Yeah the unusual allocations should stop now - just a summer holiday thing. They almost certainly won't go back to commercial operations in GM, as they will be too 'old'. Also, some have been repainted into the 2024 navy blue trial livery, so Stagecoach wouldn't do that if they had an intention of putting them in yellow in the near future.
My prediction for the MMCs would be that they come either from the East Midlands or South Wales operations. Both of these divisions have buses of the perfect age for GM school services. Also, South Wales will be able to lose some buses with the arrival of the ex Bee Network Optare Solo SRs (Stagecoach 24 plates which they were meant to get a few months ago), whilst East Midlands will likely be high on the list for some of the cascades from Tranche 3 anyway - they have a considerable amount of ALX400s as well as some old B7RLEs. Surely trading 10 MMCs between them in exchange for some other buses will be a relatively simple job?
Transferring to Metroline is a very unlikely prospect, as Metroline would not want or need some fully Stagecoach spec buses - if they needed single decks an order of E200MMCs seems much more likely.
