Edwina Hart AM
Transport Minister Edwina Hart, AM for Gower (pictured), has vowed to look again at Welsh legislation following to Assembly questions about Swansea’s school transport plans.
In her own debate on school transport, regional AM Suzy Davies challenged the Minister whether Welsh legislation complied with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in excluding faith schools from the list of schools to which pupils were entitled to free school transport. The Minister responded by committing to looking at the law again and following up on the various points raised with her.
Swansea Council is considering whether to stop providing free transport to Catholic primary schools more than two miles from a child’s home if there is a closer, non-Catholic school that the child could attend. Pupils currently attending Catholic schools more than three miles from home would also lose their free transport if they could attend a non-Catholic secondary school closer to home.
The Welsh Conservative AM for South Wales West argued: “The Convention says that freedom to manifest one’s religion can only be limited by laws made to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. Is it necessary to deprive kids of a free school bus in order to protect public safety, order, health, morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others?”
Both the National Assembly and Swansea have committed to give due regard to the Convention in all their activities
She continued: “I recognise that local authorities are really having to think hard about their budgets at the moment. Two years of deep cuts imposed by the Welsh Labour government mean that councils are having to make difficult decisions but they need to be very careful about how they deal with school transport.
“Providing free transport to the nearest faith school or Welsh medium school may be discretionary under the Learner Travel Measure, but scrapping it risks contravening other legal requirements or policy objectives. Charging for transport to sixth forms or colleges also undermines the wish of all parties in the Assembly for wider access and social mobility as it deters students from poorer backgrounds from staying in – or even starting – further education.”
Swansea Council’s stubbornness on school transport decisions has already caused the Minister to introduce new guidance on when free transport can be refused; that came into effect last month. Suzy successfully challenged the same Welsh legislation in another of her debates when Swansea Council refused free transport to Bonymaen schoolboy, Tomos James, saying it was appropriate for him to walk almost three miles to Ysgol Bryntawe along a route identified as unsafe by his parents and police.
The council’s position on school transport also caught the disapproving eye of the First Minister this week. When Suzy asked him whether, having signed up to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, it was right for Swansea Council to withdraw assistants on buses for disabled children, he confirmed that he expected the council to comply with that Convention.
