SOOBy Bus Cut Report
Children attending Selly Oak Trust school (for children with special educational needs) have used a service known as the SOOBy (Selly Oak Only Bus)bus for a number of years. This service followed the same route as the Number 11 bus, meaning the children would familiarise themselves with the route and learn how to use public transport, which would be an invaluable skill for them in the future.
In the curriculum section of the school website, the service is listed as one of the programs offered by the school as a step towards independence.
In the Step By Step Program to Independent Travel, it states:
As part of their progress towards independent living and employability, students are encouraged, where appropriate, to become independent travellers.
When students start the school in Year 7, the majority of students travel in minibuses or taxis. A small number join the SOOBy bus.
The same page on the school website describes the SOOBy bus as:
There are two SOOBy buses which run clockwise and anticlockwise around the number 11 bus route. Each bus has an escort. Students who live within walking distance of the number 11 bus route are invited to travel on a SOOBy. Parents and carers, with the school and the school transport department of the Local Authority, decide whether it is appropriate for their children to travel on the SOOBy. In addition, a decision has to be made regarding safe travel between the bus stop and home. Some students are escorted by a responsible adult, and put into the care of the escort on the bus and received from the escort at the end of their journey home. Students who are confident in their home areas but are not yet able to travel to and from school on public transport can walk to and from the bus stop unescorted.
At home time the students who travel on the SOOBy are allowed to leave lessons five minutes early to meet their escorts who take them to the SOOBy. The SOOBy buses are usually the first ones to leave the site.
If the student is to be collected at the bus stop and there is no one there to meet them, the escort will keep the student on the bus and return them to the school. Where school staff will make arrangements for the student to be collected.
The SOOBY bus offers students the opportunity to feel more independent whilst being accompanied at all times and students are being familiar with the route and the skills needed for travelling on the bus whilst travelling on the SOOBY.
With what appears to be the minimum of consultation or notice, this service has been scrapped. Listen to how this cut has impacted directly on one family by clicking the player below.
Clicking on the </> on the right hand side of the player will allow you to share the interview with social networking sites and also provide a direct link to the recording on Soundcloud and also an embed code so you can use it on your own website or blog.
If you would like to use the audio above in your own site, you are free to do so.
Update: We have been trying to get to the bottom of this story, but our investigation has raised more questions than answers. We asked the school to comment on the change to the transport arrangements, but after being told they would provide one, the headteacher changed her mind and asked us to request a statement from the local authority instead.
So we approached Birmingham City Council who told us
The service has been withdrawn due to lack of use with very few children using the service. There was no sense continuing with it as it wasn’t being used; it has not been cut because of the financial situation we find ourselves in, the cut would have been made at anytime. The children who were using the service are now using the home to school system so no children have been left high and dry.
This is at odds with what the parent we spoke to was told, that the removal of the service was due to financial reasons.
We also submitted a Freedom of Information request to Birmingham City Council regarding the wider issue of transport for children with special educational needs. They told us:
- The total budget for transport cost for 2010/2011 is £10,260,798. This is the total budget for contract hire and bus passes (NB This includes mainstream travel assistance). The budget for guiding costs is approximately £4,000,000.
- Approximately 4,000 pupils are provided with daily specialised transport assistance and approximately 3,000 pupils receive help with free bus passes.
- We contract all of our work out to external transport operators so employ no drivers. We employ 660 pupil guides.
In response to a question on how many of these services had been cut since the start of the current academic year (ie September 2010), they said
We make changes to routes as required according to pupil needs, where
they live etc. Our current policy is currently out for consultation for
change and will be subject to Members Agreement.
They claimed not to have any information on:
- How many children had been affected by cuts since September 2010
- How many services were planned to be cut
- How many children would be affected by these cuts
- How many redundancies will the cuts result in
- Financially, how much would the cuts to these services save
Interestingly, when asked “Legally, how much notification do schools and the Authority have to give parents that a service is being withdrawn”, they replied
As an authority we have a duty to act reasonably and, although there are no prescribed timescales, the authority would take into account the responses to its consultation on any changes to be made and would also consider whether any transitional arrangements may be necessary as part of any proposed changes.
This final response raises some interesting questions. How much of a consultation was entered into with parents? Were their responses taken into account and how much consideration was given to any transitional arrangements?
We will be looking further into this in an attempt to uncover the truth relating to the removal of this service.
Interview on Audio Journalism
Over the weekend, I was interviewed by the Audio Journalism Blog in regards to the LinkedIn group I set up.
If you would like to check it out you can read it here.
We Are What We Tweet – 2nd promo
Here is the second promo video to advertise the We Are What We Tweet event, organised and run by MA Social Media students at BCU. For more information, visit the WAWWT website or follow them on Twitter.
This version of the promo is still not the finished article, but you will notice differences between this and the first. More members of the group are featured, the audio on newly recorded footage is clearer as is picture quality. Certain elements from the script have been dropped and the end result is much more professional. Please note that the first version was a very rough cut and never intended to be the finished product.
Assisting with audio
As part of my Online Journalism course, I have to become part of online communities around my field of interest. One such area is audio journalism and I have been offering help and advice in a number of ways. These include the LinkedIn group, Blackberry Messenger, in real life demonstrating Garage Band and also on Twitter. Below is an extract from a conversation on Twitter with Dr L. Lester Thatch who is looking to use audio and video in her website.