Few would disagree that anything that eases traffic flow is welcome on our gridlocked roads. The government’s plan to offer supervised public transport to all Church and private schools sounded good when the Labour Party included it in its manifesto. But the outcome of months of negotiations to achieve this objective has resulted in stopgap measures that will see the promised teacher supervision on school transport abandoned.

The agreement reached by the Ministry of Education and transport service providers has some merits. It will hopefully see the number of cars on our roads decrease as parents find it more convenient and economical to rely on public transport tailored for school needs. The saving of an estimated €700 per child every year is a good incentive to give up the laborious task of parents using their private cars for school runs.

The Minister of Education has not ruled out a “period of turbulence” as the new system is introduced, partly because of insufficient capacity to cater for the transport needs of all schools. The risk is that if the new system does not stabilise in a short time, parents may decide return to their private transport even if this will be done at a cost.

The most disappointing aspect of the project is that it was never thought out well enough. Stopgap measures had to be introduced rather late in the day to ensure that private school children would indeed be provided with free public transport. The failure to deliver the promised teacher supervision must come as a disappointment to most parents. Who will be held responsible if a child is hurt because of a lack of teacher supervision? Providing parents with a free app for monitoring the movement of their children while travelling by public transport is hardly an adequate substitute for teacher supervision.

One can understand teachers’ reluctance to take on the responsibility of supervising children on public transport, especially if this duty is not adequately compensated. The minister’s “optimism” that the system should function well is not the guarantee parents expect, namely that their children will be supervised appropriately when travelling to and from school by public transport.

It is now perhaps too late to deliver the kind of transport service originally promised by the education authorities. Many argue it would have been much more efficient had the Ministry of Education reimbursed parents and left it to the schools themselves to organise transport for their students in consultation with parents and service providers. The only solution that could be adopted in this ambitious project that was well-intentioned were stopgap measures but that exposed the limitations of the education authorities in delivering a safe and efficient public transport service all parents expect and are willing to accept.

One can only hope the minister’s optimism is justified and that the new system will indeed be functional in the shortest possible time. The time is right to start thinking about how to improve the system to win the confidence of parents who rightly expect high standards of supervision for their children when travelling.

The education authorities also need to build bridges with teachers and other employees that could provide supervision services because the legal responsibilities connected to such a task are indeed onerous and must, therefore, be adequately compensated.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial