Archived decisions

Headings

Description of what is wanted

1. Name:

Home to School Transport

2. Purpose:

To provide as effectively and efficiently as possible, home to school transport for pupils and students entitled by statutory requirement or County Council Policy. The service is provided by the County Council under section 509 of the 1996 Education Act, and is delivered by using contracted buses and taxis, bus and rail season tickets and direct support for some parents and pupils.

3. Proposed improvements

    · The policy on home to school transport should be kept under review

    · Privilege transport charges should be brought closer to the full cost of providing the places

    · Further investigation needed into charging or introduction of voluntary contributions for post-16 transport for students with special educational needs

    · Representation should be made to government to enable home to school transport charges for 5-16 year to be made. This could lead to a more locally coherent provision of transport and the recommendation has been passed to the cross-cutting Best Value review of passenger transport

    · Further work is needed on the possible delegation of home to school transport budgets to schools, or clusters of schools

    · Better co-ordination of transport policy is possible and this should be considered by the cross-cutting Best Value review of passenger transport

    · The potential of externalising all County Council transport should be referred to by the cross-cutting Best Value review of passenger transport

    · Improved working relationships between education and the passenger transport group should be implemented

    · Recruitment to the escort service should reflect the ethnic balance within Hampshire

    · Extend the number of schools where home to school transport is reviewed annually

    · Promote the minibus scheme to more special schools and pupil referral units and extend the scheme to mainstream schools

    · Consider a fleet of coaches to be owned by the county council

    · Further encourage parents to provide transport where this does not lead to an increase in the number of vehicles using the road

    · Further work with governing bodies where rationalising school opening and closing times could lead to savings in transport costs

    · Use of all county council vehicles contribution towards providing home to school transport should be referred to the cross-cutting Best Value review of passenger transport

    · Action should be taken to improve the time keeping of home to school transport and to improve the quality of vehicles without raising costs or decreasing competition

    · Improve the information to parents on who to contact

    · Improve the speed of dealing with transport problems

    · Gather more information about service delivery, including incidents of vandalism

    · Make more use of the Internet for applications for home to school transport

4. Progress on implementing the improvement plan

    · Following discussion with Cabinet Member, no policy change on denominational transport

    · Charges for privilege transport increased by 20%

    · Work on post-16 SEN policy held pending new Education Act

    · Pilot study on Voluntary Contributions not yet implemented

    · Representations made to government on HTST Policy

    · Working Party set up to examine delegation/devolution of budgets to schools - to report by July 2002

    · Co-ordination of transport across service departments referred to cross-cutting review - 2 pilot studies established

    · Externalisation of transport management considered and rejected by cross-cutting review

    · Improvements to working relationships achieved by joint training events and role clarification

    · Number of area reviews extended to four rather than three. Further expansion limited by staffing pressures

    · Mainstream schools, PRUs and Special Schools all involved in mini-bus scheme

    · Executive member decided not to proceed on Fleet purchase at this time

    · Unable to identify a school cluster where rationalisation of school times would produce a saving commensurate with the time involved

    · Use of all County Council vehicles considered by Cross-Cutting Review and incorporate into new pilot study

    · Contract revision underway to improve - amongst other things, vehicle quality and timekeeping

    · Further work being undertaken on improving speed and response to complaints

    · No action yet on E Government

5. Plans for future implementation

Further work needs to be undertaken on policy reviews, now that the provisions of the new Education Bill have been published. More urgency needs to be given to improving responses to parents. The results of this year's parental survey will help to provide the impetus. Further work needs to take place with the Social Services Department in supporting the HTST needs of looked after children

6. Conclusion

Overall, changes have been put in place in line with the Improvement Plan. Some of the action dates were optimistic, particularly in the light of the delay in the final approval of the Plan.