Oxfordshire County Council has faced criticism from two local Members of Parliament over its handling of school transportation arrangements at the start of the new term.
Anneliese Dodds, representing Oxford East constituency, and Sean Woodcock, MP for Banbury, submitted a formal letter to the council expressing serious concerns about the absence of clear information and support available to families regarding school transport.
According to the correspondence, The Warriner School located in Banbury was provided with no details whatsoever regarding bus routes, timetables, or records identifying which pupils had been allocated transportation.
Year 7 pupils beginning their first day at secondary school found themselves unable to determine which operator would be collecting them, or whether any service would be provided at all.
The MPs highlighted that representatives from the school had spent nearly ten days attempting to make contact with the council’s transport department without success.
The local authority’s official website continued to display the previous academic year’s timetable, rendering the available information inaccurate and misleading for families seeking clarity on arrangements.
Villages surrounding Banbury were left without essential details about how their children would travel to school.
A significant number of parents only received notification about transport arrangements on the day before or the actual day pupils were due to return, a situation the MPs described as abandoning families entirely.
The parliamentarians warned that this complete failure in communication created a substantial risk to pupil safety.
Some young people were left without any bus service, while others experienced considerable delays with vehicles arriving far later than scheduled.
The MPs pointed to earlier proposals that would have required Banbury pupils to travel to schools in Bicester, suggesting that combined with the current transport difficulties, children were effectively left without viable means of reaching their educational establishments.
The letter further noted that the distress caused to households containing children and young people with Education, Health and Care Plans represented an additional source of disappointment and difficulty for vulnerable families.