Sutton Valence School, near Maidstone in Kent, runs a network of home-to-school coach routes. They reach Ashford, Tenterden and Hawkhurst to the south and east, and Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks and Kings Hill to the west. A separate route serves Headcorn Station.
The school used to manage its transport itself. Simon Fowle, Bursar, describes what that meant for his team.
“It was hugely time consuming and inefficient,” he says. “We had endless calls early in the morning and late in the afternoon, so staff spent their time managing parents and pupils. There was no tracking, and we had problems with the bus company to sort out ourselves.”
Many schools will recognise the pattern. Transport sits with a small team, the busiest moments fall outside the school day, and every change arrives by phone or email.
The school now runs its routes on a few clear rules, published to parents in its transport guide.
Parents book every journey online. They search by postcode for the nearest stop, choose a route and pay at the time of booking. When the payment goes through, the pupil’s name is added to the register for that coach.
The register is the list the driver checks at the stop. No pupil may travel on a school coach without a booking for that coach.
The list and the booking are the same record. A change that is not booked does not reach the coach, so the school and the driver work from one set of names.
“It runs in the background with minimal involvement from my staff,” he says. “It has allowed one member of staff to reduce their hours by one day a week.”
Regular travellers book by the term. Families also need single trips when plans change, and Sutton Valence lets parents book them right up until the coach is due to depart.
Late changes therefore go through the same route as every other booking, and the driver’s list stays current. If a family cancels a one-off trip with more than 24 hours’ notice, the booking can be moved to a future date.
Pupils should be at their stop five minutes before the scheduled departure. The guide tells parents the coach will not wait after that time.
The school publishes a punctuality target of its own: 95% of journeys should run between one minute early and five minutes late. A published target gives parents a fixed point to plan around, and gives the school a measure to hold its operators to.
The guide sets out the commercial rules alongside the timetable:
Conduct rules sit in the same document. Pupils stay seated with seatbelts fastened, wear full uniform or PE kit, and follow instructions from staff and the coach company. Breaking the rules can lead to a pupil losing permission to use the service.
Written terms give staff a document to point to when a parent questions a charge or a decision. In the guide, the Bursar also invites families in areas the routes do not yet serve to get in touch, which gives the school an early read on where demand for a new route sits.
If you run home-to-school transport, these questions are a quick test of your current set-up:
A “no” to either of the first two is a gap a register can fall through. The third is the cost Sutton Valence cut by a day a week.
