Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 2
2
The Department does not understand how access to transport is affecting attendance, nor how difficult...
Conclusion
The Department does not understand how access to transport is affecting attendance, nor how difficult it is for parents to navigate the system, particularly post-16. While acknowledging that transport is critical to accessing education and training, the Department does not 2 know how annual spending—£2.3 billion in 2023–24 and £2.6 billion in 2024–25—on home to school transport is impacting overall attendance and participation levels. Instead, it only considers how many sessions children who are already receiving local-authority-provided transport might fail to attend due to problems on a particular day. That is surprising when nearly one in five children misses a day or more of school per fortnight—around one in three at sixth form age—and almost 1 million young people are not in education, employment or training (NEET). Entitlement to transport differs markedly by age, with parents often experiencing a cliff edge post-16. For ages 16–19 local authorities have discretion to decide what support, if any, is necessary to facilitate attendance in education. Despite the weight of evidence that parents find the system hard to navigate, the Department appears unconcerned about the clarity of the offering for this age group or the impact that losing transport at 16 may have. Parents and colleges report young people missing learning or failing to start courses after age 16 because transport is no longer provided or is not suitable. recommendation In its Treasury Minute response the Department should provide an update on action it is taking to: a. improve its understanding of the relationship between home to school transport, attendance and those not in education, employment or training; and b. work with local authorities to ensure parents understand entitlement post 16.
Government Response
Response Pending
HM Government
Response Pending
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. opportunity. Departmental analysis shows a link between absence and distance from school, but this is a relatively modest factor compared with wider drivers of absence. The department has developed real-time attendance data tools that enable early intervention including AI-powered reports comparing schools’ attendance with statistically similar schools and sharing pupils’ year 6 attendance data with secondary schools. Since September 2024, a new absence code has captured issues with local authority-arranged transport. In the 2024-25 academic year, only 0.011% of all school sessions were missed because transport normally provided by a local authority or school was unavailable – representing only 0.15% of total sessions missed. The department continues to explore how best to understand the relationship between attendance and transport and is working with local authorities to consider existing data and undertake qualitative insight-gathering to further build our understanding. However, the extensive piloting and complex experimental evaluation needed to quantify more precisely the relationship between home-to-school transport and attendance would likely be disproportionate, given what is already known about that relationship. There is limited robust evidence on how transport affects post-16 attendance or the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). The new home-to-school transport data collection, alongside wider work on the drivers of NEET, should strengthen understanding. Existing local authority duties and the bursary system should ensure young people are not prevented from participating in education due to transport needs. The department recognises that parental understanding of post-16 transport may affect attendance. Work is underway through the SEND reforms to improve information for parents and young people. Additionally, we are supporting local authorities to strengthen independent travel training and ensure more consistent delivery.