\u201cHome-to-school transport\u201d should be renamed \u201cassisted travel to school\u201d to help manage parental expectations, MPs on the public accounts committee have been told.<\/p>\n
While councils are committed to helping children entitled to support to get to school, it does not have to be \u201ca door-to-door taxi service\u201d, leading local authority figures have said.<\/p>\n
One witness suggested there was \u201ca legacy of Covid\u201d, where lots of people were in single taxis for health reasons, which they are now reluctant to give up.<\/p>\n
The committee was hearing evidence on Monday as part of a scrutiny session on the rising cost of home-to-school transport.<\/p>\n
Local authorities are required to provide free transport for school-age children who cannot walk to their nearest suitable school due to distance, special educational needs or disabilities (Send), or safety concerns.<\/p>\n
A recent report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that costs in England<\/a> have risen to \u00a32.3bn a year, as increasing numbers of children with Send are forced to travel farther afield to schools that can meet their requirements.<\/p>\n Of the 470,000 children under 16 who benefit, about 40% (180,000) have Send, but councils spend five times more on transport for Send pupils as they often have to travel further in single-occupancy taxis.<\/p>\n Witnesses appearing before the committee were asked how they would redesign home-to-school transport if they could start from scratch.<\/p>\n Rose McArthur, chair of the home-to-school transport working group at the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport (Adept), questioned how the service is described.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a huge problem with linguistics,\u201d she said. \u201cIt 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 \u2026 We are wanting children to get to education but how that happens does not have to be a door-to-door taxi service.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s a level of expectation that\u2019s just built in and there\u2019s a level of over-provision that\u2019s been built into the system, and actually we could be more fleet of foot.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could definitely use commercial bus services better. We could definitely look to the bus franchising bill and all of that wonderful stuff that\u2019s coming out, but we need transport and education to be working together to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n Amanda Hopgood, chair of the children, young people and families committee at the Local Government Association, agreed: \u201cIt\u2019s assisted travel to school, as opposed to home-to-school transport.\u201d<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what\u2019s happening and why it matters<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n She told MPs: \u201cWe do have the legacy of what we had during Covid where we had lots of people in single taxis for obvious reasons and people have been reluctant to give that up. So that has required work to show that actually that\u2019s no longer beneficial for that young person.\u201d<\/p>\n Anna Bird, chief executive officer at Contact, a charity for families with disabled children, raised concerns about access to home-to-school transport for 16 to 19 year-olds, which is being cut by councils because it is discretionary.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would want to make the point that there will be some children who will always need support to get to school, no matter how local, and that the system needs to provide for these children. There needs to be a fair system based on need, not age.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Hall, Labour MP for Warrington South, described what parents and carers of children with Send in her constituency had told her during a recent roundtable.<\/p>\n \u201cParents feel they have to fight for support every step of the way,\u201d she said. \u201cThey find it demoralising. They feel like parents\u2019 voices need to be heard more. They feel like it\u2019s a very complex system and information about entitlements are not always clear. I\u2019ve heard that many times from constituents.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHome-to-school transport\u201d should be renamed \u201cassisted travel to school\u201d to help manage parental expectations, MPs on the public…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-305775","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}