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Mike Brown is helping his children hitch-hike to school after their bus route was terminated at the end of 2024 by the Ministry of Education.
He stood beside his kids on State Highway 2, the Napier-Wairoa Rd, on Monday morning and helped them find a lift to Tamatea High School.
Brown wants his children to continue to learn te reo Māori at the school’s immersion unit, but it is not their closest state or state-integrated school, according to the ministry.
A Hawke’s Bay dad is helping his son and daughter learn to hitchhike to school after their rural school bus route was terminated by the Ministry of Education.
Mike Brown lives on a family farm near the Aropaoanui River, about 45km north of Napier.
Until last year both his childrenwould catch their school bus to and from Tamatea High School.
Brown wants his children to continue to travel to Tamatea High School’s te reo Māori immersion programme, but the ministry has told him multiple times it can no longer provide a bus, or a travel allowance, because it is not the closest state or state-integrated school to his home.
“Both have been to Tāngoio Kōhanga since 3 years of age and I wanted them to continue learning Māori,” Brown said.
According to Google Maps routes, Sacred Heart College – a girls’-only school – is 44.2km away from Brown’s property, Tamatea High School is 44.7km, and William Colenso College – a mixed-gender school that the ministry says is closer to Brown – is 44.9km away.
Brown was caught by surprise by the lack of a school bus last week.
At the end of Term 4 last year his children, Laa Brown, 16, and Chamon Brown, 15, returned home with the information there would be no more school buses in Brown’s area.
“I just thought they were joking, and I didn’t take any notice of it,” Brown said.
When he took his children to the bus stop last Monday for the first day of school, he realised they were serious when there was no bus waiting.
For the first week of school Brown took his children in to school himself, but he said the journey was arduous and costly.
“It’s 45 minutes to get in to town because we’ve got 13km of shingle road, which slows you down,” he said.
“So that’s a total of three hours a day I’d have to drive.”
Laa Brown, 16, hops into a ute that she flagged down while hitchhiking to school. Photo / Mike Brown
Brown works on his family farm, but is semi-retired on a pension.
“That’s what me and my two kids live on,” he said.
So it was that Brown stood beside his kids on State Highway 2, the Napier-Wairoa Rd, on Monday morning and helped them find a lift in to town with a friendly stranger.
The pair of them then returned home in the afternoon using their thumbs to catch a ride.
In a statement, group manager of school transport at the Ministry of Education, James Meffan, said the ministry applied its policy consistently across New Zealand to “ensure limited school transport funding is allocated fairly and efficiently”.
“In line with our policy, ministry school transport assistance is only available to eligible students and can take the form of a place on a bus, or a conveyance allowance,” Meffan said.
“The ministry routinely reviews its routes to ensure they are operating within policy. This requires that routes are optimised for eligible students, as defined by our criteria.
“We also apply a patronage test to assure the economic viability of the route.”
Based on the information provided about Brown’s family, Meffan said his children would be eligible for a conveyance allowance to their nearest bus stop if they were attending William Colenso College or Sacred Heart College.
There are three criteria that students must meet in order to qualify for school transport assistance.
The student must attend their closest state or state-integrated school, the student must live more than a certain distance from the school (Years 1-8 at least 3.2km, Years 9-13 at least 4.8km), and there must be no public transport available.
In email correspondence between Brown and the Ministry of Education, seen by Hawke’s Bay Today, Brown has been repeatedly told by separate people at the ministry, including Meffan, that his children are “ineligible for school transport assistance as they are not attending the closest state or state-integrated school they can enrol at”.
However, Meffan told Hawke’s Bay Today on Monday afternoon that there was a potential solution to Brown’s transport woes.
If his children were enrolled in the Level 1 or 2 te reo Māori immersion unit at Tamatea, they would be eligible to apply for a conveyance allowance, he said.
Napier MP Katie Nimon said she “would be keen to connect with this family to discuss how my office could support them to find a safer solution”.
Chamon Brown, 15, and Laa Brown, 16, hitchhiking to Tamatea High School from SH2 after their school bus route was terminated at the end of 2024. Photo / Mike Brown
Labour education spokeswoman, MP Jan Tinetti, said it was “outrageous” that students were being “forced to hitch-hike just to get to school because of this Government’s reckless decision to cut school bus routes”.
“We now have reports from Hawke’s Bay, West Coast, and Northland – three regions where students are making dangerous trips just to access their education.
“This isn’t just a regional issue, it’s a nationwide failure, and yet the Government has shown no urgency in fixing the mess they’ve created.
“Stripping away vital transport options for kids isn’t what New Zealanders voted for, it is setting kids up to fail and is a slap in the face to working families.
“National needs to front up, take responsibility, and reinstate these routes before more students are put at risk.”
