North Yorkshire Council’s home-to-school transport policy change sparks anger and confusion among parents

National Offer Day, which this year took place on Monday (March 3), is usually an exciting time for families.

It’s the day when parents around the country find out which secondary school their child has been offered a place at.

Last year, North Yorkshire Council boasted that almost 90 per cent of families got their first choice.

There has been no press release issued this year, however.

Perhaps the authority forgot or maybe officials were wary about enflaming a controversy that shows no signs of dying down.

At a meeting in July last year, councillors voted in favour of changing the system from providing eligible children with free transport to their ‘catchment school’ to one which only pays for a child to go to their nearest school.

Council chiefs justified the change by saying home-to-school transport was costing the authority more than £50m a year – a figure which had doubled in six years.

The council will have to borrow £5m from its reserves this year and is looking to make savings wherever it can.

The authority also pointed to government guidance which said it had a duty to provide transport to a child’s nearest school, not catchment school.

The change may not seem significant on council policy papers, but in reality, many families have found that an admissions system based on catchment does not necessarily dovetail well with a home-to-school transport policy that uses nearest school as the criteria for eligibility.

Put simply, many parents have discovered that their catchment school isn’t their nearest school.

If they want their child to go to their catchment school that isn’t their nearest, they will have to pay hundreds of pounds a year.

This has all kinds of consequences that are still coming to light - siblings potentially at different schools, friends groups split as children at one primary school might have several ‘nearest’ schools, children having to attend schools outside of the county with different holiday times to North Yorkshire and families being told their nearest school is not only out of the county but over a remote moorland route that could be dangerous to use during the winter months.

These are other more nuanced implications have left parents across the county having to make difficult and unexpected choices about their child’s education.

These include Rachael and Rob Berry, whose daughter has got a place at Skipton Girls’ High School.

However, the family has been told she will be ineligible for free transport because Skipton Academy is closer to their home, which is about five miles to the west of the town.

The two schools are not far apart, and the parents asked council officers if their child could get off the bus at the academy and walk the rest of the way, but were told this was not allowed.

Mrs Berry said: “The only way we can choose to take up a grammar school place is by forfeiting our right to home-to-school transport provision.”

She added: “The only winner from this damaging policy is the council, which seems to seek to ‘get another child off its books’, causing headaches and heartache for parents in its aftermath.”

Charlotte Poran, from Kirk Hammerton, lives within the catchment area for Boroughbridge High School and has been offered a place for her daughter Anya at the school.

However, there are four schools which are nearer – King James’ in Knaresborough, which is usually over-subscribed, plus three in West Yorkshire or York.

If she wants to accept the place at the Boroughbridge school, which her older son already attends, she will have to apply for a paid place on the bus at a cost of around £800 a year or take her daughter herself, meaning it would be impossible for her to work 9am to 5pm.

There is also no guarantee of a paid place and no guarantee the service will keep running for her daughter’s time at the school.

“This policy makes no sense to me,” the mum said.

“This seems to be a money-making scheme by charging me to allow my daughter to get on a bus which is going anyway to get to her catchment school, rather than money saving as they keep repeating, whilst showing no evidence of any savings.”

Jennifer Hardy’s 12-year-old son attends Richmond School.

The family has moved recently from the village of Barton to nearby Forcett and have been told this means they are no longer eligible for free transport as, under the new rules, St Francis Xavier, in Richmond, is their nearest school.

The schools are very close - and the bus dropping off children for SFX does so at Richmond School which has a bigger car park but this makes no difference and she now has to pay £93 a month to get her son to school.

Questioning if the policy change will actually deliver any savings due to a potential increase in bus and taxi routes needed, she added: “It’s clear that what they’re actually wanting to do is raise revenue from this policy change – it’s a shambles.”

The complaint that the new policy is about making money from parents rather than finding cost savings, is a common one, as are claims that queries and complaints to the authority have gone unanswered.

The council’s Skipton and Ripon area committee this week heard from a parent and a school governor who said they had never received a reply to their queries on the change.

At the same meeting, critics’ claims that councillors were unaware of what they voted for back in July was highlighted when a Conservative councillor said he was sure the policy had an exception to allow free transport to selective schools from within the catchment area.

No such clause exists, however.

In the face of criticism from parents, opposition councillors and some Conservative councillors, senior officers and councillors on the Tory-run authority have repeatedly defended the policy change, saying savings have to be found.

A review of the policy is planned, although this will not take place until next summer meaning any changes will not take effect until 2027 at the earliest.

Until then and possibly beyond, those affected parents have little choice but to either put up with the nearest school ruling or pay up.