The £1k school bus and the decade-long fight

For more than a decade, there has been a debate over how children from one rural primary school travel to the high school most go on to attend.

It has left some parents paying more than £1,000 per year for a private bus.

But with the local council now reviewing its policy, could this change?

Barnabas Oley Primary School, known locally as BOPS, serves the Cambridgeshire villages of Great and Little Grandsen, Abbotsley and Waresley.

The majority of children - 22 were in year six in 2025 - head nine miles (14.5km) down the road to Comberton Village College (CVC) for their secondary education, a school which has included BOPS in its catchment area since 2014.

Cambridgeshire County Council said that with a "legal and financial obligation to manage public funds efficiently and effectively" it had decided, in accordance with the law and council policy, "not to adopt those boundary changes for transport purposes".

The authority typically provides transport to mainstream secondary schools for children above a walking distance of three miles (4.8km).

BOPS is also in the catchment area of Longsands in St Neots. The council does recognise that for free transport, but very few children make that move.

CVC is rated as "outstanding" by Ofsted, while Longsands has a "good" rating.

Kate, who has two children who moved from BOPS to Comberton, said that was "the natural path to follow to go to a secondary school".

The two schools have regular joint activities, including careers, music and transition work.

While Longsands do provide feeder days for children going there, Kate said: "It doesn't make sense for the children to go to Longsands.

"From where I am, there is 0.1 miles in distance between Comberton and Longsands."

Kate said using public buses from Great Gransden had not been "reliable", claiming there was only one viable bus in the morning and evening.

For a while, the family paid £350 per term for the private bus for each child but that became "not financially sustainable in the current climate".

The children are now driven to school.

In February, BOPS asked the county council to review the situation and a month later the authority concluded their policy was being applied fairly.

BOPS' headteacher Michelle Downes said: "We remain concerned about the practical impact of the current transport arrangements on families, particularly as the cost of travelling to Comberton Village College is a significant financial burden for the families in our catchment villages.

"We are keen to continue to work constructively with the local authority and other partners to ensure that the arrangements meet the needs of children and families in our community."

The local Liberal Democrat MP, Ian Sollom, has also written to the chief executive of the Lib Dem-run council expressing "concerns about the conduct" of the authority.

Through Freedom of Information requests, families have found the arrangement has been questioned by the council's own officers.

In 2014, the then children's services director Adrian Loades asked: "Are we on secure ground with the position that it's a partner school to CVC for admission purposes but is not a catchment area school for home-to-school transport purposes?

"It looks very much like a catchment area school to me and presumably will look the same to future parents."

Four years ago, another officer said after meeting BOPS there had been questions about why the council was not providing transport to both secondary schools, and stated: "There is possibly a valid reason. Not that I want to increase our transport burden at all but we need to check the equity bit?"

The current children's services director, Sarah Callaghan, wrote to a parent this year stating the cost "would be significant", estimating 80 pupils would be eligible for free transport at a cost of £85,000.

Callaghan added any change carried "a further risk of retrospective challenge from families who have previously self-funded transport".

This January, a parent from one of the villages successfully challenged the council and was granted transport for three children.

The appeal panel found that BOPS was a "feeder" school for CVC, there was no alternative public transport in their village, and there may be "negative implications" for the children to attend a different school from their primary school friends.

But the council say this appeal "does not set policy or establish a precedent for any wider community or catchment".

Since then, there has been a series of other appeals.

Andy, from Great Gransden, felt there was "so much obfuscation and there's so much put in your way to make it so complicated that you run out of steam".

He said he had been "dumped out of the process" after not getting a document back in the required time.

He said: "There are people on the panel who have said 'yes' to somebody because of what they said were extenuating circumstances and 'no' to somebody else, including two families I know, categorically, who live… 200m apart in the village...

"One's been given transport and one's not."

He felt it was an "unfair" process.

The council said it would not comment on individual cases.

A spokesperson said: "Providing free home-to-school transport for all eligible children, in line with nationally prescribed criteria, is one of our legal duties.

"In a large rural county with a mixed market of schools, this is complicated by the fact that academies can set their own catchment areas.

"We will be undertaking a review of Cambridgeshire's home-to-school transport policies, in line with normal practice for councils.

"If a parent or guardian believes their child has been inappropriately denied transport provision then they have the right to appeal the decision."

A spokesperson for the CAM Academy Trust, which runs CVC, said the school had "no involvement in, or influence over" transport eligibility.

"The college welcomes a review of existing arrangements that could address any potential unfairness or inconsistencies in the local authority's current transport policy and eligibility criteria."

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