A Whakamarama mother fears her nine-year-old son may have to walk 4km to school – along an 80km-100km road with blind corners and no footpaths, after a letter stating his school bus is being discontinued.

Bridgette Tolfrey's three eldest children have caught the bus to school for 16 years, but her youngest Luke Fraser-Brown will be unable to when Bayline Bus ends its route past Whakamarama School next year.

Whakamarama mother Bridgette Tolfrey and her son Luke Fraser-Brown, 9, waiting for the bus. Photo by: Zoe Hunter.

The 47-year-old mother-of-four says Luke came home from school on Tuesday with a letter saying as of January, 2015, the bus service will no longer be operating its Whakamarama bus route.

Bridgette is adamant on keeping the bus service and says parents and school staff have one term to come up with a solution.

'Whakamarama School is about 4km up Whakamarama Road and we live 8.8km up, so we live more than 4km up the road past the school.

'I don't know why our children are losing this bus service anyway. They're stopping our children from getting safe education.

'My son is 10-years-old next weekend and he's not going to be walking almost 5km down the road where cars do 80km-100km on blind corners to get to school and back again.”

She says she can get Luke to school via car, but it would mean starting work later and finishing earlier.

'It is my responsibility to make sure he gets to school to a certain degree, but when you're given a bus service and you buy a house in an area where that bus service is already in place, you should know you can rely on that. I'm just very disappointed.”

School principal Sue Waitai says about 20 of the school's 37 pupils catch the bus to and from school.

Sue says the route restructure is part of the Ministry of Education withdrawing its funding for Tauranga's urban school bus routes.

From 2015, Bay of Plenty Regional Council will provide replacement services through a new network called Schoolhopper – at an estimated cost of $3 million a year.

Bayline, which is contracted under the TNG for that route, will no longer operate past the school.

Multiserve Regional Transport Manager Melissa Winters says Whakamarama School hasn't been eligible for a bus route for a number of years because they haven't got enough eligible students.

'There's a group of schools in Tauranga called the Tauranga Transport Network Group which is bulk funded for transport, and they've been providing a service for Whakamarama School which has been costing the other schools to do that and due to funding changes they can't afford to continue providing that service.”

Melissa also directed SunLive to www.minedu.govt.nz.

Although she's unsure of the costs, Melissa says there's no way the school could come up with the funds needed to keep the bus route.

'It hasn't been tendered as part of the tender for next year. It's not planned to be there, no. I have no idea what it would cost.”