Secondary School and College travel in the Leicester and Leicestershire Area on Public Bus Services

Wherever possible students are encouraged to travel to their school or college by walking or cycling.

However, it is recognised that this will often not be practical or possible and many will need to use the bus.

The majority of schools and colleges in the Leicester area are served by public  bus services, open to anyone.

In line with government guidelines, specific measures have been put in place to make these as safe to use as possible:

  • Social distancing. They can only be loaded at 50% seating capacity.
  • Face coverings. All travellers must wear face coverings unless specifically exempt from doing so.
  • Increased cleaning regimes throughout the bus. Hand sanitisers are being introduced on many buses
  • Driver screens
  • Contactless and Mobile ticketing to avoid cash handling
  • Flexi ticketing deals giving good value travel on all bus operators on the same ticket
  • Increased messaging to not eat or drinking onboard and to load from the back to minimise contact

 

Due to the limited capacity of these bus services, a number of additional ‘school-only’ services are also being run on certain routes. These will operate at the same time and along the same route as the public service but will be open only to school or college children. Government guidance allows for all seats to be used on these services. Please note that many of these services will be operated with step entrance coaches without ticket machines – so they will only accept advance paid tickets.  All drivers will have DBS certification. Pupils will have to wear face coverings at all times on these services. Details are shown below.

 

If you are travelling to a school within Greater Leicester you are encouraged to purchase a Flexi ticket – this will allow you on any registered public or ‘schools only’ service. These have promotional prices until the end of September and can be securely loaded on mobile phones. See www.choosehowyoumove.co.uk/flexi for full details. These give unlimited travel on school days, weekends and school holidays. Those pupils who receive free school travel will be issued with a pass giving ‘flexi’ travel on all bus services.

In Leicestershire the majority of school transport is provided by dedicated or commercially operated school contracts. However, there are a number of journeys on some public transport routes that do carry a number of scholars and these have been identified as having capacity issues with the social distancing requirements. These journeys will also operate an additional ‘school only’ service to ensure the regular public service is not compromised and there is enough capacity to transport the scholars to and from school. In a few cases additional capacity has been increased on dedicated school transport to accommodate pupils transferred from public bus services.