Recommendation 14

Given that home to school transport policy aims to facilitate attendance, we asked the Department if the current system was doing all it could to promote it. The Department told us that it saw transport as critical to ensuring access to education but explained that it only measures the number of total school sessions missed due to problems on a particular day with local-authority-provided home to school transport (for the 6% of children that already receive it). It told us that for the 2024/25 academic year, only around 0.15% of all school sessions missed (by all school children) were due to issues with transport.32 We asked whether home to school transport was affecting absence and attendance. Contact told us that it heard a lot from families with disabled children that a lack of transport was clearly an issue and was having an impact on attendance, particularly post-16, but noted a lack of good data. Contact told us that in speaking with parents of disabled children up to 16, 80% said transport was helping their children to be in school.33