PLANS from Oxfordshire County Council to introduce a school bus tax on families that want to send their children to their catchment school if it is not their nearest school will fundamentally change children’s education across Oxfordshire forever.

This is the second time that OCC have tried to push through such sweeping changes, after a failed attempt earlier this year when 95 per cent of parents, carers, teachers, headteachers and governors who responded objected strongly.

Now, after months of consideration, the same plans are back on the table and local people remain outraged.

But this time round there is a real risk that hundreds of families are ‘sleepwalking’ into the redrawing of school catchment areas across the county and the tacit acceptance of a school bus tax.

Under law, OCC is only obliged to provide free transport to the nearest school.

However, in a rural county such as this, things are not so straightforward.

School catchment areas in Oxfordshire are not drawn up according to geographical distance.

In many parts of the county children may be physically closer to a school that isn’t their official catchment school.

The situation varies across the county, but catchments remain crucially important.

Within the catchment area of a secondary school, the ‘feeder’ primary schools are encouraged by the council to form strong partnerships.

Primary partnerships are used by the council to determine which children get a place at a specific secondary school as part of OCC’s own admissions policy. OCC itself promotes an agenda of ‘choice’ in education and the vast majority of parents in Oxfordshire choose to send their child to their catchment school. There are very good reasons for this.

Primary partnerships help to shape local communities.

Families effectively grow up together, as they move through the primary years.

Primary partnerships, with support of the catchment secondary, work to smooth the transition from key stage two to key stage three.

Under these proposals these allegiances would disappear overnight.

If the shape of catchment areas is an issue that needs addressing, then a transparent and coherent approach to redrawing boundaries should be undertaken as a priority.

To conceal this issue by burying it as a transport consultation is simply wrong.

Over the summer the Oxon School Bus Action Group met with council leader Ian Hudspeth and delivered a very clear message.

The best solution for the families of Oxfordshire is to set up transport areas matching existing catchment areas within which children are guaranteed free transport to their normal catchment school. This would protect the council from increased expenditure from free schools or academies expanding their catchment areas, while preserving long-established communities and school partnerships.

OCC claims it can save £1m to £2m from this change in policy, yet it has failed, when asked, to provide any convincing evidence that this is possible.

When the proposed changes will be so detrimental to school communities, it is unreasonable to expect the public to effectively engage with a consultation that lacks any clear financial information.

The council should answer the demand being made from all quarters to publicly release all of the calculations used to estimate the proposed savings.

Only then can the consultation be considered to have been properly initiated and a genuine dialogue about the costs and benefits of these profound changes to education in Oxfordshire can commence.

The public has until December 20 to respond to the consultation via the Oxfordshire County Council website oxfordshire.gov.uk