Pupils face hazardous trek to school

Luke Fraser-Brown, 9, could be forced to walk 4.2km along a busy highway with no footpath when the school bus service ends at the end of the year. Photo / Andrew Warner

Taking the bus to school will soon no longer be an option for Whakamarama School students.

For Luke Fraser-Brown, 9, the trip to school covers 4.2km along a highway with no footpath and cars whizzing past at 80km/h to 100km/h. The school bus service that transports him to school will end at the end of the year.

His mother, Bridgette Tolfrey, said there was no way she would allow Luke to make the trek down what she describes as a "dangerous" road and would have to reduce her work hours to pick him up from school.

"I'm just one of the mothers with their nose out of joint," she said. "My next-door neighbour's little girl is 6 years old and she's going to have to walk 4km along a highway. We're not going to allow that to happen."

Two thirds of Whakamarama School's 37 children took the bus to school but only nine met the criteria for transport assistance funding - four on one side of the school and five on the other.

Regional transport manager Melissa Winters said children in Years 1 to 8 had to live more than 3.2km away to qualify for funding and at least eight children on the same side of the school had to meet the criteria for a bus to be viable. "They haven't been funded for what they have been receiving for quite a long time but the other schools in Tauranga have been helping," she said.

A recent change in the funding of urban school buses meant the rest of the city's schools no longer had the surplus to help fund the Whakamarama service, she said.

The nine children who were eligible for transport assistance would instead receive a daily transport allowance which could go to parents to help pay for petrol or to the school to help fund a van.

Ministry of Education head of education infrastructure service Kim Shannon said several Tauranga Schools had opted to directly receive their transport funding and organise their own buses. "These schools pooled their funding together to form the Tauranga Transport Network Group. Whakamarama School did not receive direct resource funding but the Tauranga group agreed to include them on one of their school bus routes. The Tauranga group has now decided to stop a number of its services, including the Whakamarama School bus."

It was not viable to run a school bus for Whakamarama School's nine eligible students, she said.

Principal Sue Waitai said the small school would struggle to afford to run its own bus or van.

"A lot of [the children] don't live far enough away to generate funding," she said.

Getting to school

• Nationally the Ministry of Education funds school buses for about 100,000 children in rural or semi-rural areas, at a cost of about $175m each year.

• About 600,000 students get to and from school safely each day using public transport, a lift from a parent, or by walking or cycling.