SIXTH Form students across Liverpool are to be stripped of free bus passes completing a “triple whammy” of cuts it is feared will price them out of education.

And the Daily Post can reveal that hundreds of school pupils will lose out on the passes the following year due to radical changes as Liverpool council attempts to plug a £91m blackhole in funding.

Last night the city’s education supremo Cllr Jane Corbett admitted the cutbacks would be “devastating for young people” – but said cuts from central government meant the local authority’s “hands are tied”.

Currently 1,669 sixth form students and 5,132 school pupils get free home to school travel at a cost of £1.634m per year.

But from September the council will scrap travel passes for post-16 students with the exception of some with special educational needs in a move which in the first two years alone will save an estimated £800,000.

It is the latest blow for those staying on in education with university tuition fees set to be trebled to £9,000 or just under at the region’s universities from 2012 and the loss of the £30 weekly Educational Maintenance Allowance for poorer sixth form students.

And from the following year thousands of children who start school are set to miss out on the bus passes due to changes to the criteria.

Currently pupils who live beyond what is termed “walking distance” from their school – classed as two miles for under eights and three miles for older children – qualify for a free bus pass regardless of their choice of school.

But for pupils starting school from 2012 free passes will only be issued if they attend their nearest “suitable qualifying school”.