Home to School Transport: submission to Cabinet

This is what we have submitted to the Cabinet for today's (8th May) meeting on the issue of Chnages to Home to School Transport.

Paper C: Changes to Home to School Transport

The Liberal Democrat group requests Cabinet not to proceed with the proposals to change home to school transport entitlement and increase charges for Post 16 students.

The group believes that the report doesn't provide quantifiable analysis to enable Cabinet and Scrutiny members to gain any realistic appraisal of the number of schools and individual students who will be affected by the proposals. This situation is particularly acute with the issue of high schools where entitlement could be lost twice during a pupil's secondary education. Although the proposals are to come in to effect from 2014, the impact for parents will be felt immediately. Parents choosing schools will now have to consider location and transport needs alongside its ethos, culture and academic achievement.

The proposal to change the eligibility criteria to 'nearest school' will have far reaching consequences especially for Leicestershire communities close to city boundary or another county. For example where the nearest school is outside of the County boundary but is closer than a County school, under the proposed policy a child will only be supported to attend the school outside of the county boundary. In addition, if that school is also under the 3 mile 'walking policy' no transport will be provided at all.

We feel that residents in the County will see this as undermining their parental choice, especially if that means sending a child to a school in a different authority with an unknown reputation or previous association to them. This could also be detrimental to previously established affiliations between primary feeder schools and secondary schools and will undermine the County Council's efforts to improve transition between school phases.

Many will see this policy as an attempt to force academies to take on the burden of school transport and limit the ability of academies to develop their own catchment areas. It is also likely to undermine and limit parental choice particularly in more rural areas that depend on school transport.

At the recent Scrutiny Commission, officers accepted that they needed to do further work to quantify the number of schools affected and the potential impact on pupil numbers. We believe that the Cabinet should not take a decision until the full impacts of the proposals are known.

Whilst these proposals will affect all schools regardless of status, it may well have unforeseen impacts on schools in the process of converting to an academy and basing their plans to do so on their current understanding of pupil numbers and transport provision.

In terms of Post 16 education the proposal to increase fees to £430 represents a massive leap in expenditure for most households that use the service. The Liberal Democrats believe that such an increase is unfair within the current economic climate. We feel that at the very least resources within contingency should be made available to cap the charge.

Simon Galton CC

May 2012