Yellow bus for schools 'could cut roads chaos'

The majority of secondary-aged pupils no longer go to their nearest school, causing chaos on the roads every morning as they arrive by car, according to research published yesterday.

Figures show 55 per cent of parents now bypass their local school as a result of the move towards giving them more choice over their children’s schooling.

In addition, the number of children driven to primary school has more than doubled in the past 20 years to 41 per cent and 21 per cent now go by car to secondary school.

The figures are in the report of an independent commission into school transport led by David Blunkett, set up by the Yellow School Bus Commission to see if the yellow buses used in the US could be more widely introduced in the UK.

It recommends providing school buses to every primary school and encouraging neighbouring schools to stagger their start times and end of the day to allow buses to be on loan to more than one school.