Home-to-School Transport: Children with SEND

Jen Craft Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jen Craft (Thurrock) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the statutory framework for home-to-school transport for children with SEND.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I am delighted to have secured this debate on 3 December, which is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. I am pleased to see a number of hon. Members present to speak, which truly reflects the importance of the issue.

Disabled children enter the education system with the odds stacked against them. The damage and chaos wrought by 14 years of underfunding and understaffing have left a broken special educational needs and disabilities system. Parents have to fight for the entitlements of their child at every step of the way, simply to ensure that they are given the same life chances as other children. As the parent of a disabled child, I have experienced that at first hand.

We know how vital each stage of the journey through education is for a disabled child. The importance of early intervention cannot be disputed, as it provides crucial support to their development and improves long-term outcomes. Similarly, the transition to adulthood is a key stage of development when disabled young people advance their independence and encounter new challenges. Yet, as it stands, we have a statutory framework for home-to-school transport that, in effect, excludes disabled children from accessing education. Even where the statute necessitates that local authorities provide home-to-school transport, this is often disputed and subject to many shortcomings, leaving parent carers with another fight on their hands. However, I will focus on the framework today.

Under the existing framework, the legal obligation of local authorities to provide free transport to a place of education applies only for eligible children aged five to 16 and young people aged 19 to 25. This is a vital lifeline for disabled children and their families, ensuring that even those with the most complex needs can attend a school that offers specialist provision to help them get on in life, but until they reach the age of five, and after the statutory duty falls at the age of 16, disabled children and their families are failed by the current system.

Before a disabled child turns five, it is at the discretion of local authorities to make suitable arrangements for them to attend early years settings. In reality, that can materialise as a flat refusal to any request for transport. Families who have been fortunate enough to secure a competitive place at a specialist early years setting are then denied support, and are unable to shoulder the burden of time and cost needed to transport their child themselves. One parent told me that the only school suitable for their child’s complex health condition was an 11-mile drive from home. Their transport application was rejected. As they cannot afford petrol for four trips a day, that parent now drives the child to school and stays there, leaving them unable to work.

Families are forced to make the impossible choice between transporting their child themselves or giving up work, and those children who are most in need of early intervention are unable to access it. Some local authorities even refuse to transport a child to primary school until the very day that they turn five, by which time a disabled child may have missed a term of reception and lost out on vital therapies and specialised support. That leaves disabled children playing catch-up from day one.

By the age of 16, many children with SEND will have been receiving free transport for more than a decade, but as the legal obligation for that provision falls, their education can be thrown into turmoil. In the past, many councils continued to provide free transport for children with SEND from the ages of 16 to 19. Funds put into those travel costs are saved further down the line—they allow students with disabilities to achieve qualifications and skills, and to gain confidence, independence and experience. This makes it much less likely that they will fall into unemployment or disengagement, and face challenges with mental and physical health. However, the rising demand—with 576,000 children and young people in England now having an education, health and care plan—coupled with local authorities being under immense financial strain, has led to local authorities across the country, including in my constituency of Thurrock, cutting the service.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent comments. She refers to the transportation being free; for some families it is free, but for local authorities, as we all know, it absolutely is not. My local authority, North East Lincolnshire, spent £1.4 million last year alone on transporting 114 children out of area. It is unsustainable for local authorities. Does she agree that the answer is more specialist provision in area, and combined support in mainstream school for those children?

[Jen Craft]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The long-term goal must be better inclusion for disabled children in mainstream education—I would have loved to send my child to the outstanding school up the road, but it did not really want us. This is not a choice that parents want to make, and inclusion is the ultimate, long-term solution. However, disabled children should not be penalised for the financial burdens under which councils find themselves.

The transport arrangements that are provided are often unsuitable, such as a bus pass for a vulnerable young person. Parents are asked to make financial contributions or are provided with travel allowances that barely cover the costs. It is hard to overstate the impact that the yearly lottery for school transport can have on disabled children. It disrupts their education, places stress and anxiety on them and their families, reduces their independence, and asks their parents to carry financial costs.

I heard from one mother whose 18-year-old daughter attends a school offering specialist provision. This year, just 24 hours before her daughter was due to start her college course, she was told she would be charged a contribution for her daughter’s transport to school. She spoke of the anxiety inflicted on her daughter through days of uncertainty. Despite that stressful experience, that mother considers herself among the lucky ones. Her vulnerable daughter can continue to get to school safely every day, when others who are asked to contribute to transport costs may not.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does she agree that in too many cases the SEND families most in need of support find they are not given it? For many families, it is therefore a question of whether they can afford to support their children. In this country, in 2024, we must end that barrier to opportunity.

[Jen Craft]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is unacceptable that disabled families are faced with choices about their children’s education that parents of children who are not disabled are not.

During the election campaign, I spoke to another woman, Julia, and had the pleasure of meeting her 18-year-old son Oscar, who has cerebral palsy, which affects his right side, and epilepsy. For 10 years, he had received free home-to-school transport, but now his parents have to make the case every year for why he should continue to receive that support to reach his sixth form. Thanks to the new costs, his mum has had to withdraw Oscar from one of his sessions at his weekend care provision, because she cannot afford both. Despite the new charges, there is still no guarantee that their application will be approved. She said that life is hard enough without this discrimination and pressure.

Another mother, in Thurrock, told me about her ongoing fight to secure transport for her daughter. Twice her daughter was refused passenger transport to the education setting she attended and twice the family successfully appealed. That mother said:

“As parents to children with SEND we have to fight for every single step, for their existence. Fighting for what is right, what our children are entitled to.”

This is the reality for thousands of families across the country. This disruption at such a vital point in education can be devastating, with serious impacts on a young person’s mental health and development. Let us be clear: this places a financial barrier to education in the way of disabled children and their families that other families simply do not have to face.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Does the hon. Member acknowledge that lots of local authorities, and indeed lots of schools, seek to do the right thing? Councils in Cumbria have more than doubled their spending on SEND transport in the last five years, but is it not the worst thing about it, from a local authority perspective, that councils and schools that do the right thing get penalised? Is it not right that we instead support all local authorities and schools to support special educational needs children without disadvantaging them or their families?

[Jen Craft]

As I have said previously, the important thing is to see a long-term goal where disabled children are truly able to receive a mainstream, inclusive education, so that we get out of this cycle of families having to pay to transport their children miles and miles from where they live.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

May I just say that the Member who is speaking is not obliged to take interventions? It does take time away from those who have put in to speak.

[Jen Craft]

I will make some headway.

The requirement for free transport returns for 19 to 25-year-olds with complex needs and an education, health and care plan, to support those who need longer in education or training to achieve their outcomes.

The guidance itself says:

“It is critical that, from year 9 at the latest, local authorities help young people start planning for a successful transition to adulthood.”

Given the importance of this transition, why does the statutory obligation for free transport fall between the ages of 16 to 19?

We cannot ignore the rising costs that councils face in carrying out their duty to provide free home-to-school transport. However, those costs are not the fault of disabled children. It is not a choice by families to send their disabled child or young person to a school far from home; it is a necessity, and the only way to receive the specialist provision that meets their needs.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

Will the hon. Lady give way on that point?

[Jen Craft]

I would just like to make a little more progress.

When I think about my child’s journey through education, I do not see it in stages. The journey for my daughter and for every disabled child is a lifelong one. We need a statutory framework that reflects that and that provides stability, security and reassurance for disabled children throughout their development and for their families.

In the context of the Government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity for every child, the situation with home-to-school transport is damaging the life chances of disabled pupils. I encourage the Minister to consider a framework that ends the current anomalies in the system, so that local authorities have a legal obligation to ensure that no child is denied an education that will allow them to get on in life.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments about the existing framework, and the contributions of other Members, as we seek to develop a system that ensures that the needs of every child are met.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jen Craft]

I thank Members from across the House for their contributions this afternoon, particularly those from rural areas who highlighted the additional complexities of home-to-school travel there. I thank the Minister for her considered response.

I recognise that the challenges to the SEND system are immense and will take a long time to put right. My concern is that, while the ultimate goal of moving inclusive, mainstream education closer to children where they need it is an honourable one and is clearly the direction that we should be travelling in, there are children who cannot access that right now. They cannot wait for a long-term shift in policy and approach; that would have a detrimental impact on the rest of their lives.

The outcomes for children aged 16 to 19, if they do not access education or training, are well documented, which is why education or training is compulsory up to the age of 18. The only people who currently have to face a financial burden to meet their child’s need and make sure that they are accessing that compulsory education or training mandate, on a general, widespread basis, are parents of disabled children. That is something that needs to be looked at.

I welcome the fact that the Minister is keen to look at this issue in more depth in her role in Government and at how it is working in practice. I would very much welcome the opportunity to work with her on that, and indeed to work with the sector and parents of SEND children more widely.

I finish by saying that no one puts their vulnerable, non-verbal child in a car with strangers by choice; it is because that is how they can get them to their education setting. I reflect, with gratitude, on the people who have taken my daughter to school. I believe that their professionalism, their absolute empathy, and the way that they interact with her on a daily basis is something to be commended, as is the role that people play in this system in general.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

I thank everybody for their indulgence in keeping their speeches short. We have had 33 speakers in this debate, which I think is the most that anybody has ever crammed into an hour; I hope that Guinness World Records is paying attention.

Question put and agreed to. 

Resolved,

That this House has considered the statutory framework for home-to-school transport for children with SEND.