Services in urgent need of review

Quite plainly, a 40-year-old school transport system, which could possibly force as many as 6,000 children to have to change schools, is in serious need of a review.

Ironically, their plight arises from a very sensible move to make school buses safer after the horrific accident which claimed the lives of five school girls near Navan, Co Meath, last May.

Education Minister Mary Hanafin recently announced a 25 million investment by the Government which will ensure that by the end of next year all children travelling on school buses will be belted into their own seats. This means that the previous system whereby three pupils shared two seats, the “three-for-two” seating arrangement, will be eliminated for second-level students from the next term.

All primary school children will be afforded a similar safety measure from next year.

Although more buses, both public and private, will be added to the school bus fleet by December of next year, there will be fewer seats because of the new safety precautions.

In the meantime, the Irish Vocational Education Association (IVEA) estimates that up to 6,000 pupils could be stranded when classes resume later this month.

The problem emerges because they are among the many thousands of students who depend on “spare capacity” on the existing buses to get to their education because their addresses are not on the routes for the schools they are attending.

They are, unhappily, described as “catchment boundary” students, which means that they have never been guaranteed school transport for the duration of their schooling, but rather are allocated a place on a year-to-year basis.

If those places disappear, then, their current mode of transport will disappear.

However, as the National Parents Association of Vocational Schools and Community Colleges points out, some parents be forced by circumstances to drop children off at school possibly an hour before classes begin, thereby giving rise to another safety problem to worry about.

Bus Éireann, which runs the School Transport Scheme, has admitted that as many as a very high 85% of catchment boundary students may be affected as the buses get safer.

The transport company merely runs the scheme on behalf of the Department of Education, and it is up to Minister Hanafin and her Minister of State, Síle de Valera, to find a solution.

The problem may be mitigated in that all the spare seating capacity may not totally disappear because of the extra buses and, in any case, 6,000 discommoded students is a worst possible scenario.

How problematical it will be, remains to be seen but indubitably the decades old policy will have to be re-visited because it is inequitable that so many students are compelled to rely on spare capacity to get to school.

While providing seat belts for the children is laudable, it would be self-defeating if that same measure itself compromised their safety.

The Government has given the sanction for the fitting of lap belts to all school bus seats, but reservations have been expressed by opposition spokespersons as to whether they will ensure the best safety option. The point has been made that harness-type belts would be safer for small children in comparison to lap seats.

If this be the case, then the Government would be advised to examine this provision again because the standard to be applied for the protection of our schoolchildren has to be safety rather than economy.