Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the help with home to school transport programme.

The Department’s school transport policy aims to ensure that no child is unable to access education because of a lack of transport. Local Authorities must arrange free travel to school for children aged 5 to 16 who attend their nearest school and cannot walk there due to the distance, route safety, or as a result of special educational needs, disability or mobility problems. There are additional rights to free travel for low-income families aimed at helping them exercise school choice.

The Department works closely with Local Authorities to gain an understanding of the opportunities and challenges they face which, for example, supported decision-making on the measures put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent years, the Department also consulted on its statutory guidance for Local Authorities which helped highlight areas of challenge that we have worked to address. The revised guidance will be published shortly.

Whilst no formal assessment of the effectiveness of the policy has been conducted, the Department has a good understanding of how it is operating and engages regularly so if challenges arise, work can be done to address them.