The eight hour school run on 12 buses

For Shabnam Abbas, the school bus run never seems to stop - she has to catch a total of a dozen buses, six to take three of her children to school and six to pick them up again. It takes up to eight hours, sets her back £50 a week and the mother of four has to get up at 5.30am to begin the mammoth journey each day. It has been forced on Mrs Abbas by a combination of her arthritis preventing her from driving and her local council’s intransigence. Three of her children – Mehvish, 13, Kiran, seven, and Eliyza, six – attend different schools.

Mrs Abbas says the local council has refused to help her transfer some of the children to the same school to ease her nightmarish routine. She said: ‘We have to get up at 5.30am to get the first bus and, by the time we have done all the stops and I’ve got back home again, it can take about three hours. By that time I’m in tears.’ Once the round-trip to the three different schools is over, it’s not long before the mother, from Bradford, has to do it all over again to collect them. Mrs Abbas is left ‘absolutely exhausted’ by the trip.



Her problems began in May last year when the family were offered a four-bedroom home after eight years on the council house waiting list. After moving in, she discovered she would not be able to move her children to schools nearer their new home. Meanwhile, her 12-year-old daughter Sumera is in limbo after she finished primary school earlier this year and hasn’t been offered a place at a school nearby.

Kath Tunstall, of Bradford Council, said: ‘We are unable to talk about individual families but we continually work with parents and carers giving advice and support to help resolve school place issues, wherever possible. This year, 96 per cent of pupils within the district were offered one of their preferred choices for a primary or secondary school place.’