The State Government last week announced plans to scrap the 40-year-old School Student Transport Scheme, a move that could cost many parents about $391 per child every year.

But nobody really benefits from the scrapping, with disadvantaged families to suffer especially, according to Buslines Group CEO Peter Ferris.

“The ones that travel long distances have no option but to travel by bus,” he said. “If a cost is imposed on children travelling from places like Darlington Point what choice do they have?”

Buslines Group manages Griffith Buslines, which is responsible for a significant part of the 50 or so buses operating in the Griffith area.

Mr Ferris said reduced numbers of children catching school buses could affect other bus services.

“Less students makes the system a lot less efficient and it will have an impact on the number of other bus services available for the rest of the Griffith community,” he said.

“Most of the people using these services are the elderly, or those who have no access to a car.”

Trevor Robertson is responsible for 14 school bus runs from places like Coleambally, Yenda and Goolgowi, and said the government probably won’t cover costs by charging bus fees per student.

“At the start of the year we do surveys to tell how many students we have, and if there are 50 seats on a bus but only 30 kids, we still have to run the bus,” Mr Robertson said.

“But the impact will be felt by parents, because they’ll have to pay because they need the bus.”

Mr Ferris said he had a number of meetings with the Department of Transport to discuss reforms to the school transport scheme, but said he believed the announced changes were made by the Treasury rather than the department. “The frustrating part is we’ve worked with the Department of Transport for two or three years to reform the system and we’ve been ignored,” he said.

It is believed more than half of school students in Griffith use buses to get to school.