First Student (United Kingdom)

First Student UK

First Hampshire & Dorset run First Student BMC 1100FE, at the 2008 Alton bus rally.
Slogan	The safer way to travel to school
Parent	FirstGroup
Headquarters	Macmillan House, Paddington Station, London
Service area	UK
Service type	School bus
Managing Director	Linda Howard
Website	First Student - Welcome

First Student UK is the brand used by FirstGroup for student transport in the United Kingdom. The brand was originally used in the United States for school transport there, and was expanded to the United Kingdom in 2000. First Student UK is a pioneer in the introduction of task-specificschool buses in Britain, usually painted school bus yellow to distinguish them from conventional buses.

First Student and First in West Yorkshire successfully piloted one of the first yellow school bus schemes in the Huddersfield and Calderdale area in 2000.

In 2002, another early scheme began in Wrexham, Wales. It was also contracted to First, who began to operate the scheme in June of that year. FirstGroup's chief executive Moir Lockhead said "we believe that the yellow school bus offers the safest, most reliable way to transport children to and from school". As with other schemes, including one in Runnymede in Surrey set up around the same time, First had to open new bases to operate the school buses, having no other operations in the respective areas. The first schemes also had buses built like traditional US school buses, whereas later schemes have more conventional UK bus shapes.

By October 2002, FirstGroup's first Welsh scheme had proved successful enough for the fleet of buses to be doubled.

As further schemes developed, First became more involved in setting up schemes. First Berkshire, already running the Runnymede First Student service, won the contract from Surrey County Council in 2005 to operate the Ride Pegasus! school bus scheme, although using buses in a different livery. However, this ended in July 2010 following the withdrawal of funding.

In December 2007, a yellow school bus visited Perth, Scotland, to test reactions. FirstGroup suggested that their research shows 86% of British parents would like to send their children to school in dedicated buses.