Photo: 123rf.com
A Hawkes Bay teacher who quit her job to home-school her daughter after the teenager's school bus route was canned by the Ministry of Education, has described the situation as "a nightmare".
The Ministry of Education reviewed 290 routes as of November last year, confirming at the time that 39 would be axed or amended.
KC Jordan's daughter was catching the school bus from the small Hawke's Bay community of Te Pōhue to Sacred Heart College in Napier 43km away, equal to a roughly 80-minute round trip by car.
The route was one of many to get the axe at the end of last year, after a 2023 audit and 2024 review found fewer than eight students were using the D050410 and D050411 services.
"But to have a service that we've, we've had for forever, to lose the service, it just, it's not fair," she said.
Jordan, a play-based teacher for children with learning difficulties said the loss meant she's had to quit her job at the local primary school where her youngest daughter goes so she can home-school her eldest.
"It's not fair. It's not fair at all to not be working at all, and having to take on the role of, you know, teaching my own child.
"She misses their social interaction at school, one-on-one with different teachers for different subjects."
Starting Monday, Jordan's mornings have involved driving her youngest to nearby Te Pōhue School, her old workplace, before rushing home to help her eldest with the online homeschooling platform, Te Kura.
"It's just been a real struggle to get home online learning sorted out it's just, it's not an ideal way of learning when you're not used to it."
But the bus cancellation left her with little alternative, Jordan.
"To get her into a boarding school, there were no vacancies. We had quite a few parents trying to get their kids into boarding school, and it didn't work."
Jordan said others in the area have opted to leave the district, a move she doesn't want to consider.
"I shouldn't have to uplift, you know, our rural life to go somewhere where we're not happy.
"We've never lived in town, and to do that to my kids, they're very country kids... and then there's a housing crisis in town anyway, so we wouldn't even get a house even if we tried."
In a statement, the Ministry of Education said the changes were meant to "prevent inefficiencies in the network due to excess demand at some schools and surplus capacity at others."
To be eligible to receive ministry-funded school transport assistance there must be eight or more students using the bus, students must attend their local state or state-integrated school and they must live within a certain distance from the school.
Group manager of school transport, James Meffan said although "the primary responsibility for transporting children to and from school rests with their caregivers", the ministry can provide transport where students meet certain criteria.
"Te Pohue secondary school students attending William Colenso College and Sacred Heart... would be eligible for school transport assistance as long as the other criteria are also met.
"Where caregivers choose not to send their children to their closest school, this assistance is not available.
"We will continue to monitor the number and location of eligible students who live in Napier and Hastings and have encouraged the schools who have had cancelled or curtailed services to reach out to us if there is any change.
"We trust that parents will continue to prioritise their children's education and meet their obligation to access education."
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