SCHOOL RUN

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Transport Secretary Alistair Darling plans to ease school-run traffic chaos by sending kids to school in American-style yellow buses. It is hoped the plan will also cut down the number of road accidents involving children and reduce truancy levels. Children would sit in the same numbered seat each day and the buses would have regular drivers so they would swiftly spot the absence of any pupils. The single-deck buses were first introduced in Britain in 2002, in six pilot areas. Their success so impressed ministers they have decided to put the buses on school routes across Britain in a multi-million-pound scheme. A senior Government minister said, "They will cut traffic congestion and offer children a safe, enjoyable way of getting to and from school."

Parents are being asked to get their children walking, cycling and taking the bus to school in a bid to cut congestion. Government plans also include staggering school timetables to ease congestion during peak hours. Local education authorities are being urged to help by working with parents to draw up "travel plans", involving safer routes, more road crossings, lower speed limits and cycle paths. Ministers have pledged £50m for the project, over the next two years, £7.5m of which would pay for more local authority-based school transport advisers. The government said it was also concerned children were getting less exercise by not walking or cycling to school - a worry backed up by figures showing obesity is on the increase.

Twice as many children are driven to school as 20 years ago, with parents accounting for one fifth of cars during rush hour. Most journeys are less than two miles long. But the headteachers' union said teachers would have a tough time persuading parents - most of whom do not drive their children to school - to accept a staggered timetable. General secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, David Hart, said, "If school hours should be changed then they should be changed for good educational reasons, not to dig the government and local authorities out of a hole that they have created by their failure to address traffic congestion during peak hours. What many parents are being asked to do is to stagger hours for the convenience of the minority of parents who choose to come by car, at the expense of the working and family lives of many other parents."

Under the plans, primary schools will be entitled to £5,000, and secondaries to £10,000, to spend on improving facilities such as bike sheds. Primary schools are being urged to give pupils more road safety and cycle training. And schools should work with police and transport companies to come up with ways of improving behaviour on school buses, including the use of rewards for good conduct, said ministers. High-earning parents would be expected to subsidise fares for the poor on US-style yellow school buses, in Government plans to ease traffic congestion. Proposals published would give local councils the power to charge families for the new service. Tony Blair wants it to be free for the poorest, with a daily charge of about 50p. Families would be means-tested to see if they qualify for aid and money raised would go towards improving services (where have we heard that before?).

Children who live more than three miles from their school - or two miles in the case of under eights - are entitled by law to free transport. The government said parents have complained that the rules restricted the hours they could work if they had to drive their children to school at times when no buses were running. The government has asked a "small number" of LEAs to try out different arrangements and said the law could be changed to accommodate those that proved successful. John Dunford, general secretary of the Secondary Heads Association said, "Local schools could perhaps come to an agreement but I don't think the Government can look to schools to make more than a marginal contribution to cutting transport problems."

It is all very well asking parents to change the way they take the children to school, but some of the blame should be laid at the door of thecity council's education department. The catchment areas of some schools, and the locations of the schools themselves, often result in resorting to the car. For instance, I 450 yards from the live in Heatherton, just nearest primary school. The school is a short stroll across two minor roads, but I am in the catchment area of an infant school 1,100 yards away, and a junior school two miles away.

For residents like myself, who have children at both schools at some point, it means when there is one at each school, the infant childwill have a hike of more than four miles a day. There are no buses from where I live that run near the infant school, or one that runsnear the junior school's starting time. There is no school crossing to help you across the busy Burton Road, as all the children on that side of the road go to another primary. Where new schools are built and who they serve must be looked at if there is to be an end to the school run.

School runs are also compounded by the shortage of places in schools. If you move area, and therefore catchment area, it is unlikely, especially in the popular suburbs of Derby, that you will get a place in the local school. How many articles in the Evening Telegraph have we seen where children moving into a new area can only be found a place on the other side of the city? Paula Walker

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