Welcome to the Public Accounts Committee on Monday 8 December 2025. Home to school transport aims to remove transport as a barrier to accessing education. However, the costs associated with home to school transport have been growing substantially for local authorities, reaching £2.3 billion in 2022-23 to transport over half a million children and young people. Rising demand, increased costs and constrained funding are all contributing to these increases. The biggest spending pressures are linked to transport for children aged nought to 16 with special educational needs and disabilities, or SEND, where spending has more than doubled in less than a decade. We have had a number of evidence sessions for this inquiry, including with many representatives from local authorities who note the struggle of balancing their transport duties to eligible pupils with their duty to balance their budgets. Today, we are fortunate to have with us our expert panel of witnesses who share a huge wealth of knowledge and experience of working in this area. This will be followed by our main session questioning Government officials later this afternoon. We hope to hear from them about the users of home to school transport and to better understand the modes and costs of transport, as well as future home to school transport. To help us with all that, I am going to let you introduce yourselves.

My name is Anna Bird. I am chief executive of Contact. We support families with disabled children, reaching 381,000 families last year with our support, information and advice.

I am Councillor Amanda Hopgood from Durham county council. I am here in my capacity as chair of the LGA children, young people and families board.

We were wondering, before you came in, how long you have been chair for.

I have been chair since September this year.

Very good. Tell us what committee you sit on, too.

I sit on the children, young people and families committee.

You have a specialist interest in this area. Thank you.

I am director of transport, highways and climate change at Cheshire West and Chester council. The purpose of me being here today is that I am chair of the ADEPT national home to school transport working group, which captures about 84 local authorities. ADEPT is the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport.

We are very honoured to have this wealth of knowledge with us.

At Contact, we support families with disabled children, so I am going to talk specifically about home to school transport for children with SEND. We have done a fair amount of research in this area, and what we have found is that, up to the age of 16, transport is broadly going to the right people. It is broadly identifying those children who, if they did not get school transport, would not be able to get to their place of education because they are further from home or may not be able to travel by public transport or to travel independently. Largely, the system is working. When we speak to parents of children up to the age of 16, 80% say that their school transport is working and helping children to be in school, so it is impacting on attendance, boosting independence and helping the whole family, including parents in terms of being in work during the school day. As an example of that, we have been talking to a 15-year-old girl who has Down’s syndrome. She uses the school bus. It arrives at 7.30 every morning. She likes to go down the path to wait for the school bus on her own, so there is an element of independence in waiting for the school bus and getting on it on her own. It has helped her to understand her morning routine. When she gets on the bus, she high-fives her schoolmates and goes off to school. It is very much part of the school day for her. That is when it is working well. We also know that, in a year’s time, she is likely to lose that school transport provision because we have this problem with 16 to 19-year-olds. In the research that we have done, where it is not working well is after the age of 16, where it becomes a discretionary service. What we are hearing is that 70% of families are expecting or experiencing changes. It has a huge impact on children’s independence. It has a huge impact on the whole family. Some 40% of families who we spoke to said that they had had to give up work to manage getting their children to school when transport had been removed. It also has a huge cost for the family. As an example, we speak to a family in Birmingham. Harry is 17 and has Down’s syndrome. He has always got the school bus. At the age of 17, that provision was cut for him. He is at the same school. His needs have not changed. He is still required to be in school. Now, he is paying £46 a day in taxi fees to get to that school. It is having a huge impact on the family. It is having a huge impact on a single mum who is unable to work because of her child’s needs, and who is now having to shoulder a cost of about £5,000 a year. Is it working? It is not working for that group of children aged 16 to 19, where the service is being pulled because of the financial constraints on councils.

We have seen a real lack of data on that. We have not seen very much that shows the knock-on effect of a lack of school transport on attendance. What we have seen from our surveys is that it is clearly an issue.

Yes, absolutely. We are hearing a lot that it is having an impact on attendance. We spoke to the family of a boy who had been going to school with a 98% attendance rate. At the age of 17, his transport budget was cut and he was struggling to get in once a week. His parents work—one of them is a nurse—and they just cannot get to the school gate. It is having an impact, but we do not have great data.

It is a complete postcode lottery up and down the country. What we are seeing is that every local authority is making different decisions. It depends on where you live. There is no obvious rhyme or reason as to whether you will get some or all of your transport covered.

Yes, absolutely.

It definitely would. For 16 to 19-year-olds, who are now expected to be in education, there is no good reason why school transport is cut at 16 and becomes discretionary.

Apart from there being no money to deliver it. There is no reason other than the fact that it is discretionary. Many local authorities now have to cut everything that is non-statutory.

To what extent is home to school transport, or the lack thereof, affecting parents’ ability to work?

That has been covered slightly by what Anna said. Once you hit that cliff edge, it stops. If we want to encourage people to work, we need to have a system in place that allows that to happen. It is very different depending on where you are in the country, whether you are in a rural locality or whether you are in a city, and how close work is to where your children are going to school. Some people can drop them off on the way to work, but if you have more than one child, and one who is in special education school getting home to school transport, it can often be in completely the other place. With the best will in the world, you cannot be in two places at once, and someone has to be able to take the other children to school as well. Having a good, robust home to school transport facility is absolutely essential if we want to encourage people to continue to work. We see this evidence on a daily basis in local authorities, and how that impacts. We have tried to be creative. We have done personal budgets. For those families who do not work, it is certainly cheaper for the local authority if the parents want to take their children to school and get a personal budget to pay for that, but, as I say, that is not always applicable. In the area where I live, we can be talking about an hour in school transport. That can be private transport, so that is not even waiting for a bus to pick everyone else up. That is a taxi to pick you up at home to get you to school when you are in quite a rural locality.

The question was around whether people are getting what they need and how it is affecting parents’ ability to work. There are hundreds of thousands of trips made every single day using home to school transport provided by the local authority. The majority of cases pre-16, from age four to 16, are covered, whether that be down to rurality, to risk-assessed routes, or to provision of commercial transport. People use their own fleet. We use our own fleet within our local authority. There are personalised travel budgets. There is independent travel training. There are whole allocation models around walking, cycling, using public transport or using internal fleet. There are many options provided by local authorities to ensure that the child has access to transport and, therefore, the parent is able to work. It is a really interesting question to ask. There is a lot of work being done across local authorities to make sure that that happens. There has to be the conversation about parental responsibility in a child going into a place of education. It is not just a council responsibility or conversation. In many cases pre-16, there is a massive amount of work done to undertake hundreds of thousands of trips.

Sarah touched on the data. Is the DfE collecting enough data to be able to capture this best practice of each local authority, so that it may be imparted to others?

It is making a very good start. In the last year, it has started to ask for greater collection. With great encouragement, the DfE has been using the ADEPT home to school transport working group to come and say, “What data should we collect? What data do you have? How do we ask for it? How do we make it possible for you to provide that without really overwhelming you?” It has been brilliant in terms of trying to make that response one that we can satisfy. It is making great strides in collecting that data. It has not been there previously, and local authorities collect data in lots of different ways, using different metrics and systems, so they are certainly going in the right direction, and great strides have been made over the last year, certainly.

I represent a very rural constituency, so I appreciate the difficulties. How hard is it for parents to navigate the legislation around home to school transport?

It is something that we speak to parents about a lot on the SEND helpline that we run. It is regularly a top topic, where parents do not really know their rights and are not really clear on how to navigate the system. That is particularly true of parents of children between 16 and 19, because the system is very unclear. It is often changing in every local authority in real time, so it is very hard for families to understand what is happening and how they can make sure that their rights are met. We spend time helping parents to understand what is happening and what they are entitled to.

It is particularly difficult for parents, and it is complex. The local authority that I sit on transports 10,000 passengers every day. That is 1,200 different contracts with over 300 providers. It is hard for officers and staff to navigate through that, and those are just the ones that are appointed. When you go out to appoint, you have to advertise for more than that and put different systems in place. For parents, the problem is that we are working on a 1940s system in 2025, and we need to be looking at the needs of families and parents in the 21st century, where both parents are working. It is a very different culture and world that we live in now than when these policies were brought in, and we are trying to retrofit something to 65 years ago, or longer than that. It is just not fit for purpose going forward. We need to bring it up to date with what the modern family is and where schools are. Not only in rural communities, but even in London, we have primary schools that are closing because they do not have enough pupil numbers, so we are having to transport children further than we would have, because there just are not the number of children in certain localities due to changes in employment. For example, in the north-east, where you would have had lots of manual jobs and big communities in rural locations, they do not exist any more. We closed a school because it had one pupil left in it, and that is not good for the child or for their education moving forward. We need to look at this in the context of the world that we live in now, in 2025, and what we need for the future as well, to try to future-proof it as much as we can. Q13            Mr Betts: There was an interesting line there—and I presume that one of my colleagues will probably pick that up in the future—about what the world is going to or should look like. Are local authorities, in the end, not necessarily providing the most suitable modes of transport for children and young people but the ones that they can afford?

I am at the coalface of this pretty much every day. Again, it is a very fair and very good question to ask, because there are lots of headlines that are grabbed as to what is happening within local authorities. We use an allocation model, where we always want to have an independent child who becomes an independent adult, so the transport provision is really important in ensuring that that child has the best start in life. If they can walk or cycle, that is fantastic. Commercial bus services that are already running, as well as internal fleet, are a cost-effective way of moving the child to where they need to be. It is only really as a last option that we want to put them in a single occupancy vehicle—a taxi—because it is costly, but also because it is a bit othering for children to feel that they are not part of a system or with their friends. We work very hard to ensure that they have the right transport provision. Independent travel training, which I mentioned earlier, is about how we are trying to upskill children to become independent adults by using public transport. In terms of personalised travel budgets, the parent is given money to take the child to their place of education. It is a very fair and very good question to ask in this arena, but local authorities are moving hundreds of thousands of children a day and putting out 101 contracts to just get 30 responses back, because we have to look at all of the options. It is a very complex, high-volume and noisy part of a council in terms of what we have to do, but we are constantly trying to find that value for money for the taxpayer and also to put the needs of the child first in what transport allocation they are given. Q14            Mr Betts: I just want to pick up on two points there. One is that, in terms of what was mentioned before, the 16-to-19 situation is different because it is discretionary, but does thought then have to be given to what happens to that young person when they get to 19 and they may need to have skills that can enable them to be a bit more independent, rather than simply getting in a taxi that is provided every day? Is that an issue that has to be weighed up as well?

Yes, it is certainly something that is good practice across many local authorities. It is not just about getting the young person from A to B. Education is not just about getting results, at the end of the day. It is about developing an independent person. You are teaching them life skills for when they get to 18 or 19. That might be how to get on the service bus. That is really important, but it has to be done in conjunction with the family, because young people will be at a different stage depending on their personal issues at different ages. You might have someone who goes to a special school who is able to get on the service bus or the school transport from 12 or 13. You may have someone who is not quite confident enough to do that until they are a bit older, or they need some help to get on there in the first place. It is all dealt with on an individual basis. It cannot be one size fits all. Q15            Mr Betts: Parents are sometimes a little bit overprotective about what they think their child should be allowed to do. It is a challenge. I can see that.

I have brought the evidence from the ADCS, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. They want children to become independent adults, and the barriers there are often about fear from a parent. Q16            Mr Betts: Let us move on, then, to the issue of regular local bus services. They are often not that frequent. They do not always run on the right routes. Moving now, as we are, to franchising at local levels, are conversations starting to be developed between education authorities and the relevant transport authorities—in some areas, it may be a mayoral combined authority—to try to see how those bus routes can be altered to take account of these needs?

Yes, absolutely. Again, in some of the written evidence from ATCO, which is the association of transport commissioners, that is absolutely where we are trying to get to. Rachel, I completely sympathise. Cheshire West is a very rural borough, as is Durham. That rurality means that we are now supporting 33% of our commercial services, as opposed to the 7% that we were, because they are just not profitable. We are not franchised. The Bus Services Act 2025 allows us to start to look at that. The metropolitan combined authorities are literally mandating that into the bus provision, essentially. It has to link in better from an education perspective. A big theme from this whole inquiry and all of the work is a better working relationship between education and transport, so that it is a whole system conversation and looking at commercial bus services provision for school transport.

Good afternoon. I want to talk about costs and ask if you can tell us about some of the actions that local authorities could take to help reduce the cost of home to school transport.

That is a million-dollar question.

Yes, literally, or maybe a billion-dollar question by the time we are finished. I am sorry to repeat myself, but it is an incredibly important question to ask, certainly in an NAO-driven committee. From a local authority and an ADEPT working perspective, we have spent four years just going through every single conceivable way in which you could bring down the cost of providing home to school transport. If you do not have sufficiency of placements—if they are out of borough and necessitate a 50-minute rather than a 20-minute journey, with the child having high needs, needing a passenger assistant and needing to travel in a single occupancy vehicle—there is nothing that a local authority can do from a transport perspective to bring that cost down. You need a reliable driver who turns up in the right vehicle at the same time every day, with a passenger assistant who knows that child’s needs, to go to a placement that will be probably out of borough, because there is not the sufficiency of places internally from an education or a SEND perspective, which is why the SEND reform is so important. We have looked at route optimisation and independent travel training. We have looked at personal travel budgets. We have looked at bringing fleet in-house and hiring our own drivers, so that they can work in the peak on those really expensive contracted services. If I may say, there is still something to go at in terms of the cost of commissioned transport from private taxis and licensing, because there is probably a margin there that is above the Hackney carriage rates, let us just say. Those drivers will be giving us a really good service and moving some of our most vulnerable people across long distances. The same driver is turning up every day with the right security clearances, in an appropriate vehicle that has been checked by us. If you went to an unregulated, non-commissioned market, you lose all of that certainty for the child. There are costs in there that you could look at and think, “How did you reach that?” but, when you start to drill down, there are really important factors that make sure that we are moving the most vulnerable people within our society in the right way. That has probably not answered the question in the way that you wanted, but there is a whole working group that are spending their daily lives, basically, trying to root out the costs that sit there.

It really does touch on some of the issues in the question, and I noticed that the report includes some examples of where cost reduction has been tried. On a related note, I wondered if you had any sense of which of those have been particularly effective.

Reverse auctions are really good because they show the market that there is a minimum cost that we want to drive there, and that it is not just their market. I am sounding adversarial, and I do not mean to, because they provide a brilliant service, but reverse auctions are very good. In terms of route optimisation, there are numerous software systems out there where we try to put as many children as possible who can travel together in a shared vehicle. Single occupancy vehicles are the holy grail. That is what we want to chip away at every single time. Having internal fleet and being able to utilise your own routes with a paid driver on the right contract has driven costs down. If I am honest, independent travel training and personalised travel budgets are not taken up to such a level to make much of an impact there, but there is some brilliant work being done across councils that I would be happy to provide after this session, where they have challenged the taxi operators and said, “Your Hackney carriage rate is this. Why are you charging us this?” and driven the cost there. Reverse auctions and looking at contract costs and at route optimisation—many local authorities will tell you that they have undertaken a transformational programme around home to school transport to see, collectively and holistically, what they can do across the council—are the main things.

It would be lovely to see that information if you are able to share it afterwards.

Yes, it is a really good case study.

Rose, you mentioned route optimisation. I live in Gloucestershire, which is a very rural authority with lots of rural neighbours. Some of their buses cross into each other’s areas each morning. Could more be done through co-operation between local authorities?

Yes, definitely. If we were coming on to a conversation on devolution, the route optimisation piece, if done on a cross-boundary basis, yes, absolutely. That may be where devolution might take you from the unitary to the bigger combined authorities. There are certainly some really big opportunities there to look at cross-border working, because that out-of-borough placement would not be out of borough. It would be in placement and being delivered by the right service.

Amanda, do you want to say anything on cost reductions?

In terms of what has happened and what evidence we have, the use of personal transport budgets has doubled in the last five years. We have evidence to say that where we offer alternatives, some people will take them up if it is what is right for them. We 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. It has required work to do that and to show that that is no longer beneficial for that young person. Part of their development is around shared access and possibly looking to use public transport. I would be amazed if there was a council in the land that has not looked at how to start reducing this, and we have evidence of where different local authorities have. With regard to SEND pupils, 46% of journeys are already by minibus, with 22% using cars and taxis, because that is still the best option. Again, depending on the location, that will be significant. If you have someone who lives in quite a rural location, it will probably be, despite the cost, cheaper to send a taxi for them when they live nowhere near anyone else to do that shared transport. There can also be a hybrid version, where we bring them to a point where they then get on to public transport. You are able to transport them to an area, and then they would all join public transport. It is a bit of a hybrid, so that young people can experience that independence as well as getting there safely.

If I could make one small point, it is great to hear all of the points around ways that the system can be optimised and how costs can be reduced, and we absolutely agree with many of the recommendations here. Our experience is, of course, that the main way that costs are being capped at the moment is through the removal of the discretionary service from 16 to 19. That is a real concern to us, so we would like to see, as well as all the ways to optimise the service and reduce costs across the system, the closing of the legal loophole so that children aged between 16 and 19 who are required to be in school have a right to a service. It is just important to place that in the conversation about cost reduction, because it is vital.

That is perfectly fair. Thank you.

I also want to declare what you might call an interest, having been the Minister for School Standards up until September this year with responsibility for this policy area. What you are saying about the work that you are doing to bring down those costs is really interesting. From your perspective, to what extent is the misalignment of the financial and budgeting years, with the financial year running from April and the academic year from September, and that challenge of predicting pupil numbers and changes in them, proving to be a barrier to managing some of those costs, particularly in your negotiations with private transport providers?

I could stay here all day with that one.

Thank you for that question. It is really tricky. It takes a lot of very fast thinking and a lot of people working very hard at particular points in the year. Some of the impacts are that we forecast our costs and we say, “This is what we think we are going to do on pupil numbers, on birth rates, and on SEN provisions of children coming through with an EHCP. This is what we think our costs are going to be”, but, because it is done in the school year and the parents will be going to tribunals and appealing, what will happen is that our providers will give back the contract and say, “No, we do not want to do this”, so we have to go back to market a week before it starts. They know that we are over a barrel, so the costs get absolutely inflated, and what you then get is a complete change in that forecast cost. That happens for adult social care and Care Act-eligible adults in terms of placement changes. What we find is that we can forecast to the best of our ability, but there is some volatility in terms of, “Are you happy with the placement?” “No, I want to go somewhere else”. “You are not eligible there”. “Fine. I am going to go to a tribunal”. All of that cost comes in very late. Within all the reports, one of the biggest things picked up is that councils are spending way above what is budgeted. Unfortunately, that sometimes translates internally as a level of incompetence that we did not forecast well, but the volatility of that change midway through the academic year means that you have to literally just react as that is happening, and it can add an enormous cost to it. There are some difficult behaviours as well seen through that.

Will the better data that is clearly recommended through this report, and is beginning to be collected, go some way towards creating much stronger benchmarking for you to be able to negotiate some of those contracts with more reasonable margins in those circumstances?

Yes, absolutely. Better data of any kind on this subject matter is going to help us. A lot of the local authorities are using their data services at the moment to try to get dashboards to show, “If we did that and fixed that, put some more fleet in, added a driver, took that out and route optimised all of that, where would we come out to?” We are all trying to get as many dashboards as possible to know what levers we have. Again, I am here just as a transport person who deals with it on behalf of the local authority. If we had someone from education, I am sure that they would talk about sufficiency of places, places in mainstream, and local places. Therefore, the mileage comes down, the cost comes down, and the number of contracts that we are putting out drops. I am the sneeze when the cold has been caught over here in this situation, but all of the SEND reforms and the data collection will certainly help.

It does go hand in hand. We cannot fix one without the other, so we do need that SEND reform and looking at that as soon as possible. That will have a huge impact on home to school transport. Better alignment between transport planning and school placement is really important. Again, it goes back to the fact that we are dealing with a system from the 1940s, when children went to their local schools and there was not the same issue, and we are trying to retrofit something that is not working. We are trying to put a round peg into a square hole and hope that it works, and it just does not. We need closer co-ordination. We need to have more people trained in the system so that we can get those EHCPs through at a faster pace and we know what provision is required. In another capacity, I am a vice-chair of an academy trust. I have also been chair of a primary school. I have seen this in real terms, in terms of how long we have to wait for things such as that for pupils. That is someone’s life that we are talking about. It is their education. Without fixing one, we have no hope of fixing the other, so it needs to be done in parallel to get both of these together and work in cross-over, not in silos, going forward.

You keep saying that we are retrofitting into an old system. If you were going to start from scratch with the work that you are doing, and design a new home to school transport system across the board, what would that look like?

I have a very specific one, which is around parental expectation and “home to school”. There is a huge problem with linguistics. 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. What I would probably do is make sure that there were not two things. It is not free, because it costs the local authority a lot of money, and it is not home to school, which is a linguistics challenge. It is, “We are wanting children to get to education, but how that happens does not have to be a door-to-door taxi service”. There is a level of expectation and overprovision that has been built into the system, and we could be really more fleet of foot. We could definitely use commercial bus services better. We could definitely look at the Bus Services Act and all of that wonderful stuff that is coming out, but we need education and transport to be working together to do that.

Indeed, Rose, the Association of Transport Co-ordinating Officers says, “The very nature of the term ‘home’ to school travel implies it is a door-to-door offer. More emphasis needs to be placed on ‘travel assistance’”.

That is really helpful to understand, and this comes to your statement about the upcoming SEND reform. What is it that you will be particularly looking for within that reform that will help you do what you need to do in terms of—I hate to say it—home to school transport?

I would be looking for something that is fit for now. Rose has picked up on it absolutely perfectly. It is assisted travel to school as opposed to home to school transport. Home to school transport might not always be from their home address. Lots of children might be looked after by grandparents early in the morning, which could be closer to school and require much easier assistance in getting there. We need to look at that. We need to look at the criteria. I know that we are talking about distances, and one size does not fit all. However, a 17-year-old’s legs walking to school and a four-year-old’s legs walking to school at the beginning and the end of each day are going to be significantly different. If we want the little four-year-old to walk 3 miles each way before they can get access to assisted travel, we need to consider that as well. We also need to think about how far we are expecting children to travel to school. Again, at an early age, adding an extra hour to a school day is massive for someone who is in key stage 1. Their school day is longer because they have an hour travelling each way. Anyone who knows my accent will know that it has taken me three hours to get here today, and it will take me three hours to get back. That is great, but I am an older person who can cope with that. If we asked someone who is four or five to add that length of time to their working day, it is quite a lot to ask. I would go back to making sure that we have a system that is fit. I would love to see an inclusive system, but that will come with investment. We cannot just put more pressure on our mainstream schools and expect them to be able to deliver, without putting training and resource in to allow that to happen. If we can have more young people in mainstream schools, closer to where they live and to their communities, and being integrated, that will benefit people for the future. It will benefit those young people who are in mainstream schools to just be accepting that not everybody is the same.

I think we all agree on the need for more local, inclusive mainstream schools. Beyond that, 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 those children. There needs to be a fair system where the determination of who needs it is based on need, not age. Where we might differ a little is that we would not want there to be ringfencing or eligibility that is set up around age, because it is about the needs of the individual. It can only be determined at that level.

We have virtually come to the end of our time. I want to ask you one very specific question, Amanda, if I may, with your LGA hat on. Before I ask the question, in case parents are listening to this session, one must always remember that we are asking about the money, but it is all about a parent and a child who need the system. In this reformed system—hopefully we are going to get there with the White Paper next year, and one thing or another—could you comment on the effects on councils in general of the statutory override and how it applies to part of the system and not to other parts?

In terms of the LGA, our committee has said that it is easy to get focused here on the money, and the priority are the young people and the children. We have to do what is right with it. At the minute, we have a system that is not working and is very expensive. Even if it was very expensive and was delivering amazing outcomes and was very successful, we would have to look at that and just accept that it is an expensive system, but we have the worst of both worlds. We have an expensive system that is not delivering. If our committee was starting from scratch, we would be looking at the needs of the child and the young people, and working out how we do that. We do that with parents, not to parents. That is very important, because you are going to have a lot of parents who are really concerned that something is being looked at. They know that there is likely to be change, and we need to take them with us on that journey. It needs to be something that they feel part of and not something that is done to them. That is just how I have always dealt with things and how you work with people as opposed to doing it to them.

Can I thank all three of you? You have given us some fantastic food for thought and evidence today. We really appreciate it. We are going to now take a short break while we re-alter the panel. You are very welcome to stay. On the other hand, you might, having travelled your three hours, want to get the three hours back again. You are all very welcome to stay if you wish to.   Witnesses: Susan-Acland Hood, Juliet Chua and Nico Heslop.

Welcome back to the Public Accounts Committee on Monday 8 December 2025. We now move into our main session. We have just heard from a really excellent panel of witnesses about some of the complexities and pressures facing home to school transport. I would like to start by reiterating that, for children and young people who need and receive it, home to school transport is a highly valued service that helps to ensure that transport is not a barrier to accessing education. The Department for Education holds the overall policy responsibility, with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government allocating funding to local authorities for home to school transport through the local government funding settlement. Following the Children and Families Act 2014, the number of education, health and care plans, or EHCPs, has increased significantly, meaning that more children may travel to specialist settings, which are often further from home. Local authorities spent about £2.3 billion in 2022-23 on transporting more than half a million children and young people to their education settings—over £400 million more than they had budgeted. This is a very complex area. Efforts by local authorities to address these escalating costs can deliver savings and help increase independence for some. However, cuts to discretionary transport services may impact pupils and their families. Today, we have a very experienced panel in front of us. We welcome you, Permanent Secretary, as a regular attender of this Committee. Would you like to introduce yourself and your fellow panellists, please?

Thank you very much indeed, Chair. I am Susan Acland-Hood, and I am the permanent secretary in the Department for Education.

I am Juliet Chua. I am the director general for schools at the Department for Education.

I am Nico Heslop. I am the director of local government finance at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Thank you very much. You have all been before this Committee before, so we do not need to extend special wishes to you. I am going to start with Catherine, and perhaps you would declare your interest before you start.

I declared to the previous panel that, up until September this year, I was the Minister for School Standards with responsibility for this policy area. Thanks very much for being here today. The NAO report has shown, among other things, that the non-compulsory use of school transport budgets—those children over 16 who might not necessarily fall within the statutory definitions—is leading to transport support being increasingly squeezed, with increasing pressure on the system. How confident are you that school transport support is getting to those who need it most?

Thank you to the Committee and to the NAO for looking at this important topic. As you will know, there are statutory duties on local authorities to provide free travel for children who cannot walk to their nearest suitable school. That might be because of distance, special educational needs or unsafe routes, and there are some additional rights for low-income families. Although it is not specified in the same way, there is still a statutory duty on local authorities to ensure that no young person in their area is prevented from attending education post-16 because of a lack of transport or support to access it. We look very carefully at the evidence around whether those duties are being met. You heard from the really thoughtful panel that we have just heard from that the main provision of transport for five to 16-year-olds does feel like, by and large, it gets to the right people. We still see local authorities spending on discretionary elements for five to 16-year-olds. For 16 to 18-year-olds, we see spend on transport rising faster than even that for five to 16-year-olds. In the period since 2015-16, spend on pre-16 SEND-related transport has risen by about 140%, so it has more than doubled. Spend on 16 to 18-year-old SEND-related transport has gone up by 170%. Although there is not a statutory duty of the same force there, local authorities are not removing that support wholesale. They are taking that broader statutory duty that they have seriously. We do, however, recognise that sometimes the provision will change for children as they get older through the system, and that local authorities may use that moment of the change in support to look at it again.

That is helpful, thank you. Particularly for those post-16, but for all children and families who engage with the system, is it easy enough to navigate at the moment? Is there more the Government could do to support with that?

Local authorities are responsible for assessing children’s eligibility for free home to school travel, and they have to publish their school travel policy on their website. We say that the policy should be clear and should enable parents to easily understand the circumstances in which their child may be eligible, and that it should be kept under review. We also say that local authorities should have an appeals process if there is uncertainty about it. We do not see very many complaints coming through to the Department about the clarity of the offer. Particularly the statutory travel distances—2 miles for primary-age and 3 miles for secondary-age children—are relatively well understood, but we are always interested in hearing whether people are finding difficulties in navigating the system. The point that was made by the previous panel, which was that it may be less clear for children who are in receipt of discretionary support, may well be right.

Is the current system doing all that it should to support and promote school attendance?

I might turn to Juliet in a moment, but we did quite a lot of work to look at whether there was an impact on attendance from challenges with home to school transport. First of all, I just want to take a moment to say how grateful we are to teachers, headteachers and parents up and down the country. We have seen 5.3 million more days attended in the last year than in the year before. There is a long road to recover attendance to where it was before the pandemic, but it is moving in the right direction both on overall attendance and on persistent absence. We did a piece of work with FFT Education Datalab to look at the relationship between absence and distance from school, which I accept is not the same as there being a transport problem. We were testing whether it looks like that is a significant factor. That suggested that, in the context of the absence challenge, it can only be considered a very minor factor. It does not appear to be a driver for absence. Again, we know that a lot of absence is driven by a complex mix of health, social and emotional factors. We know that there are also challenges in expectation. We know that there are a set of things that schools can do around belonging. We also look at the number of sessions that are coded against transport-related difficulties. Out of the total number of school sessions for the 2024-25 academic year, 0.011% were missed because of issues with transport normally provided by the local authority or the school not being available. That is of all sessions, including those that were attended. That is about 0.15% of all the sessions that were missed. Given that, in improving absence, we like to leave no stone unturned, we continue to worry about absolutely everything, but we do not think that this is the biggest issue. Juliet, is there anything that you wanted to add?

I would definitely echo your thanks to everybody who is involved in all the work to ensure that we really focus on attendance, which is an absolutely critical priority. I would add two things. One is that ensuring that we have really good live data that is available to local authorities, schools and trusts to really understand what is going on in the local area is absolutely central to our effort. We have introduced a number of new absence codes, which allow us to identify where transport is either not available or where it is disrupted, which means that local authorities can identify if there is a particular local area. As Susan has said, the overall impact in terms of lost sessions is this tiny number of 0.011%. We also look closely at, for example, where there are sessions missed within special schools, where it is 0.237%, and also at patterns such as at the beginning of terms, so that local authorities can, essentially, engage directly and understand if there is any risk of disruption and respond rapidly. This is an area that we are going to continue to want to pay close attention to.

In terms of evaluating what the new world will look like, as the previous panel spoke with great hope about, are you confident that you have sufficient data to understand the impact to take us from the current situation and the home to school transport policy, both in terms of costs and impact, to the new system once the reforms are announced?

Data is essential to understanding the challenges and pressures that we see in the system as it currently stands. We have had local authority spending data through the section 261 returns, but what we have not had was enough detailed data in terms of modes of transport and different patterns of transport. For the first time, we worked closely with local authority partners to design a data collection that went into the field in February and we then published in October. This has moved us forward materially. We are really grateful for the time and work with local authorities in terms of that return coming back. The NAO report reflected the dataset that we have built. We are in the process of updating that. We will go back for a second year. We want to continue to refine it. The return that we got had about 75% participation out of 115 local authorities. It allowed us to estimate confidently the total population of children and young people using home to school transport, but we want to continue to develop the picture, particularly in areas such as understanding the modes of transport in more detail and really looking closely in a way that will allow benchmarking local authority by local authority, because it is really important for individual local authorities with like-for-like characteristics to be able to understand what that looks like in different areas.

Is the current home to school transport system helping lower-income families to be able to exercise school choice in the same way that those who might have their own transport are able to?

When we look at the data, we see about 7% of home to school transport for pre-16s identified as being for extended rights, so the part of the overall statutory framework where children from low-income backgrounds can apply to three of their nearest suitable schools, not just the nearest suitable school in terms of transport. That 7% of total uptake reflects a relatively small story in the overall home to school transport data. Nevertheless, it is a really important part of the overall framework in terms of being able to reflect where children may want or need to be able to travel further to reflect preference within their local system.

I had just one final question, which is about breakfast clubs, which we know are a key part of the child poverty strategy and also generally improving school outcomes. At the moment, the home to school travel policy does not cover breakfast clubs as a requirement. We know that low-income families are the ones who will really benefit from breakfast clubs, so what are the plans to make sure that all children can access them and that transport is not the barrier to that?

I thank all the schools involved in our early adopter programme of 750 breakfast clubs. We have adopted what is called a test and learn approach to that. We have very deliberately been wanting to understand and build our approach to the Government’s overall commitment to offer breakfast clubs in every state-funded school with primary-aged pupils, so the initial early adopters have given us a real insight. That represents schools in a whole range of areas with different characteristics. The expectations on those schools are that parents and carers can use the breakfast offer to drop off early, that the child can access that provision, and that parents are supported in being able to get to work. I visited a breakfast club recently, which was absolutely an example of that offer in practice. We are looking closely at the way in which home to school transport interacts with this. We see case studies, drawing on a particular early adopter special school, where, previously, you would have seen children waiting in the car park, in their transportation, for school to start, and this is enabling them to join and be part of that breakfast club. This is an area that we will continue to monitor, as we want to make sure that breakfast clubs are really successful.

Will that eventually become a statutory entitlement?

The overall framework continues to be that parents and carers take the opportunity to use the breakfast club as it is currently made, but we will want to make sure that we are looking at whether there are barriers currently.

The transport element will become a statutory entitlement, presumably, if the breakfast club is an entitlement.

As Juliet has said, we are taking a test and learn approach to this, and advising Ministers. Any change of policy has to be for Ministers, and we would not want to use this Committee to pre-empt that.

I have one or two questions arising out of that, I am afraid. First, Susan, you said that, for post-16s, there is still a statutory duty to ensure that transport is not a barrier to somebody attending further education. That is all very well, but, if a local authority does not have the money, that is why they have had to introduce these discretionary systems. On the one hand, they have a duty to do it. On the other, they do not have the money. How are they supposed to deal with this?

As I say, when we look at the data, we find that the spend on transport for 16 to 18-year-olds is still going up, not down. It is worth saying that.

In a rural area such as mine, it is bound to go up.

The second thing is that—again, you heard from the panel before—we see a lot of work being done across authorities to think really hard about what the right balance is between more transport, more support for travel, and particularly developing independence. That is particularly important when you are talking about young people aged 16 to 19. First, we see that patterns of travel for everybody aged between 16 and 19 are much more widespread, because there is a much wider choice of settings. Young people, as they become more independent, are much more likely to want to make a choice based on exactly the right provision for them, which might mean significantly longer distances, but also that it is increasingly right for them to make the trade-off between the challenge of travel and the rightness of the provision. That makes it hard to produce a blanket duty. Councillor Hopgood, in answering your questions about this, said—and she was completely right—that you cannot have a one-size-fits-all. You have to really think about how this suits the young person. For that reason, it is not inappropriate to have a different framework post-16, where the statutory duty is about making sure that no young person is prevented from attending, rather than having a blanket set of entitlements, because the risk is that you would have to frame those entitlements in a way that constrained where children and young people could go. The critical thing is that you are also thinking about that 16-to-18 period as preparing children and young people for adulthood, and so shifting towards more independent modes of travel through that period is appropriate, particularly given that some of their peers are in work.

That is a very interesting answer. I agree with a lot of the sentiment of what you said. We will want to look at how well it is working, and we may well want to come back to that. Secondly, you quite rightly praised parents and children for the drop in absenteeism, and quite rightly made the point that this school to home transport, if that is what we want to call it, has very little effect on this. I read in the statistics somewhere in the NAO report—I cannot find it now—that, within the last fortnight, one in 20 pupils has been absent, which I find a shocking statistic. That might be historic, but is it coming down?

Yes. The overall absence rate is coming down. The persistent absence rate, which is the proportion of pupils who have missed more than one day in a fortnight, is also coming down. In the last full year for which we have data it was 6.9%, compared to 7.2% in 2023-24. The statistic that has not moved downwards yet is the severe absence rate. When we track backwards, it lags the persistent absence stat. It is very difficult to be severely absent if you have not previously been persistently absent. Severe absence is children missing more than half of their education. It is a little bit over 2% at the moment. That is the one that has not yet turned the corner. We are working incredibly hard with colleagues across the system on this. If it behaves as it has in the past, it will track, with a lag, the shift that we have seen in persistent absence. The fact that persistent absence is going down is both a good thing in itself and a sign of hope for that severe absence number, but we have not seen it move downward. We are focusing on all of it because they all link to each other, but that is the real area of concern.

We may well want to come back to you on that.

I am sorry, Chair. Can I just correct one thing? I said the statutory walking distance was 2 miles for primary age. That is not right. That is for the under-8s. It is eight-year-olds. I just wanted to correct that immediately.

Thank you. Can I come back to you? This Committee is very keen on data. It seems to me that collecting data on a more granular and consistent basis would give you the opportunity to analyse what authorities do well and what they do not do well. I will take you to page 49, paragraph 28 in the appendix. Quoting from the paragraph there, it says that you collect the basic data well, but “the dataset has several limitations. At most, 115 local authorities submitted responses to individual questions, and response rates varied across the dataset”. Surely the answer is to make what they have to supply to you absolutely mandatory, in a consistent form, and make sure all local authorities supply it.

This is the first year that we have put the data together. We saw a 75% response rate. For the first time, we have been able to use that to put together a robust estimate in terms of numbers of children accessing home to school transport. There were data quality issues. It was the first time that local authorities were engaging with the question set. We saw questions being interpreted differently. It is interesting. As you get into the detail of this, you discover different interpretations of exactly what a single occupancy vehicle is. We needed to make sure we get those question sets right and get the responses absolutely consistent, as well as inevitably picking up some data quality issues as we went. We have just confirmed that we will proceed with the second year of the data collection. We are working closely with the sector in terms of how to make sure that we get a really strong response back. I fully anticipate we will get a higher rate of response. We will continue to look at making it mandatory. We are always thoughtful about when we ask for data from the system because it comes with a cost and a burden. One of the things that we are thinking about is whether, in a modern context, there are easier and better ways with which to engage with the sector in terms of being able to access data through, for example, management information systems. There is huge variation in that. You heard from the witness earlier in terms of being able to access that type of data effectively and in the most straightforward way. We will want to keep the question of whether to make it mandatory under review.

When I read that paragraph, it struck me—I might be wrong about this—that the ones who are not supplying the data are probably the ones who need help the most. There probably needs to be an element of compulsion. Otherwise, they will never supply the data.

We will continue to look closely at this question. We want to have the most comprehensive dataset and we want to make sure that we get the way in which we access the data as proportionate and effective as possible.

Just on that, Geoffrey, in 1.21 it says, “Available data show that 143 of the 153 local authorities with a duty to provide home to school transport have increased real terms spending on home to school transport over the past eight years”. If there is a duty to provide the data, I am assuming that only 115 responded to you, and the rest of that data is data that you have just collected from their website or other sources. I cannot understand why there is a note about 143 responses in one part of this report and 115 in another. Can I just get some clarity on where the remaining number above the 115 is?

I did not catch your first reference.

In 1.21 on page 19, it says, “Available data show that 143 of the 153 local authorities”, and then in paragraph 28 in appendix 1 it says that 115 have responded.

We are talking about two different data sources. In the first instance, we are talking about expenditure information that comes through section 251 returns. The second is the data collection that we have introduced for the first time, which captures individual-level modes of transport and eligibility-type data. Those are two different returns.

That is perfectly fine. Thank you for clarifying that. In terms of my questions, I am going to look particularly at cost and demand drivers. Figure 4 in the report indicates the demand driver, for those in the audience. It clearly shows that SEND from 0 to 16 has doubled from 2015 to 2023, and it is similar for 16 to 18 and 19 to 25. One of the things that is not mentioned in this report is that the overall school population in secondary schools has increased during that period. Should there have been reference to the fact that the school population in secondary schools has gone up from 3.1 million to around 3.4 million over the course of this period? Would that explain why mainstream transport costs have increased?

Again, it depends what period you look across, but we have seen increases in mainstream transport expenditure that are a little bit higher than the increase in pupil numbers, but they are not an order of magnitude different. It is always really useful to look at the population change alongside the statistics. I agree that it is really helpful to have that contextualisation. As I say, when we look at the drivers, pupil numbers is one. We see things such as fuel costs and wage costs being cited by authorities, but by far and away the biggest driver of cost in the system as a whole is SEND provision. It relates to the number of children travelling longer distances and somewhat to the type of transport and the cost of that transport. Again, just to get a bit of framing, if we look at the percentage of pupils who travel more than 3 miles to school, in primary school it is about 5%. For those travelling to a mainstream secondary school, about 17% travel more than 3 miles. If you have an EHCP, it is 28%. That is whether you are in a special school or a mainstream school. If you are in a state-funded special school, it is 34%. It is intimately related to SEND and to the distance you are travelling, which is why there are a large number of things we can do that are specific to travel and transport to address this problem. Fundamentally, if we can succeed in the SEND reforms, particularly in the aim that Ministers have set for more children to be able to attend an inclusive local school that is nearby, that is the single thing that we can do that will make the biggest difference.

In some ways, you have answered some of the questions that I have, which is brilliant. You are exactly correct. The market pressures have been highlighted in 2.20 to 2.22. There is a shortage of drivers, rising costs around transport operators, licensing restrictions and so on. You might have the answer to my next question. SEND prices are rising. Do you have the detail on the cost of SEND students attending mainstream schools versus attending specialist schools? You have rightly said that that is a point, in some ways, as a response to my previous question, but I am going to try to delve into a deeper level of analysis.

Do you have it, Juliet? I do not have the split out for SEND students between SEND attending mainstream and SEND attending special in cost terms. I do have the figures I have just given you on distance. For pupils with an EHCP going to any state school, which will include the children in mainstream, 28% are travelling more than 3 miles. In a state-funded special school, about 34% are travelling more than 3 miles. When we look at the cost data, if you looked at independent special schools, it is harder to collect and it is smaller numbers, but it would be highly likely to be higher again.

Could I ask that we perhaps have that data? That might be useful for us.

Yes. Permanent Secretary, would it be possible to provide that data? Would you have that data?

We would need to do some analysis to bring two different datasets together. We would potentially be able to share something on that basis.

We would be happy to look at what we can do on that.

If you can, we would be grateful. I accept that they are smaller numbers and therefore you have to go across a lot of local authorities.

I also accept that there will be likely higher costs for SEND students attending specialist schools because they potentially have greater need requirements. I am just interested to see whether that is a particular area where we are seeing a dramatic increase over time. If that is the case, measures may need to be specifically targeted at specialist intervention schools as opposed to looking at SEND as an overall cohort. I do not know. That is a question that I have.

Yes. We can look at cost range. The other breakdown that we have is around mode of transport. We can certainly see the distinctions there. Do you want to add something, Juliet?

On mode of transport—the data has enabled us to look more closely at this—we can see the pattern of provision. As part of the growth in the number of children accessing specialist schools travelling further, we have also seen an increase in journeys where children are going further afield and an increase in individual journeys. One of the things that we want to work with local authorities on—you heard about it from your expert witnesses earlier—is route optimisation, effective sharing of transport and support for specialist vehicles that are appropriate for the child’s needs. Nevertheless, that needs to be planned in a way that reflects the pattern of local provision. As Susan says, our stated intent for SEND reform overall is to be in a position where children are able to access really high-quality provision more locally and not travel such significant distances.

In case this helps, I can do the proportion of pre-16 pupils receiving LA-funded transport by type of school attended. You will just have to bear with me while I do this. In order to make it make any sense at all, you need to know what proportion of total children are in those schools. Otherwise, it is very odd. Imagine you have all the children who are getting local authority-funded transport for SEND reasons pre-16. Imagine that there are 100 of them, to represent the percentage. About 7% of those children are in primary mainstream schools in early years. That compares to about half the total pupil population; it is 50.8% of the total pupil population. If we go back to our 100 kids, 12 of them, 12%, attend a secondary mainstream school. That compares to 40.4% of children across the system who attend a secondary mainstream school. If we go back to our group of children who are getting pre-16 SEND home to school transport, 61% of them are in state-funded special schools. In many ways, that is not surprising, because this is a group of children who are getting support with SEND transport. Of the total pupil population, that is about 1.7%, so 1.7% of pupils attend state-funded special schools, but those attending state-funded special schools make up 61% of those getting SEND transport. Pupils attending independent special schools make up 16% of those getting SEND-related home school transport. Approximately 0.3% of the total pupil population go to independent special schools. I know it is a bit of a confusing way to do it, but that is what I have.

Well done.

That is really helpful data. We would love to see that more. That level of analysis shows you that state-funded special schools and independent schools are taking a significant chunk of the budget, and therefore interventions possibly need to be targeted at those particular schools. If I may, I will move on to the second question, because this links to reducing SEND transport costs. We can see in the report that councils are trying different things. We have a bidding process by which they are looking at reducing the number of suppliers. Some councils are purchasing fleets in-house, which they are then sharing with other services. Some councils are very urban-contained. My council, Medway, is a very urban area. Geographically speaking, it is 15 miles wide. Kent county council next door is hugely rural. They have very different challenges. Because of this plethora approach, are we getting the worst of both worlds? Some councils are learning the right lessons, but a lot are not and are therefore subject to the market exploitation that might be happening around costs.

I will say something very briefly and then I might bring in Juliet. I might also bring in Nico to talk a little bit about integration and how this relates to some of the bus franchising work, which was raised earlier but is very relevant here. There are new tools available to local authorities as a result of the Bill that we think might be helpful, particularly for those children who could potentially travel independently if a bus was available. You are right. We see a really wide range of approaches being taken. We see restructuring organisations; integrating transport decisions and SEND processes better; reviews of routing and route optimisation, which was being talked about earlier; dynamic bidding systems; some councils have gone for in-house fleets, which does not make sense everywhere; or the use of personal travel budgets. There has been quite a lot of work to try to make sure that good practice is spread. There is a real balance. As you say, different things will work in different contexts. There is a perennial challenge for government, local and central, to think about best practice and work out when the right answer is, “That really will not work here because it really is different”, and when actually people can learn or borrow more than they think at first glance. We have been trying to work on best practice with ADEPT and others. ADEPT produced a very good toolkit in 2023, which looks at all the approaches that have been taken and lists some of the savings possible. We have to keep going on that sharing of good practice and trying to quantify for people how much difference it makes. The data collection work will help us do that as well.

I would just add two things. First, there is a very live conversation in local government in terms of sharing good practice. We have a twice-monthly session on this, and we always get over 100 local authorities participating in it. We work really closely with ADEPT and ATCO. As you say, the toolkit has had a lot of take-up. It is quoted in the NAO report in terms of the types of interventions. We also see that the spend patterns and patterns of provision vary significantly, reflecting the different types of distance requirements. Some of the higher-spending local authorities are counties with high levels of rurality, which is reflected in the distances. The type of transport planning may look different in a large county than in an urban area, where you do not have the same set of questions to work through. It is about how you identify really good practice and how you ensure that the community can come together to anticipate it, but the like-for-like data also helps with benchmarking and puts more power in the commissioner’s hands in terms of thinking about things such as dynamic purchasing models or using route optimisation software in a way that reflects that. Local authorities are thinking quite carefully about questions like bringing their fleet in-house or indeed buying vehicles that special schools can use that reflect their circumstances. Again, there is not a single size that fits all. You want a really strong local plan and to make sure that is updated regularly.

Your previous witnesses mentioned this, but mayoral authorities or strategic authorities are gaining power over bus franchising and strategic transport in their area. Where bus networks cross different local authorities, there are opportunities for mayoral or strategic authorities to play a role and to look at how their existing franchises work.

I just have one last question, if I may. This question is about any future risk. At present, school transport is provided from the age of five to 16. It is also provided for 19-plus as a statutory requirement. Is there a risk that at some point we might get challenged as a Department on why you are not providing transport from 16 to 18?

It is certainly something that is raised. The duty post-19 is very different from the five-to-16 duty. It applies to a very small subset of young people who are not in higher education or most conventional types of further education. It is people for whom education has been specifically arranged by the local authority as part of their EHCP. There is a slight peculiarity. Although it is extremely small and very targeted—much more targeted than the five-to-16 duty—there is a requirement that, if the local authority is doing that, it is free. That is different from the 16-to-18 duty, which is broader but is more about not having a system that prevents people from attending education, which does not specify that it has to be free. Again, most authorities will think very carefully about that. You heard from your previous witnesses. Contact, which was represented on your earlier panel, has a campaign on this at the moment. We are talking to them about it. Again, Ministers will listen to that. We should always be ready to look at these things and keep them carefully under review. For the reasons that I gave earlier in response to the previous question, it is right that we think differently about 16 to 19 from the five-to-16 bit of the system. The post-19 duty really is a much smaller group of generally profoundly disabled young people. It is a bit different.

At the heart of the work that we are doing on SEND reform at the moment—again, one of your earlier witnesses talked about this very powerfully—is our belief that it is incredibly important that we are working through, developing and testing our proposals for the reform of the SEND system with the people who it will affect the most: young people and their families. Along with our expert advisers, Dame Christine Lenehan and Tom Rees, and in partnership with the Council for Disabled Children, we are hosting a set of SEND engagement events across the country at the moment. That started last week. We have had the first national event. There are events in every region. I would encourage anybody watching this for whom this is an issue to join one of those events. We have lots of information on gov.uk about how to join and where to find them. We really want to make sure we are doing this with people and not to them. That is the first thing that I would say.

The Secretary of State has set out a range of principles that she wants to use for the reforms. The support should be early, local, fair, effective and shared. We are going to be working through those principles and what they might mean at the reform events. It is important that we are not just presenting things to people and asking them to react. If you just give people the question or the problem, it can be quite difficult to engage with. We are trying to get the balance right. We want to shape around those principles, including starting to share options or things that we might think about. In a sense, that is exactly why we are trying to do some of the engagement before we produce the White Paper, because at that point you have a thing. It will be important that we have a formal consultation afterwards as well, but we want to do the shaping in advance of the production of the White Paper. That is what is going on now. In terms of the point about what is making the difference now, we are trying to make sure that we are doing things that will help in the meantime. We have a really clear principle, which is about early intervention and more local support. We want to improve the inclusivity of our mainstream schools. We want to improve the experience that children have in them and the expertise that is there. We have been working through the expert advisory group for a year. They have been doing a lot of work with schools on things that we can do now. I hesitate to call them no-brainers, but there are some things that are not going to change through the process of consultation that we know will help make mainstream schools more inclusive, and we should just get on with them. We are working through our RISE advisers to work with mainstream schools and help them become more inclusive. We have thought about that quite carefully as we published the curriculum and assessment review. We have asked Ofsted to hold leaders to account for inclusion. They have set out an explicit focus on inclusion in their new framework. That is now in operation across schools. We can see that starting to make a difference to the kind of questions that people across the system are asking and the good practice that they are seeking and sharing between them. I can talk more, but that is a key bit of framing on what we are doing now.

I will bring in Juliet in a minute. There is a balance here. There is a set of fundamental systemic reforms that we need to think about. We really have to think about every possible option here. If we are going to do what we have all said that we want to do, which is to do this in a participative way, we cannot start to do some of these things before we have had participation in the conversation. I know that is awkward, but it is true. There are other things that we can start, and indeed have started now. We have put an additional £740 million of high-needs capital into the system in 2025-26. It is an un-ringfenced formulaic allocation that enables local authorities to build provision in line with local priorities. In particular, that will allow local authorities that have capacity restrictions in the state-funded system to build out more provision, which will allow them to offer more places and reduce the use of what tend to be both the most expensive and most distant placements in the system. As I have talked about in this Committee before, we have work going on jointly with the Department of Health and Social Care. I would pick out two particular programmes. First, partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools is a programme that has been working with about 10% of primary schools to look at particular work that can be done to improve the inclusion of children with ASD, which is one of the most rapidly rising types of need. Again, anything that we can do that helps local schools meet needs better is good for transport costs and for children. The other programme that I would pull out is ELSEC, which is an early speech and language support programme. That is one of the most rapidly rising types of needs. We are trying to do things that are focused on those areas where the need is growing, and we are not waiting to do those. They are in process and being worked on now.

Could I briefly come in on capital? Capital is an important part of this. We need to make it available to local authorities and they need to consider how to use capital to create specialist places closer to home. As Susan said, we estimate that the £740 million of high-needs capital in 2025-26 will enable us to create an additional 10,000 specialist places. We are really interested in making sure that there are places within local mainstream schools through the use of what is called SEND units and resource bases. We are really interested in how we make sure that we have really effective high-quality practice within that type of provision as well as within local areas. There will continue to be the need for special schools for the children with the most complex needs. We need to make sure that in local areas we have that pattern of provision.

More generally, not necessarily specifically on SEND, the funding reforms that we are bringing forward for local government are going to better allocate funding to local authorities based on need. That includes a new formula on home to school transport. That will be in place from April 2026. It will make a big difference. At the Budget, the Government confirmed that, once the statutory override ends in 2028-29, local authorities will not bear the ongoing costs. That is an immediate and very important thing for local government. They still need to be very acutely on top of their budgets and do everything that they can to improve outcomes and bring down costs, but those actions, ahead of SEND reform, will make things better for most people in local government.

I always aspire for things to improve immediately.

Tomorrow will be soon enough.

We want to improve things as fast as we can.

Nico, can I just come back on that answer on the revision of the funding formula for local government? If you look at the table—I do not know whether you have had this—on local authorities covered by members of this Committee, it looks on the face of it very clear that it costs considerably more for rural authorities to provide home to school transport than urban authorities. I suspect they are not being reimbursed anything like that amount. Will the formula reflect the actual cost that they incur?

Let me talk about what we have done generally across the local government finance settlement. Juliet might want to come in on the home to school transport formula. Within the overall funding settlement and the overall revision of the formulas, we are confident that we are capturing the needs of all authorities, both rural and urban. The first thing that we are doing is updating all the underlying data. Unbelievably, we are still using data from the 1970s. That will end from April 2026. Particularly for rural authorities—I am sorry; this is a bit techy—we are making changes to the area cost adjustment, which underpins all the formulas, including the home to school transport formula. That accounts for the differences in hiring people and the difference in travel costs. This is even more technical; I am sorry. Previously, we looked at everything based on straight-line maps. If the distance was 4 miles, you would get an allocation based on it being 4 miles. We are now looking at how long it actually takes to drive. If you are in an urban area and 4 miles takes two hours, that will be better reflected. If you are in a rural area and you are having to drive down roads on which you can travel less fast, that will also be accounted for. Overall, we are confident that rural areas are picked up. Crucially, the index of multiple deprivation—there is an updated formula for 2025—looks at every single part of the country at a lower super output area, which covers areas between 300 and 1,000 homes. That means we are properly taking account of deprivation and rurality in the overall formulas. Juliet might want to add on the home to school transport formula.

It is essentially the approach that you have described, in terms of updating it with a bespoke formula that, for the first time, reflects distance in the way that Nico has described. There are two elements to how the home to school transport formula works. First, mainstream home to school transport uses per-pupil data from the National Pupil Database. It identifies pupils who are assumed to be eligible based on their statutory walking distances and then it adjusts from that postcode to the nearest school. Indeed, if there is a wiggly line of a big country lane on the way there, it reflects that rather than just the straight-line distance. Through the consultation, we were initially going to cap at 20 miles. We have now increased that to 50 miles, reflecting the concern that there will be children who are travelling greater distances and the formula should take account of that. SEND home to school transport uses the total compulsory school-age population, multiplies that by the average distance travelled by EHCP pupils and weights it more heavily, reflecting the cost of SEND transport because it is more specialist than mainstream transport. It is worth saying that in the consultation we did receive a range of different views from urban and rural areas. The particular emphasis on distance and adjusting the cap on distance means that in the mainstream formula there were essentially no journeys that were more than 50 miles. We think that large counties and very rural areas are now captured within that formula.

This is the first time that we have ever had a formula specifically for home to school transport. That reflects very close working with the sector. There are only seven formulas, and one of them is home to school, despite it only representing about 3.2% of local government spend. We recognise that it is an important issue for some authorities.

Thank you. That is very helpful.

Mr Heslop, I just wanted to follow up on what is happening to SEND funding once the statutory override ends. More specifically, deficits have been accrued by local authorities. What is happening to the debt that they have accrued?

On the deficits specifically, we will set out more information in the provisional local government settlement, which will be next week, and the final provisional settlement in February. At the Budget, we have said that, as a Government, we recognise that local government cannot deal with the existing deficits by themselves. That was a very important set of words. As I said, we are working very closely with DfE. We will set out a bit more detail next week and then the final answer on it will come in February alongside the provisional settlement.

Just to follow that up, the statutory override provision ends at the end of the next financial year, does it not?

No, the statutory override continues until 2028-29.

It ends in March 2028.

It is March 2028; sorry.

There are two more years. At the end of that, you are going to have to find a way to help local authorities deal with the debts they have built up.

We have said two slightly separate things in the Budget. First, for existing deficits—deficits that have already been accrued—we recognise, as I was just saying, that local authorities cannot deal with those on their own. We will set out more detail on what the Government propose to do through the local government settlement. To your question, it is likely—the OBR has put a set of projections on it—that deficits will still continue to increase. When the override comes to an end, we will need to deal with that at that time. We will do almost phase 1 at the provisional settlement, and then there will need to be further action once the override ends.

What about the next two years, if more deficits build up?

We are dealing with the current deficits. As the others build up, we will need to look across Government, but we are clear that local authorities cannot manage the deficits on their own.

That is a bit like open season to local authorities, is it not?

No, it is definitely not. It is definitely not open season for local government.

The wording “cannot deal with them on their own” is quite important. We see this as a shared responsibility. As I say, we will set out a bit more on how the deficits will be managed. Some of that will be part of the provisional settlement and some will be part of the final settlement, exactly as Nico has said. Local authorities should not be hopeful that this might mean they can rack up an unlimited deficit and Government will shoulder it. Not that surprisingly, we are not proposing that that should be the arrangement.

There are three different stages, then. The first is the deficits that have already been built up; the second is the deficits that might be built up in the next two years; and the third is what happens after then. That will all be sorted out in this year’s settlement, will it?

No. This year’s settlement will focus on the current deficits, as they stand.

It will focus on current deficits. It will set the principle for further deficits that arise. Again, I do not want to show too much leg ahead of Ministers, because that is never a good thing, but the principle that this is a shared problem is what underlies the analysis. We want to make sure it really is a shared problem. As central Government, we need to be incentivised to make sure we are creating a system that is operable for everybody; local government needs to remain incentivised to operate that system as well as they possibly can.

Come the beginning of the next financial year, will local authorities know what is going to happen to any overspend on SEND in the next financial year?

They will very much hope that by the time of the next financial year they will have a clear policy on SEND in the longer term, and that they will have an answer on what happens with their existing deficits. As Susan said, they will have the principles for what happens with any overspends in future.

That will include the next financial year. Local authorities will know what it means for them if they overspend in the next financial year.

Yes, I think they will know—

This is a bit unclear, is it not? We are talking about a financial year that is only four months away.

We are just being careful not to go ahead of ministerial announcements.

I am not asking you to say what the announcement will be. Will there be an announcement that gives local authorities clarity for the next financial year.

They will have clarity in the local government finance settlement.

Will they have clarity by next week?

They will have more help next week and clarity in February in the local government finance settlement.

They will know before the financial year begins.

Yes.

Just for the record, we want to be very clear that these deficits are only those that are caused by the statutory override and SEND, not any other reasons for accumulating deficits.

Yes, absolutely.

It is helpful to get that on the record. Just coming back to an issue that has been pursued before, Permanent Secretary, about the desire that most of us would absolutely share to get kids, wherever possible, educated in their local schools—not just a mainstream school but their local school—because that means that kids with particular needs are with their fellows, who they probably go out and play with of an evening, in the same community and their parents can get into school easier. All of these are important things. I was at one of my local schools, Waterthorpe, last week. It is a small infant school. The head was saying that they have 108 pupils and 40 of them have special needs. The level of special needs determines whether you get any extra funding. You have to have particularly severe needs to get extra funding beyond the basic level for SEND kids. She was saying that the problem now is that the school is in a significant deficit because they are not getting any extra funding for those kids, which is putting them in a position where they have to start sacking staff, refusing kids with special needs or taking educational provision away from the other kids in what is a relatively deprived community. This needs sorting out, does it not?

You illustrate really well some of the challenges with the system as it is shaped at the moment and why we have a reform programme running.

To encourage local schools to take kids with special needs, which we want to see, there needs to be some extra provision to reflect the extra cost of those children to those schools, does there not?

If we look around the world at the most inclusive systems that successfully incorporate children into mainstream settings, they absolutely try to make sure there is funding for inclusion going to mainstream schools. Interestingly, they tend to think about that in a cohort-based way more than at the individual level because that helps them predict and plan for that need. There is a distinction to be made around need that is common enough across the system that you could make a plan for it before you know exactly what children you have in your school. There is lots of work going on about how we can meet more children’s needs using funding to incentivise schools to behave in inclusive ways without necessarily relying on as many people as possible going through what can be quite an adversarial individual-based system.

I get that. Currently, each school gets a £6,000 allocation to reflect children with special education needs in that school, but the numbers vary enormously between schools, do they not?

Yes. Again, we have talked about this in previous hearings. The £6,000 is a notional figure. We fund schools, as you know, based on pupil numbers and a set of characteristics including low prior attainment and free school meals, both of which proxy quite well for SEND incidence in the community. We then say, notionally, “You should have available about the first £6,000 of any need in your budget”. We do not give them the £6,000 as a separate funding stream. That means it is not very visible to the school or the parent that that funding should be spent on those issues. We need to look at that really hard as part of the reform. In terms of variation, you have two challenges. The level of need in different schools varies, but at the moment the school has a very powerful role in determining what need is identified. You also have to take care that you do not create a system that incentivises the school to identify as many children as possible.

An incentive to identify the needs that children have and deal with them properly ought to be something that is encouraged.

Yes, absolutely. It should be more about that than about how you describe the need. There is a reason that this problem has not been solved by people immediately.

There is a challenge there, but at least the problem is recognised as something that needs addressing.

Yes.

Whenever we have these meetings, there are always two things that are lacking. One is data and the other is strategy, for obvious reasons, because you cannot have strategy without data. I am delighted that Rose McArthur, who was a witness here earlier, had a quiet word in my ear and told me that Phil Curd, an officer in Somerset council, which is run by the Liberal Democrats, is absolutely exceptional in his data management, which makes life for my constituents in west Somerset, including Stogursey, a lot better than it would be otherwise. This is my question to you. Will you work with local authorities to improve data quality?

Yes. I know you like a brief answer.

Will you compel them, though? That is much more the question. We have been there before. We do not want to go back there again. Rachel, are you done?

Yes, that is it. That was great—come again.

We had a little go on data earlier on.

I am keen to understand how the Department for Education is working with the Department for Transport—especially given the Bus Services Act—and other bodies so that those local transport initiatives that are being explored reduce reliance on home to school transport. There is an example from my own area in Buckinghamshire of a service that was provided for statutory reasons being removed once the statutory element reduced and it became no longer cost-effective. Once it was removed, those individual children had support, but the rest of the cohort that were not entitled to support had to rely on a commercial service that got them to school about three hours earlier than they needed to be there. Some joined-up thinking would have been welcome in my area this time last year. What work are you currently doing with the DfT and others?

We work really closely with DfT to make sure it is thinking about transport to school and education settings as they develop long-term strategies, and to ensure that we are helping to support good quality join-up. I will just say a few things, and then Juliet might want to come in. We have talked a little bit about bus franchising. As a result of the Bus Services Act, as well as the shift on franchising, there is also a measure on socially necessary services so that local authorities and bus operators have to have regard to that kind of social necessity.

Does access to school count as a social necessity?

The DfT is going to publish non-statutory guidance, which will help transport authorities determine services as socially necessary. What I was going to say was that we are working with them closely as they develop that guidance. That is exactly the sort of thing that we should be working on with them. We know that franchising powers can help local authorities to do much better joined-up planning around things such as identifying routes where additional provision could help to reduce reliance on other more expensive forms of transport. Going back to the issue of good practice in local authorities that we were talking about earlier, we have seen some really good practice. Some local authorities are looking in a much more integrated way at their transport and SEND provision and joining up between those teams. We know that that makes quite a big difference. There are other things. We do a lot of work with DfT on sustainable travel. Again, we know that supporting active travel, including walking and cycling, can make a really big difference to accessibility for children. The DfT allocated a bit more than £600 million for Active Travel England from 2026-27 to 2029-30. That is supporting local authorities to build and maintain walking and cycling infrastructure. That benefits the whole community, but it can make a really big difference to children’s travel to school. Again, unsafe routes are still a trigger for entitlement. If the route is unsafe, of course you want the child to get transport provision, but surely what would be better for the community as a whole is to try to make the route safer. That brings a benefit to everybody. Wherever we can, we are working with DfT on active travel. We work with them on Bikeability. I went to a fantastic HAF programme where they were training children to ride bicycles. Particularly for secondary-age children, that significantly extends the range of what is reasonable to do and promotes independence.

You have said a lot. We work really closely with DfT at a strategic level in terms of making sure the local transport authority is thinking about transport integration alongside education. As part of our post-16 White Paper, we referenced the importance of making sure that local planning was integrating transport as part of inclusion and accessibility. As you say, on the sustainability side, part of the home to school transport legislation explicitly identifies that local authorities should be promoting the use of sustainable transport. That points to the schemes that we see schools really benefiting from in terms of sustainable travel, accreditation for Bikeability, safer streets initiatives outside schools, encouraging the confidence to walk safely and, as Susan says, reducing some of those unsafe routes with infrastructure.

Who leads on those initiatives that you were just talking about? Is it DfE, DfT or somebody else? Does it depend?

Active Travel England is the Government’s executive agency responsible for wheeling, walking and cycling. ATE is an executive agency of DfT. They will be leading on those initiatives, but we will be working with them to make sure that we are thinking about that in an integrated way.

A lot of this is just really good-quality partnership. I will just take a couple of examples. In 2024-25, Active Travel England’s walk to school outreach programme worked with more than 1,000 schools. We think it encouraged about 320,000 children to walk, wheel or cycle to school. As part of that, they encouraged schools to do a school route audit, where they look at the routes to school and how they could be improved. That is generally about bringing in local people to say what would make a difference to how they feel about their child going to school through some of those routes. That is often then shared with the local authority and results in capital investment. That is join-up not just between us, DfT and Active Travel England but at the local level as well. I have a couple of case studies. The first is Ash Green Primary Academy in Halifax. Calderdale council made improvements to footways, crossings and the nearby play area in response to the route audit that was done. In Bury, a primary school increased active travel by more than 50 percentage points because their route audit led to the installation of a school street. I am sure many of us have been fined for parking in them at the wrong time, but they are great at encouraging parents to feel more confident about their child going to school. That is where you block the street off and make it pedestrianised at drop-off times. They also established official park and stride locations, where you can drop your children and they can walk in together, and the installation of scooter and cycle parking facilities. It is a partnership.

My original question was about buses, and I am conscious that we have strayed into routes being made available where you would not need a bus. There are parts of the country where walking simply is not the option. I am not sure I am clear on how you are working with partners, using the new Bus Services Act that is coming in, to improve things for the various schools around the country and for pupils and families. I am not sure I fully understand what you are proactively doing as a Department.

I am sorry; I heard “partnerships with the Department for Transport”. We have a wide range of partnerships with them. As I say, the key thing is working with them on the non-statutory guidance for local transport authorities on socially necessary routes, but it is also about supporting both MCAs and the partnerships between MCAs and local authorities to make sure that, in thinking about bus franchising more widely, they are incorporating and looking at the planning that they can do to make sure those routes serve schools well. Currently, they may well be spending on bespoke transport, but, exactly as in your example, a more widely available bus route might both help them to reduce spend on dedicated school transport and provide a better service for others in the community. That is absolutely critical. We are encouraging local transport authorities to consider transport to school and education settings in the local transport plans. We are asking them to work with education departments to ensure joined-up planning locally. There is a new connectivity tool that can support that by helping them assess access to schools as part of wider connectivity considerations. As I say, we are continuing to work very closely with them as they develop the guidance.

I want to talk about NEETs now. For anybody who does not know the jargon, NEETs are young people who are not in education, employment or training. What changes to transport will help to reduce the number of young people that are NEET?

Fundamentally, we see two really key challenges in the NEET figures that have recently come out. We always worry about the proportion of children in education and training, but that proportion, particularly for the 16-to-18 age group, is holding up reasonably well. The thing that has been driving NEET numbers has been the proportion of young people who are economically inactive. We also have seen shifts in unemployment, but they are not as extensive as the ones in economic inactivity. Transport is something that improves access to the labour market. If you have good transport, you have better access to the labour market. We see transport as critical to making sure young people can access education and training, although, as I say, that is not what is driving the NEET rate increases that we are seeing at the moment. It is more this economic inactivity piece. We also think it is relevant to unemployment. On economic inactivity, it is a bit harder to work out what the role of transport is. It may be more about what we are doing to make sure young people are not getting to the age of 16 or 18 feeling like they are disempowered and not able to enter the labour market. There may be some transport component in that. It is not quite as clear as the transport component in access to education and training or access to employment.

It would be useful if you could do some work around that. Certainly, in my constituency, I would bet my bottom dollar that the reason many young people are not in education, employment or training is because they do not have transport. It is an absolutely key issue all over the patch. Could you delve into that and get some data? If you did it on a regional basis, I suspect you would get more insights than if you just focus on urban areas. That would be super-helpful, because it could help rural MPs lobby really effectively on behalf of our young and most vulnerable constituents. That would be good. If you could do that, that would be great.

This question will hopefully be a quick one. The bus franchising legislation has been mentioned a number of times in this and the previous session. Do you see any risk associated with this in terms of budget or anything else? It sounds great. It looks like it could be really helpful, but is it going to be?

Carefully trained though I am, as an accounting officer, to see risk everywhere, this is, broadly speaking, in my “opportunities” bucket rather than my “risks” bucket.

That is exactly right.

That is really encouraging to hear.

I did raise this with the previous panel, but several of our evidence providers talked about the independent travel training policy. Is this something that you pay close attention to? Can it bring about improvements?

Yes. What comes through in the good practice is that there are a number of local authorities that see independent travel training as a promising piece of the landscape. It still looks like a rather small piece of the landscape at the moment, but it is something that we should pay attention to, particularly because it sits in that space where it supports both travel to school and, as one of the previous witnesses put it beautifully, independent children who grow up to become independent adults. It is something that we have been looking at it, but it is right for you to prompt us to keep looking at it and for us to work with local government partners on what would support that to be done more and more effectively. Again, at a very simple level, if we can equip children and young people to travel independently with confidence, that is, in itself, a skill for the rest of life.

I am sorry that I am flitting about a bit, but we had another piece of evidence from the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, which says, “In 11% of our upheld cases, the ombudsman found a council refusing to provide transport to a named school in an EHCP plan on the basis that there was a nearer suitable school”. Is the naming of suitable schools something that we want to be looking at? In essence, it must be right that a child or a pupil is educated as near to home as possible. I am wondering whether this is something that we really need to look at.

We look closely at the current pattern of tribunal rulings and what that tells us about the current system. One of the areas we are looking at closely in the context of non-statutory guidance support to local authorities is how we can make sure we have really effective join-up between transport and education. The role of the LA SEND caseworker is about making sure that transport is included in planning for the child. We see instances where the transportation aspect is not taken into account early. You then see very long journey times, which may not have a positive benefit to the outcomes of the child. We think there is a role for better joined-up planning between education and transport. As you heard from your expert witnesses, this is an area where we have seen, across local authorities, planning between education and transport coming together more closely. We think it is an area we need to continue to look at.

That is very helpful.

Just to follow that up, that is not the problem, is it? The problem is that tribunals do not take account of those costs when they make the decisions.

That is true.

Is that going to be part of the overall review that you are doing?

The original 2014 legislation does say that it is important that value for money is taken into account, as well as the impact on the whole system. Again, this is a very challenging thing to talk about. We want to start by making sure that we are making the best possible provision for children, but, again, some of the challenges that we see in the system at the moment are because people are finding it very difficult to manage not just rapidly growing volumes but rapidly growing and very peaky costs in particular parts of the system. It would be fair to say that in the emerging case law tribunals tend to be absolutely focused on parental preference as the first thing.

I am not sure that was the question that I asked, was it? Is this something that you are looking at in your review?

For the work that we are doing on the review, we have taken the fundamental principle that we should be prepared to look at basically anything. We want to follow those five principles that the Secretary of State has set out. Again, one of your earlier witnesses said it very well. It is a very high-cost system, and it is not producing particularly good outcomes for children. If it was producing brilliant outcomes for children, we might all want to say, “We just have to spend that money to get those brilliant outcomes”. Looking at that system, we have to be prepared to look at everything that we possibly can. I am being very careful because I also am acutely conscious that there are parents out there who have provision for their children that they will be worried about. We also want to be very thoughtful and to work with parents on this to make sure that we are not removing really important provision from children. I am sorry; I know it is a bit frustrating when I am cagey, but I am just trying to make sure I give you a truthful answer without causing unnecessary concern. We will do this very responsibly and thoughtfully with parents.

We absolutely understand that, Permanent Secretary. We would not want to cause any alarm or concern. I am just wondering, on this quite sensitive matter, whether we are looking down the wrong end of the telescope. Parents want school A because it provides better provision over there, but school B is much closer. Should we not be concentrating on the provision that school B provides so that it is not necessary to go that further distance to school A?

Yes. That is exactly right, Chair. The first principle that the Secretary of State set out was that it should be early, but the second one is that it should be local. We want really good-quality provision for more children closer to home.

That is the answer. Thank you very much indeed. You have given us a lot of food for thought. An uncorrected version of the transcript will be available in the next few days. Following that, the Committee will produce a report, no doubt with recommendations, which I hope you will look at carefully. We appreciate your presence today and your very candid answers, which we will look at carefully.