Free school transport to church and independent schools to cost €10 million

The proposed introduction of free school transport to students of church and independent schools is expected to cost €10 million, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo has revealed.

Speaking after MP Simon Busuttil tabled a parliamentary question, Bartolo also revealed that the government already pays €8.1 million to provide free school transport to state school students; this means that the total cost of the initiative will definitely cost over €18 million.

Currently, there are 12,000 government school students who use the service, roughly 34.7% of the total student population who attend government schools.

During the budget speech last October, the government announced that discussions and studies on the initiative would begin in 2018 with a view to offering such free transport for the scholastic year 2018/2019. It was later revealed that the education ministry will head the project with assistance from the transport ministry.

A consultation was launched at the start of February. The government is currently favouring a ‘minimum intervention’ model, which would retain the current transport systems across all schools and introduce a refund mechanism where the government would pay for the service being provided.

Both the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party had included the initiative within their electoral manifestos in the last general election, and believed that the scheme would have a positive effect on morning traffic; however, it was only the Labour Party that provided some indication of what the scheme would cost.

Muscat had told a press conference on 29 May that the initiative, along with the increase in children’s allowance, would cost a total of €21 million.