Ministers will ask councils to provide more details on the travel they arrange for pupils to get to school in an attempt to help bring down soaring costs.
The Department for Education currently only collects data on how much councils spend on home-to-school travel.
But schools minister Catherine McKinnell said “even fundamental information” such as the number of pupils who received free transport was not collected. Nor was information on catchment areas relating to travel.
Councils predict home-to-school travel costs could soar to £2 billion this financial year, with transport for pupils with special educational needs costing up to £1.5 billion – nearly treble what it cost a decade ago.
They are expecting to spend an additional £514 million on transport to mainstream schools, up 46 per cent since 2015-16.
Local authorities are required to arrange free travel for children of compulsory school age who attend their nearest school but cannot walk there because of distance, special educational needs and disabilities, or because the route is not safe.
McKinnell told MPs this week she was “determined” the DfE improved its data “so that local authorities can benchmark themselves against similar authorities and learn from one another, and so that central and local government have the robust evidence to inform decision-making on those issues”.
But in a Westminster Hall debate several MPs told McKinnell about their constituents’ difficulties and inconsistencies in accessing transport in Northumberland.
‘Vaguely Kafkaesque’
Joe Morris, the MP for Hexham, said it was “not just illogical, but vaguely Kafkaesque” that a father had to drive 170 miles a week to get his son to school as he did not get a free transport place, despite his daughter receiving one.
Pupils living in rural communities were “regularly late” for school because of delays with transport, he added.
Morris said another constituent’s daughter was collected at 7.45am for a 15-minute journey – but did not get to school until after 9am.
David Smith, the MP for North Northumberland, said it was common in villages in his area for an 11-year-old to spend up to two hours a day on four different buses.
He told of one child with autism who was no longer attending school for several reasons, the first being transport.
Smith said parents were “resigned to the notion that having a child with more complex needs will require spending large amounts of money and time travelling to school” because of the lack of suitable nearby schools.
DfE will write to councils
McKinnell said the department is writing to councils “in the coming days, setting out our plans to ask them to provide data on travel”.
It will be voluntary initially, but she hoped councils “will see the benefit of the data collection and share the requested data that they hold”.
She said there were several reasons for the increased costs, including the rising cost of fuel, driver shortages and more children with education, health and care plans travelling long distances to a school that could meet their needs.
A County Councils Network spokesperson said the data would be useful for benchmarking, but costs had “dramatically increased as they are directly linked to special educational needs and disabilities services”.
“As useful as data collection could be, the need for reform of the SEND system should be paramount.”
