I comuni pagano i costi del trasporto scolastico per 470.000 alunni in Inghilterra

“9% of under-16s who receive funded transport because of Send travel alone in single-occupancy vehicles”

Lumping people using subsidized bus services in with people using Taxi services is disingenuous at best.

The picture for the article is of a child in a car (presumably to make the reader think it’s a taxi) when 91% of the total are using “non-single-occupancy” vehicles (busses) is frankly misleading

That said when i was in sixthform they were offering a few courses at the local college and used taxis to ferry students to and from their lessons there. It was multiple students to the car but the taxi drivers were absolutely taking the piss driving all around the backroads racking the meter up. I hope they’re doing fixed price transfers now

The government doesn’t think parents should be responsible for the cost of feeding their kids, why would they think they should pay for their travel to school?

If you’re in the right schools car park at the right time (for various reasons) and are parked or stood close to the clique of taxi / private hire drivers you hear stories that would make your blood boil.

It’s absolutely, for some, become an entire revenue stream that pays them very well and can get them let of some things that other would not be (“but guv I drive SEND kiddies around, I didn’t mean to speed”).

Beeb rage bait and they are rather naughtly for opening comments on it. Never the less :

Roughly speaking it works thus :

1. the council are obliged to put you in school.
2. the school has to be “suitable”. (broad, but generally means SEND if required)
3. it needs to be within 2-3 miles

if they can’t find one and if you get maximum tax credits and free school meals, they have to pay to get you there.

there are additional cases by discretion, which are usually based on safeguarding, or temporary arangements.

We can argue about the inefficiency and yell “Surely there’s a better way!?” (there always is) but please, dont get sucked in to the “back i my day i walked 12 miles barefoot to school just get a slap and I were bloody grateful”. ….or start mumbling about tax payers.

Per the article – it’s around 6% of pupils which is quite low.

One of my kids didn’t get into any of the three local schools because they were at capacity. They were given a place in a school 30 mins away. We’re fairly rural, so the journey would be 3 buses, leaving about 5am and getting home at 6pm. At the time, they were 12.

One of myself or my partner would have to change jobs to support that kind of journey, and get a second car. The council puts on a taxi for them, and also ~8-10 kids in similar situations (they share, this is a rural/capacity problem rather than a SEND one).

The fundamental problem, at least in our area, appears to be capacity.

Not saying stuff like this isn’t an issue, but I find it hilarious that we talk so much about migrants, people out of work, children and old people but hardly ever about huge corporations, businesses and the mega rich just funnelling billions out of the country into their pockets.

If you ran the country like a business you’d identify the biggest issue you face and come up with a plan to tackle it. It’s not this.

Disclaimer – i benefit from this service for my SEND child, and am very grateful. The only school that could accomodate them is out in the middle of nowhere, and 6 miles away. Ive done it on public transport a number of times, and its a short train journey (1 train per hour), followed by a 45 minute walk along country lanes with hedges, no pavement, and no street lights. Its terrifying for me as an adult to walk that route, let alone a child, let alone a SEND child.

The taxis are filled up – they do a route, and pick up 4 kids if its a small taxi, or more if its a people carrier situation.

I read that the problem is that the councils cant just run their own minibus service and spread the benefit across multiple areas, as they all come from their own ‘pot’ / department.

What they should be doing is employing a full time minibus, and use it in the mornings for school runs, during the day for NHS and asylum seeker duties, and then back to school for the evening, along with other things that are currently done using taxis.

But they cant, since schools are under education, NHS under healthcare ,and I think asylum is under home office.

So if they bought there own, they would all have minibusses sitting there doing nothing most of the day.

I dont have a source for this, so might be wrong.

There was a ridiculous post on LegalAdvice UK the other day. Council had withdrawn paid for transportation for a child in a wheelchair that the parent was trying to get reinstated- turns out the parent already had a modified car but got upset / anxious at driving in mornings and didn’t want to do it…

Ensuring children have the means to get to school is a good thing. We all know that educating our children is what helps to improve our country.