School transport provider announces free trial of transport tech

Kura launches next step in mission to revolutionise daily school run

Leading transport technology specialist Kura (@ridekura) has announced plans to offer schools free trials of its award-winning school transport technology.

The no-obligation, 90-day trial includes its full suite of vehicle tracking, safeguarding and route management technologies Trial users have access to a dedicated Customer Success Manager to guide them through getting going quickly and ensure they achieve their goals.

The free trials are designed to help school management teams get proof of impact before making important investment decisions. It follows research that reveals how COVID-19 has put vital investment plans on hold for one in eight schools across the country.

By opening up access for schools to implement transport innovations, Kura is removing the barriers between squeezed school budgets and schools’ abilities to offer a first-class transport service. As a result, helping incentivise parents to trust their child’s travel needs to the school, opening up new catchment areas and reducing school run congestion and emissions.

Participating schools will be able to use Kura’s innovative smart registration software to keep track of exactly who has travelled on the bus each day, with contact-tracing functionality included. Meanwhile, parents will have visibility of when their children arrive at school and at home, and that they are travelling with pre-approved passengers, ensuring total pupil safeguarding.

Through this scheme, Kura’s goal is to remove thousands of cars from the road and around the school gates every day, improving pupil safety while significantly reducing schools’ collective carbon footprint.

As an example, if 10 schools were to sign up to the trial this would equate to 50,000 kilos of CO2 saved on average, through pupils and parents opting for shared school transport as opposed to low-occupancy cars. Each 49-seater coach also removes 31 cars from the road on average, accounting for thousands of car-led journeys being phased out in favour of greener alternatives.

While a third of school leaders (32.8%) believe the level of traffic around their schools each day is a safety risk, and 22% are concerned with the level of toxic fumes around their school, action to reduce this has been limited, with only a fifth (22.8%) of schools having invested in technology to improve their own school transport offering over the past decade. However, further investigation reveals that COVID-19 has significantly hindered investment, with 12.8% of schools reporting that COVID-19 placed investment plans on hold.

Godfrey Ryan, CEO of Kura, said:

“We are fully confident in our software’s ability to deliver value to schools, but we are also mindful of the difficulties COVID-19 has placed on their budgets. This free trial means school leaders have the opportunity to test the full features of the product without any obligation to commit.

“Moreover, and in light of recent, global conversations around the environment and sustainability, we hope the trials will also reignite the case for getting more children to use shared transport to reduce the number of cars on the road and thus levels of pollution.”

“Since launching our software-only solution last year, Kura now transports over 15,000 students every day across more than 30 schools and MATs. We and our existing customers know the software’s power and the benefits it delivers so we are quietly confident that schools will stick with us.”

Since launching in 2019, Kura’s school transport technology has revolutionised home-to-school travel by making shared, school-managed transport a safer, greener, more efficient alternative to the current daily school run, removing thousands of car journeys from the roads each day. Following this early success, Kura launched a tech-only offering in late 2020, in order to provide a more tailored, scalable solution to better fit varying school budgets.