There’s been a fair bit of debate in the media in the last few months about the rising costs of transporting children and young people with SEND to their place of education. Much of this debate has tended in the direction of dismay at the impact on councils’ budgets of getting disabled children to school.
The National Audit Office (NAO) has today published a report on home-to-school transport, with a particular spotlight on the cost of transport for children with SEND. It is one of the fastest-growing areas of spending for local authorities, and both the NAO and the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee are looking at why this is. The problem, as the NAO defines it, is the struggle for local authorities to balance their duties to children with their duty to balance their budgets.
Before getting into the details of the report, it’s worth being really clear about how important home-to-school transport services are for children and young people with SEND and their families. It’s an absolutely central part of their daily lives, their ability to access education and to thrive and succeed, and shouldn’t be seen as an afterthought by local planners and policy-makers.
Not just a SEND issue
Sometimes, when you read news reports and opinion pieces about children with SEND “bankrupting” local authorities, you’d think that transport to school is a SEND-specific issue. But it isn’t.
Of the approximately 520,000 children and young people in England receiving home-to-school transport from their local authority, only around a third of these,180,000, receive it because they have special educational needs and/or a disability. The rest get free transport by law because their route to school is unsafe, they live beyond the statutory walking distance, or their families have a low income. Some children, of course, will have a combination of all these factors.
But as the NAO points out, the cost of providing transport for children with SEND is considerably higher as an average per child than the cost of transporting children without SEND—no surprise there. While only a third of children and young people who receive transport receive it on the grounds of SEND, they account for two-thirds of local authorities’ total transport spend, which in 2023-24 was £2.32 billion.
This is an increase of 70% in real terms since 2015-16, “due mostly to increased spending on transport for children and young people with SEND, which rose by 106% compared with a 9% increase for ‘mainstream transport’”. On average, local authorities spend around five times more on transport per pupil with SEND than on pupils without SEND.
“Less to spend on other services”
The NAO doesn’t just report facts and figures; it also engages in the occasional value judgement. For example: “Local authorities consistently spend more on home-to-school transport than they have budgeted, meaning they have less to spend on other services.”
If LAs are consistently spending more than they have budgeted, perhaps they need to adjust their budgets? And there is a slightly unpleasant whiff of a suggestion here that transporting disabled children and young people to their place of education is causing other local residents to lose out on things.
A report like this is never fully complete without a spot of parent blame: “We heard that parents can have high expectations about the type of transport local authorities can provide, regardless of cost.” But mostly it isn’t like that.
There are two things to look at. Why has the cost of transporting children and young people to their place of learning risen so much, so fast? And why are local authorities not doing a better job of planning ahead, coordinating more effectively between their own transport and SEND teams, and working more proactively with transport suppliers?
Why have costs risen so much? Spoiler: it’s not the fault of parents OR the Tribunal
“If LAs are following what the law requires in their decision-making, they needn’t feel “threatened” by the prospect of a Tribunal appeal. If a child’s needs can be met at a school closer to their home with lower transport costs, then that is what the Tribunal will agree.”
One reason that costs have risen so much is, of course, a rise in the number of children attending special schools. Some of these may be a considerable distance from children’s homes, due to insufficient local capacity. This is a strategic commissioning issue: no amount of tinkering with transport budgets will get around the fact that in some areas there simply aren’t enough specialist school places to meet children and young people’s needs.
The law is clear that children with an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan have the right to attend the nearest school that meets their needs. If the nearest school is in the next county, then that is where they will have to go, and they are rightly entitled to transport to get there.
But the report allows some misconceptions to fester. A section that refers to “a general parental preference for specialist settings” (based on what evidence of this preference? None that we know of), includes an inaccurate portrayal of the SEND Tribunal (paragraph 2.9). How about this for a piece of disingenuousness: “In some cases, where parents have a preferred school, the threat of tribunal can make SEND teams more reluctant to consider alternative placements with lower associated transport costs.”
This is, to use a technical term, bonkers. If LAs are following what the law requires in their decision-making, they needn’t feel “threatened” by the prospect of a Tribunal appeal. If a child’s needs can be met at a school closer to their home with lower transport costs, then that is what the Tribunal will agree. But if their needs can’t be met at the closer school, then the Tribunal will rule in favour of a place at a school that may be further away. Because the law says that every child has the right to an education that meets their needs.
The less densely populated the area, the longer children’s journeys are likely to be, and the less opportunity for children to share transport. And of course, a minority of children have very complex needs and require specialist vehicles and trained assistants. My heart sank at the example in the report of one local authority paying “around £145,000 per year for one pupil”. It sank because this is bound to be used ad infinitum as an illustration of how unsustainable the SEND transport system is, when it is, of course, an extreme outlier. The median annual cost per pupil of compulsory school age is, in fact, £8,116.
The reality is also that the cost of delivering transport services has risen as the cost of fuel increased by 12% between 2021 and 2024, and the wages of transport staff rose by 28% in the same period.
Key Content
Why are local authorities not better at this?
Local authorities report having to deal with last-minute cancellations and price rises from transport providers just before the start of the school year, leaving them with little option but to pay higher prices. It’s clear that they need to be much better at planning and negotiating with providers, not leaving everything til the last minute when, to deliver on their obligations to children, they find themselves having to pay whatever providers require.
Local authorities also cite “the misalignment of financial years and academic years” plus “late changes to pupil numbers, types of transport needed, and provider prices [making] it difficult for them to plan”. But the timing of the school year can’t come as a surprise every year surely?
The NAO also finds that there are considerable variations between LAs: some LAs are simply better at this whole commissioning thing than others.
Scaling back
The NAO looks at how local authorities have responded to these increases in both needs and costs. None of this is new information: LAs have been scaling back discretionary—ie non-statutory, so not legally enforceable—transport services since 2010. This means reductions in free or subsidised transport for young people of sixth-form age, children below compulsory school age, or children who aren’t attending their nearest suitable school.
And all the other usual things: independent travel training “as a means of promoting independence among children and young people with SEND and achieving cost savings” and personal travel budgets. The report does acknowledge that the former isn’t suitable for all young people, and the latter transfers costs from LAs to parents.
The Government’s solution: better data and SEND reform
The Government is counting on better data, new guidance and SEND “reform” as the solution to the inexorable rise in SEND transport costs. DfE has developed a new approach to data collection on home-to-school transport to help identify who receives transport, what’s driving costs in local areas and how LAs can benchmark more effectively with each other. DfE also plans to issue new guidance to encourage more joined-up decision-making between local authorities, schools and health bodies – “to meet needs while limiting costs”.
The Government’s theory—desperate hope?—is that as schools become more inclusive and fewer children attend special schools (because they don’t need to, or because they don’t have the right to?), transport costs will fall because more children will be educated in schools close to their homes. DfE does prudently acknowledge that “it may be some years before any savings start to materialise”.
From the complaints we receive, we know transport to and from their education settings can be a significant issue for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, and for the councils that arrange and fund it. We commonly see the significant impact it can have on families when blanket decisions are made, and individual circumstances are not properly considered.
“We welcome the National Audit Office’s report and the focus it has placed on the specific challenges around transport within the SEND system and await further clarity on the government’s intended approach when it releases its SEND reform white paper.”
Mrs Amerdeep Clarke, Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman
It’s not just about logistics: it’s about disabled children
The people who plan and commission home-to-school transport for disabled children, and the drivers and passenger assistants who work with children every day, have a massive impact on the lives of those children and their families.
While there are all sorts of practical solutions that absolutely should be adopted and implemented, such as reviewing routes, using better purchasing and procurement systems, and so on, the bottom line is that local authorities aren’t transporting parcels around the place; they are working with children. Some of these children have complex needs, and some are very fragile indeed. It’s not a simple matter of cramming the greatest number of children into a vehicle on the longest possible route.
The drivers and assistants who take our children to school or college every day do an astonishingly important job and deserve to be valued and paid well. They are the bridge between home and school; they play a vital role in helping children feel safe and supported and ready to learn when they get there. They enable families to function, allowing parents to keep their jobs and earn money. I wonder if policymakers fully grasp how much difference it makes to a child and family’s life to have a good, caring, reliable bus or taxi driver?
A real-life example
Let me humanise it a bit. Home-to-school transport was a central part of my daughter Amy’s daily routine for 12 years. We met a lot of bus drivers during that time and experienced the best and worst of public services. She had drivers who really cared, drivers who didn’t seem to even notice her, drivers who were charming and delightful but slept through their alarm more days than not, drivers who messaged me when she was in hospital to say they missed her, drivers who were rude and disrespectful to the carer we employed, drivers who decorated the bus seasonally and made play-lists of music the children liked, drivers who couldn’t park for toffee or didn’t know how to operate the bus’s wheelchair lift, drivers who complained to us about their lot in life and went AWOL at a moment’s notice, drivers who got lost between home and school. Michael, the final driver, was everything a bus driver for disabled children should be: he cared, he was on time every day, and he knew how to operate the wheelchair lift. He even came to Amy’s funeral when she died earlier this year.
So yes, home-to-school transport needs to be planned and commissioned better. Transport needs to be properly integrated with SEND provision at the local authority level. Mainstream schools need to be more inclusive for a wider range of children, and specialist school places need to be commissioned closer to where children live. All of that is true. But let’s not forget that we’re talking about finding a way of taking children to school so that they’re ready to make the very most of their education.
Find the report on the NAO website. And if you’re wondering what the latest rules on SEND transport are, we’ll have a post next week from Eleanor Wright of SOS!SEN explaining everything you need to know.
Disabled Children’s Rights are Under Attack.
We’re fighting, but we can’t do it alone: we need your help more than ever.
We’re volunteer-run, but costs are rising. To help us keep going, please consider a one-off or, if it’s possible, a regular donation.
Read more about being a regular donor here.
We use Zeffy to fundraise, which doesn’t charge us a fee, so 100% of your donation reaches us.
Also read:
- Beyond EHCPs: Why Inclusion Needs More Than a Document
- The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reforms
- How health and family support systems are failing children starting school
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters
- Capital carrot, SEND steamroller: The Government’s evidence-light reform route isn’t waiting for anyone
- Schools White Paper: What do we know so far about funding for SEND?
- SEND cash splash: What does it all add up to—and will ditching debt improve provision?
- Inclusion bases: a new label, a big ambition, same unanswered questions
- Fix SEND our way for 90% of SEND debt write off, Government tells councils, urging swift action on change. So much for co-production…
Don’t miss a thing!
Don’t miss any posts from SNJ – simply add your email address below. You must click the link in the confirmation email you’ll receive to activate your free subscription.
You can also keep up with us by following our
Want more? Be an SNJ regular donor!
SNJ is a non-profit and everyone who writes here does so voluntarily. We need your support to help us with costs by donating once or as a regular patron. Find out more here
When her younger daughter was diagnosed with Rett Syndrome in 2009 shortly before her second birthday, Catriona found herself dealing in practice with things she’d previously thought she understood in principle.
She juggles her work as policy manager for a national charity with caring and advocating for her daughter. She's passionate about improving the lives of disabled children and their families, and making the systems that should support them work more transparently and equitably.
Catriona writes for Special Needs Jungle in a personal capacity, and all views expressed are her own.
- “Why would anyone in government think that was an okay idea?” #SaveSENDLegalRights - May 12, 2026
- The SEND reform reality check: Why experts’ and policymakers’ concerns are growing under scrutiny - April 15, 2026
- MPs warn “unsustainable” SEND transport system fails families with disabled young people - March 6, 2026
Please share this article!
Discover more from Special Needs Jungle
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
My Son who has Autism, learning difficulty, selective mute, and other difficulties was told he definitely qualifies for transport, the SEND manager also provided a letter to support this. The council told me to also get a letter from my GP to support this too then the process can go ahead. The GP did the letter in which I had to pay for, but the council even though receiving everything they asked for, didnt bother to approve it. This led to my Son not wanting to attend his special needs school, he wont get on the bus the best of times let alone rush hour. We walked an hour to get there and a lot of people being around him he could not cope, plus the bad weather, and he is frightened of the thunder and lightening. He kept going in the road and staying there, telling me he wanted to be run over and to be killed. I had no choice but to then home school him.