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Home to school transport

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

Published: 31 Oct 2025 Recommendations: 5 Type: Value for Money Department: Department for Education
Dept: Department for Education Topics: Education, training and skillsLocal governmentLocal services and housingSchools nao.org.uk →

Recommendations

5 items
No response position recorded.

The indexed recommendations do not yet have a recorded response position. This is separate from evidence of implementation. This report was published 31 October 2025.

Recommendation 1

Addressee: Department for Education · Source location: Page 12, 22a

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

Response position: No response position recorded

Delivery: No implementation status recorded

Recommendation 2

Addressee: Department for Education · Source location: Page 12, 22b

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.

Response position: No response position recorded

Delivery: No implementation status recorded

Recommendation 3

Addressee: Department for Education · Source location: Page 12, 22b

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.

Response position: No response position recorded

Delivery: No implementation status recorded

Recommendation 4

Addressee: Department for Education · Source location: Page 12, 22b

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.

Response position: No response position recorded

Delivery: No implementation status recorded

Recommendation 5

Addressee: Department for Education · Source location: Page 12, 22c

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

Response position: No response position recorded

Delivery: No implementation status recorded

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.