Rising fuel prices are forcing regional parents and schools on the Mornington Peninsula to reconsider excursions and extra-curricula activities.
Angela Pound, mother of three, waits in the afternoon school pick-up queue at Flinders Christian Community College. Picture Miranda Stahl
Flinders Christian Community College operates private charter bus services across its campuses in Carrum Downs and Tyabb. Many of its students travel significant distances to get to the school, including from as Blairgowrie, Mt Martha and Flinders. The school also uses its buses to transport its 2000 students to excursions such as surfing, viticulture and multiple sporting activities.
Commercial operations manager Adam Simpson said transport costs were already affecting the school’s day-to-day operations.
“We obviously rely heavily, given our location, on bus transport and the costs associated with that look like they will escalate,” he said.
The school operates on a “cost recovery model”, meaning transport and other operational expenses are largely covered through parent fees.
“But it’s difficult to pass those increased costs on because parents are also under financial pressure,” Simpson said.
He flagged that in addition to the concern around buses, increasing expenses were also expected to flow through to other areas of the school’s budget.
“We’re expecting other suppliers critical to the operation of the school to also increase their prices due to transport costs,” he said.
He said the school may need to reconsider some non-core activities.
“We are incredibly reluctant to wind back those activities, but we feel it is necessary to review them rather than cut into direct education,” Simpson said.
Fuel prices have risen sharply in recent weeks, with the Australian Institute of Petroleum reporting the national average price for regular unleaded reached $2.38 per litre in the week ending March 20, up from $2.19 the previous week. The increase has been linked to ongoing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, contributing to instability in global oil supply and rising costs across Australia.
A Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into the use of school buses in rural and regional Victoria, conducted in November 2021 found that rural and regional communities continue to face limited access to public transport and have higher reliance on private travel.
For regional families, driving is essential, with long distances between home, school and work making fuel costs a significant weekly expense.
Angela Pound, a mother of three, said rising fuel prices were placing increasing pressure on everyday routines.
“It is getting really hard. Everything’s more expensive, groceries everything, but the daily school run is really expensive,” she said.
“Some of the mums are talking, we’re trying to carpool or do anything like that, and get onto bus services where we can, but it’s just become a really added expense every single day.”
Pound said extracurricular activities were also becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.
“We’re a basketball family, so with my three kids, we can have multiple trips before and after school to different stadiums, and it has really started to add up,” she said.
There are concerns that reduced access to excursions and extracurricular activities could further disadvantage regional students. Research from the Australian Government Department of Education shows the average 15-year-old in rural and regional Australia is already around 1.5 years behind students in metropolitan areas in science and mathematics.
While fuel prices remain volatile, analysts warn that continued global instability could see further increases, placing ongoing pressure on both school operations and regional households.
