SEND transport pressures demand urgent action, bus industry meeting told

Without reform of the wider SEND special needs education system, ‘home to school’ transport pressures will continue to rise unsustainably, and financial and operational consequences will likely overwhelm the system, a bus industry meeting has been warned.

SYSTRA’s Brian Drury and Carry Stephenson, were addressing an online workshop of the Bus Centre of Excellence Public Sector Members Network. The session examined the National Audit Office’s (NAO) recent report on ‘Home to School Transport’. It was an area often overshadowed in mainstream transport policy discussions, the speakers said , “but now rapidly becoming one of the most urgent financial and operational challenges facing local authorities throughout England.”

“What is clear from the NAO report and the Public Sector Members Network workshop is that it is the local authority transport team that has to manage the direct consequences of decisions made by the same authority’s education team on school placement,” they told LTT.

Brian Drury opened the session by highlighting just how dramatically the school transport environment had shifted over the past decade. “The growth in demand and the steep rise in operational pressures on local authorities and transport operators all point towards a system overhaul,” he said. The current system of free-of-charge ‘home to school’ transport, particularly for children and young people with Special Educational Needs (SEND), was becoming financially unsustainable.

The figures presented were drawn directly from the NAO’s analysis and made clear the sheer scale of the challenge. Since 2015, the number of children and young people with an Education Health and Care (EHC) plan had risen by 166%, from 240,000 to 639,000. During the same period, spending on home to school transport had increased by 70% in real terms, with costs for SEND transport in particular rising 106%, compared with by just 9% in mainstream transport.

These increases had created a funding gap for local authorities, who collectively overspent their planned home to school transport budgets by £415 million in 2023-24 alone, the workshop was told. The disparity in per-pupil costs highlighted the magnitude of the issue. “It now costs £8,116 per year to transport a SEND pupil to school, compared with £1,526 for a mainstream pupil,” the audience heard.

The SYSTRA specialists explained these are not simply budgetary difficulties, but present a system that was outpacing both local authority finances and the transport operator’s capacity.

The dramatic growth in the number of children with EHC plans reflected much wider demographic and policy changes. While improvements in educational diagnostics have been e a positive step for inclusion, the NAO report warns that the associated transport responsibilities have expanded faster than funding or delivery models can handle.

Local authorities across the land face the same dilemma, the meeting heard. Where a child’s nearest suitable school is beyond a reasonable distance, transport must be provided free-of-charge. For many SEND pupils, this meant their local authority relying on costly bespoke taxi or minibus provision, particularly in rural and semi-rural areas where bus services have dramatically decreased.

Local authorities cannot solve the ‘home to school’ challenges alone, nor can providers simply scale up, the SYSTRA speakers warned. What is required was a coordinated system-wide approach that considers realistic transport services. “We need to ask the question: Are the services that are provided up-to-standard? How can we implement better, more consistent monitoring of provision to ensure users and authorities are getting value for money?”

The NAO report provided a chance to reshape ‘home to school’ transport provision so that it was an affordable enabler to educational opportunity, Drury and Stephenson concluded.

Three key issues to be addressed – and potential solutions

Drury and Stephenson  structured the workshop around three key questions arising from the NAO’s ‘value for money’ report analysis, and possible solutions.

What measures can be taken to help with rising costs?

Aside from the inevitable systemic review of eligibility policy, there were some practical measures including improving route efficiency by maximising vehicle occupancy; and using technology to cut unnecessary mileage and increase productivity. Furthermore, dynamic purchasing systems could  strengthen market competition ,while larger and longer-term contracts could deliver economies of scale. Authorities might also benefit from keeping their vehicles in use throughout the day by integrating education, social care and health transport services.

There remained the potential to review a wider question about where the SEND services are provided. Were there supportive and effective options that are more accessible – putting less pressure on transport services at source?

What measures can support better planning, coordination, and monitoring?

The NAO report highlights a wide variation between local authorities in planning and data quality, emphasising the need for more consistent and coordinated approaches. The workshop participants stressed the importance of improving coordination and sharing data between education teams, schools, transport providers, and transport planners. This could give visibility of service quality, vehicles, compliance, and safeguarding. Local authority collaboration where pupils travel to specialist schools outside of their  boundary could meanwhile  improve efficiencies.

How can the sector address provider capacity constraints?

Addressing provider capacity constraints is one of the sector’s most immediate operational challenges. Authorities and operators face ongoing difficulties recruiting and retaining drivers and passenger assistants, a problem  compounded by low pay, irregular hours, and the responsibility of supporting children with complex needs. 

The workshop’s discussion focused on strengthening training and professionalising these key workers. Other suggested initiatives could involve demand-responsive services and community transport partnerships which would expand capacity and reach.

To read the NAO Home to School Transport report:

https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Home-to-School-transport-Summary.pdf