Bus charges still threaten schools

By Christopher Howse
MANY Catholic schools will have to close if education authorities follow Oxford County Council in going ahead with plans to charge for travel to denominational schools, despite the Lord's defeat of clauses in the Government's Education 13111 concerning transport charges.
Mr Bill Igoe, speaking for the Catholic Teachers' Federation, said: "It would have been better if clause 23 had been amended. It could virtually close all our. schools in Oxfordshire. because there is plenty of room in county schools."
Mrs Maureen Hastings. chairman of the Catholic Area Education Committee, said it looked like a surreptitious way of starving denominational schools. Lust November, Oxford voted by 33 votes to 17 to cease paving any costs whatsoever for children travelling to Catholic schools, when there was a nearer one,.
The defeat of Clause 23 has had no effect, she said. The Council bases its action on a reading of the 1944 Education Act that goes against the intention of its drafters.
The chairman of Oxford Education Committee, Brigadier Streatfeild is reported as saying: "If we want choice, we must pay for it."
Oxford's attitude was publicised in a letter to The Thnes from Janet Todd, the county's Sheriff, "Oxfordshire has already passed a proposal to axe this concession (free transport)," she said, "though a huge protest campaign was mounted by the Roman Catholic community ... I am sure that other counties will now he tempted to follow suit."
Oxford also proposes to close one primary and one middle school in the city. A meeting of parents to discuss the closures is planned for April 17 at St Edmund Campion school.
The headmaster of Edmund Campion, the city's only Catholic comprehensive, Mr John Prangley, said: "The Catholic Lords won the wrong battle. Oxfordshire can charge Catholics without risking electoral defeat, as Catholics are such a small minority here."