Recommendation 3

The Department does not yet have the data it needs to oversee home to school transport effectively. Though local authorities have submitted spending data on home to school transport for many years, the Department has only recently started to collect data on the number of children and young people receiving transport and how they travel. It received a 75% response to its 2025 voluntary data collection, but the way local authorities collect data varies and some were only able to provide partial responses. Without a better understanding of costs per capita— how they compare between authorities, and across different modes and providers of transport—and trends over time, the Department cannot understand if it is achieving value for taxpayers’ money. It also lacks a credible baseline against which to measure how future policy changes, such as SEND reforms, affect costs and demand for home to school transport. The Department does not know who receives home to school transport and whether it reaches those most in need. Parents report that provision broadly meets need for children with SEND up to 16, but not beyond. 3 recommendation a. Alongside its Treasury Minute response the Department should write to the Committee setting out its plans for continuing to improve data quality so it can better understand cost drivers, identify and share best practice, and have a starting point against which to measure the impact of policy changes, for example the recently announced SEND reforms, on demand for home to school transport. b. The Department should make its data collection from local authorities mandatory and write to the Committee setting out how it is improving consistency and standardising data while minimising cost and burden for local authorities.