Assistance Extended to Schools Facing Difficulty with School Bus Contracts

Ms Joan Pereira asked the Minister for Education (a) how will the Ministry assist schools with difficulty getting school bus contractors to ferry students; and (b) whether the Ministry will consider providing support to drivers who may be keen to drive school buses obtain the relevant licences.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) has been working with school bus associations on a number of proposals to help school bus operators manage the challenges facing the industry. These challenges include, but are not limited to, competition for bus drivers, ageing profile of the school bus drivers, rising fuel costs and the point-to-point service model.

These multiple challenges have and would continue to drive up the costs for school bus services and, therefore, also school bus fares and put at risk the sustainability and affordability of school bus services.

MOE had recently announced a number of measures to better ensure the sustainability of school bus services, including allowing a calibrated increase in the Foreign Worker (FW) quotas for school bus drivers on a time-limited basis. MOE has worked with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and the Ministry of Transport (MOT) to allow selected bus operators to increase their foreign worker quotas to better achieve economies of scale. This will not only allow them to continue to serve their existing schools but, more importantly, enable them to serve more schools when they secure more school bus contracts. We have processed the first batch of applications from school bus operators for additional foreign worker quotas and we will be progressively conveying the outcome to the applicants. As many school bus tenders for the next school year will be awarded in the coming months, we expect more operators who have been successful in these tenders to apply for higher foreign worker quotas.

For those who wish to become school bus drivers, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) will ensure that there is sufficient training capacity for the Bus Driver's Vocational Licence (BDVL). LTA will continue to facilitate BDVL applications to allow bus drivers to obtain their vocational licence quickly.

The MOE schools will also evolve the bus contracts to provide more flexibility to the bus operators to help them manage their costs and better manage the scarce manpower resources, including offering common pick-up and drop-off points and not having to offer school bus services that may not have sufficient demand to be viable. We hope that through better school bus route planning and with more students in each school bus, operators will be able to manage with fewer drivers, whether local or foreign.

Let me conclude by putting the school bus issue in perspective. About 98% of Primary 1 students are posted to a school of their choice or within two kilometres of their homes. Many of the primary school students who do not live near enough to walk to school use public transport rather than school buses, especially the older students. We hope that, over time, more students will choose to do so. Only a minority of primary school students use school bus services to commute to and from school.