Source · National Audit Office

Home to school transport

Published: 31 Oct 2025 Recommendations: 5 Type: Value for Money Department: Department for Education

Our report looks at why home to school transport is one of the fastest growing areas of spending for local authorities in England.

Dept: Department for Education Topics: Education, training and skillsLocal governmentLocal services and housingSchools nao.org.uk →

Recommendations

5 items

Government response pending.

The NAO has not yet recorded a response to these recommendations. This report was published 31 October 2025.

Rec	Recommendation	Addressee	Acceptance	Implementation
1	DfE should ensure that forthcoming SEND reforms and their implementation consider implications for home to school transport to ensure that the whole SEND system is delivering the outcomes intended Ref Page 12, 22a	Department for Education	Pending	—
2	DfE should as it seeks to improve its data collection and make it mandatory review the design of its data collection to ensure that the information it receives enhances understanding of cost drivers and supports effective benchmarking, while remaining practical for local authorities to provide. Ref Page 12, 22b	Department for Education	Pending	—
3	DfE should as it seeks to improve its data collection and make it mandatory ensure the findings from its data collection are available to local authorities to encourage higher completion rates, better data quality and to support local authority benchmarking and best practice sharing. Ref Page 12, 22b	Department for Education	Pending	—
4	DfE should as it seeks to improve its data collection and make it mandatory work with the local government sector to explore what more it could do to understand the overall effectiveness of its home to school transport policy and the impact of changes in policy or discretionary transport, for example on attendance. Ref Page 12, 22b	Department for Education	Pending	—
5	DfE should monitor the impact of the home to school transport funding formula on different types of authority, and check whether the changes better align funding with local need Ref Page 12, 22c	Department for Education	Pending	—

Public Accounts Committee follow-up

2 reports

The Public Accounts Committee examined this NAO report and published its own recommendations. The government responds to PAC recommendations via Treasury Minutes.

— Public Accounts C… Treasury Minutes: Government response - 70th Report - Home-to-school transport · parliament.uk

6 Mar 2026 Public Accounts C… 70th Report - Home-to-school transport — 15 recommendations · parliament.uk