Buses sent to Fife schools – when they were all closed for teacher strike

Numerous buses continued to show up to Fife secondary schools despite them all being closed due to a teacher strike.

The Kingdom’s secondary schools were closed to all pupils for a teacher strike led by NASUWT Scotland and SSTA unions.

Witnesses saw empty buses arriving at Kirkcaldy High School, St Andrew’s High School also in Kirkcaldy, and Inverkeithing High School.

John Melville, NASUWT Scotland’s Fife rep, said his members saw 11 buses going to the three schools and he believes many more were operating across Fife.

Another witness saw a further five buses serving Balwearie High School.

John said: “Every bus was empty. It doesn’t make sense, they’re polluting the environment for nothing.

“It looks like they went to all the schools in Fife, probably to fulfil contracts.”

Fife Council admitted a fleet of buses did attend the area’s secondary schools, adding that due to its contract, the local authority has to pay for the buses whether they run or not.

It said the decision to run the fleet gave them reassurance should the strike be called off at short notice, and that some of the school buses also serve the community.

But it’s the number of buses all running at the same time which John says seems ‘bizarre’ because in the community, there is ‘no need’ for them all at the same time without the pupils.

Many school buses operating

Fife Council’s service manager for passenger transport services Tony McRae said there were several reasons buses were in operation.

He said: “Fare-paying passengers can and do use these services and we wanted to avoid any confusion for the travelling public as to whether local services which normally only operate on a school day would run.

“Primary schools are open today, unlike the last strike, and it is often the same buses that travel to a high school then on to do a primary school run.

“It is also the case that some of the operator’s school buses go onto to operate a local bus service after a school run.

“We therefore took the decision to operate all of the school services although we were happy to allow operators to reduce the number of buses operating along a route if they requested this, providing they catered for any fare payers.

Tony added: “Contractually the council is paying for the school buses regardless of whether they operate or not so it gave us the assurance that if the strike was cancelled at short notice operators were already geared up to operate.”