The Swansea City and County area contains six voluntary-aided schools: five Roman Catholic and one Church in Wales. The Council introduced a new policy under which, from September 2015, it would no longer provide discretionary free places on the school buses currently used by pupils attending church schools in Swansea: however, at the same time, it proposed to maintain free school transport on a parallel school bus network used by pupils at all of the county’s twelve Welsh-language schools, regardless of the financial circumstances of the families who would benefit. Subject to transitional provisions specifically designed to continue free transport for pupils already attending a particular faith school, the effect of the new policy would be:
- that pupils attending faith schools would be entitled to free public transport only if the relevant distance criteria were met and there was no suitable alternative school within two/three miles of their homes – and for the purposes of the amended policy a suitable alternative school would include a non-faith school [5]; while
- pupils living more than three miles from a Welsh-medium comprehensive school would continue to be eligible for free school transport even though there might be an English-medium comprehensive school within three miles of their homes [6].