regardless of whether they opt for their catchment school or not. Currently the rules allow students choosing their catchment sixth form to pay the cheaper fare (currently £264). This unfairly penalises children who live more than 3 miles from any school, through no fault of their own, but because there simply isn't one. Children in rural villages will be disproportionately hit by this change. What makes all of this even worse is that there are no guaranteed saving from these proposals. The council are relying on everyone sorting out their own transport and then ending the provision of many of the routes they currently provide. They have calculated the projected savings on the assumption that no-one will want a bus to their nearest school and everyone will continue to go to their catchment school, either driving or paying for a bus, but in the medium term they plan to phase out even the paying buses to catchment schools. If they are wrong and people do want buses to their nearest schools, as many people I have met during this campaign will, they will cost just as much as the old buses to catchment schools and hence there will be no savings to OCC. The other problem with the projected savings is that many nearest schools are full. Where this is the case the council will still provide transport to the next nearest school, usually the original catchment school. So no savings there either. Just a lot of upset and worry around admissions time for many parents. We have repeatedly asked the council to provide us with the financial modelling they have done around these scenarios, but they refuse to provide |