Rural school bus system gets top marks after first year
Students from Mona High School in St Andrew disembark a bus as the National Rural School Bus Programme officially rolled out on Monday, September 8, 2025.JIS
NE year after its full roll-out, the National Rural School Bus Programme is getting high marks from educators who say it has largely delivered on its promise to make transportation safer, more affordable, and more reliable for thousands of students.
The programme serves more than 13,000 students daily across 352 schools on 86 routes, using a fleet of 110 buses. And Christine Wright, principal of St Mary High School, described its impact as “tremendous”.
According to Wright, students and parents have embraced the service because of its reliability and the financial relief it provides.
“Once they recognised the financial implications, and the fact that they would be at school on time, they started to gravitate [towards it],” said Wright.
Similar sentiments were shared by principal of Eccleston Primary and Infant School in St Ann, Keisha Wisdom, who told the Jamaica Observer that the school bus system has transformed students’ daily commute.
“What the school bus does is that it drops my children right at the gate… that, for me, is safety at its highest,” Wisdom said, describing the programme’s impact as “very, very great”.
“The only thing we would have wanted is that we get a bigger bus for that route. A bigger school bus would do us well so that even more children can get on it,” added Wisdom.
She said approximately 150 of her students consistently use the service during the school year, with parents of incoming grade seven students already seeking information on how their children can register to travel on the school buses.
Similarly, Brown’s Town High Principal Alfred Thomas said parents attending orientation for incoming students were requesting access to the registration link.
He said the school has issued more than 300 bus cards and is served by between three and five buses daily, depending on availability.
In the meantime, Maggotty High School Principal Sean Graham said, while the initiative is beneficial, he would have welcomed greater consultation between the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), which administers the service, and his school community during the implementation.
“I don’t think the consultation, especially to engage the high school, parents, school community, has been done sufficiently… Hopefully, over time, if there’s more engagement or collaboration and discussion, we’ll be able to better serve the community,” Graham said.