Thousands of Danish school kids are taxied to and from school every day – a service that cost the state 76.3 million kroner in 2012 alone.
The expenses associated with cabbing the 2,279 children nationwide to school has politicians up in arms, particularly considering that the state pays millions more driving bilingual students to other schools.
“It’s a lot of money to spend on getting children to their schools,” Rasmus Jarlov (K), a local politician in Copenhagen, told Metroxpress newspaper.
“Copenhagen is relatively small, so it should be possible to teach the children to take the train, bus and Metro to get to school.”
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Dyslexic dilemma
The taxis are also used to shuttle children in special and introductory classes to schools that are a great distance from their schools.
“That’s way too much money spent on taxis. We need to teach kids how to handle themselves in traffic,” Klaus Mygind (SF), a local politician in Copenhagen, said.
“For instance, we had a class of dyslexic kids coming by taxi from all parts of town. They may be dyslexic, but they can easily move about in traffic.”
Aarhus was particularly pricey for cabbing around students. In 2012, the city spent almost 40 million kroner on taxis taking 546 kids to school, which is almost 72,000 kroner per student.
