The Department does not understand how access to transport is affecting attendance, nor how difficult it is for parents to navigate the system, particularly post-16. While acknowledging that transport is critical to accessing education and training, the Department does not 2 know how annual spending—£2.3 billion in 2023–24 and £2.6 billion in 2024–25—on home to school transport is impacting overall attendance and participation levels. Instead, it only considers how many sessions children who ...

The Department does not understand how access to transport is affecting attendance, nor how difficult it is for parents to navigate the system, particularly post-16. While acknowledging that transport is critical to accessing education and training, the Department does not 2 know how annual spending—£2.3 billion in 2023–24 and £2.6 billion in 2024–25—on home to school transport is impacting overall attendance and participation levels. Instead, it only considers how many sessions children who are already receiving local-authority-provided transport might fail to attend due to problems on a particular day. That is surprising when nearly one in Type: conclusion | Number: 2 | Response status: response_pending