Schoolchildren without smartphones penalised with higher bus fares

Schoolchildren who do not own smartphones face paying hundreds of pounds extra in annual bus fares as cheaper travel passes are digitised.

Critics argue that by only making discounts available through an app, operators are undermining government guidance to keep mobile phones out of schools.

Adele Kightley’s 11-year-old daughter faces paying an extra £546 a year to get to school because a discount scheme launched by Derbyshire county council is only available via smartphones.

The b_line card caps single fares on trentbarton buses at £1.50 for those aged 18 and under. However, users have to register their card with an app to qualify.

“We made the choice not to give our daughter a smartphone, instead opting for a brick phone when she started secondary school this month,” Kightley said.

“In order to get trentbarton’s young person discount, a child has to connect their student card with the app. However, they can’t get the same discount by showing the same student card to the driver and paying by cash or card.”

Trentbarton said its ticketing machines are not configured to read the council-issued cards. “We are working at speed on developing a new physical card to provide the discounted b_line fare for under-19s,” a spokesperson for the bus company said.

“In the meantime, all young people, whether they have a smartphone or not, will continue to receive a range of discounts off our adult fares however they pay.”

East Midlands combined county authority said it sympathised with parents who did not want their children to have smartphones and would consider how young people accessed discounted fares as it developed the region’s fares and ticketing strategy.

The increasing use of digital-only passes is penalising poorer households as well as undermining efforts to restrict screen time for children, according to Daisy Greenwell, a co-founder of the campaign group Smartphone Free Childhood.

“There is now a huge movement of parents and schools trying to delay smartphones for children but, in many parts of the country, bus companies are making that much harder by charging smartphone-free children up to twice as much for exactly the same journey,” she said.

More than 200,000 parents have signed up to the campaign group’s “parent pact”, which promises to delay getting a child smartphones until at least 14, “yet essential services are still being designed around the assumption that every child has one”, Greenwell said. “For lower-income families in particular, owning a smartphone can effectively become the price of accessing cheaper bus fares.”

Other regional operators, including Stagecoach and Compass, also require children to have a smartphone to access the best discounts.

“My husband and I decided not to give smartphones to our children because of the overwhelming evidence that shows how harmful they are to developing brains,” Kightley said. “When our younger child starts secondary school, it will cost us nearly £1,100 a year more than it would if they had access to the discount through the app.”

A law banning the use of mobile phones in English schools came into force in June. Some schools prohibit pupils from bringing smartphones on site. However, the Department for Education said the legislation did not cover phone use during travel to school and that app-only fare discountswere a matter for individual bus operators.

The government’s stance is sending mixed messages, Greenwell said. “Bus fares shouldn’t be a barrier to schools choosing policies where smartphones aren’t brought on to site. Government and bus companies have a clear opportunity to fix this, so every child can access the same fare whether they carry a smartphone or not.”