“Home-to-school transport” should be renamed “assisted travel to school” to help manage parental expectations, MPs on the public accounts committee have been told.
While councils are committed to helping children entitled to support to get to school, it does not have to be “a door-to-door taxi service”, leading local authority figures have said.
One witness suggested there was “a legacy of Covid”, where lots of people were in single taxis for health reasons, which they are now reluctant to give up.
The committee was hearing evidence on Monday as part of a scrutiny session on the rising cost of home-to-school transport.
Local authorities are required to provide free transport for school-age children who cannot walk to their nearest suitable school due to distance, special educational needs or disabilities (Send), or safety concerns.
A recent report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that costs in England have risen to £2.3bn a year, as increasing numbers of children with Send are forced to travel farther afield to schools that can meet their requirements.
Of the 470,000 children under 16 who benefit, about 40% (180,000) have Send, but councils spend five times more on transport for Send pupils as they often have to travel further in single-occupancy taxis.
Witnesses appearing before the committee were asked how they would redesign home-to-school transport if they could start from scratch.
Rose McArthur, chair of the home-to-school transport working group at the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (Adept), questioned how the service is described.
“There’s a huge problem with linguistics,” she said. “It does not have to be home-to-school, it could be home to a bus stop, or a bus stop to here or a walking route to there … We are wanting children to get to education but how that happens does not have to be a door-to-door taxi service.
“I think there’s a level of expectation that’s just built in and there’s a level of over-provision that’s been built into the system, and actually we could be more fleet of foot.
“We could definitely use commercial bus services better. We could definitely look to the bus franchising bill and all of that wonderful stuff that’s coming out, but we need transport and education to be working together to do that.”
Amanda Hopgood, chair of the children, young people and families committee at the Local Government Association, agreed: “It’s assisted travel to school, as opposed to home-to-school transport.”
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She told MPs: “We do have the legacy of what we had during Covid where we had lots of people in single taxis for obvious reasons and people have been reluctant to give that up. So that has required work to show that actually that’s no longer beneficial for that young person.”
Anna Bird, chief executive officer at Contact, a charity for families with disabled children, raised concerns about access to home-to-school transport for 16 to 19 year-olds, which is being cut by councils because it is discretionary.
“We would want to make the point that there will be some children who will always need support to get to school, no matter how local, and that the system needs to provide for these children. There needs to be a fair system based on need, not age.”
Sarah Hall, Labour MP for Warrington South, described what parents and carers of children with Send in her constituency had told her during a recent roundtable.
“Parents feel they have to fight for support every step of the way,” she said. “They find it demoralising. They feel like parents’ voices need to be heard more. They feel like it’s a very complex system and information about entitlements are not always clear. I’ve heard that many times from constituents.”
