Councils in England urgently need more money to help them pay for school transport for children with special needs.
Many councils have told the Guardian that their obligations under the wider special educational needs and disabilities (Send) system are financially unsustainable, with the rapid increase in pupil transport costs becoming a particular issue.
Sources in councils and education said transporting the children was essential, but that the system, which was set up about a decade ago, had expanded beyond its original intention.
With no extra funding to support these services, some councils are now spending as much on transporting children as they are filling potholes.
By law, councils must provide transport to Send pupils if they live more than a set distance from their nearest suitable school, with the great majority of them travelling by taxi rather than buses.
The number of children travelling has risen by a quarter since 2019, with 31,000 going by taxi, according to the County Councils Network.
This creates enormous costs, particularly in larger and more spread-out areas.
The government is hoping its efforts to reverse some of thiswill help bring more Send pupils into their local schools, reducing the transport bills.
To support vulnerable children, Ofsted’s new grading system takes inclusion into consideration.
But with the wider Send system in chaos – MPs routinely say that it is one of the most common reasons for constituents to contact them – many councils believe that this will also require more resources, which they are unlikely to receive.
“The only way to deal with this is to put money into mainstream schools along with very clear accountability about what they should provide for Send pupils,” a council source said. “But you can’t just tell them to provide for Send pupils – you have to fund this and have the workforce for it.”
Another said: “There has been a change. Before the election there was a lot of buck-passing, and now the Department for Education is treating it seriously. But there is always a risk it ends up in the ‘too difficult’ pile.”
Of 43 councils that replied to a Guardian request for data, all but eight were spending more on Send pupils’ transport than on their revenue roads budget, which is used for maintenance rather than capital improvements.
On average, the amount spent on transport was slightly over twice as much, and in some cases notably more. One council, Wakefield, spends seven times as much on Send transport than road maintenance, and the ratio for several others is four or five to one.
Norfolk spent more than £40m on Send pupils’ transport in the last financial year.
Councils say the rapid growth of their bills is in part the product of more parents securing an education, health and care plan (EHCP), which provides them with extra help and, in some cases, the option of education in a non-mainstream school.
“EHCPs were meant to make the system less adversarial but it’s done the opposite,” one council source said. “It creates a tension between parents and carers acting perfectly rationally versus councils with a very finite pot of resources.”
Another commonly cited issue is the school reforms introduced by the Conservative education secretary Michael Gove in 2014 – at about the same time the Send system was being revamped – under which schools are judged primarily on exam and test results and similar metrics, making them less likely to be inclusive.
A DfE spokesperson said: “The Send system we’ve inherited has been failing to meet the needs of children and families for far too long, with a lack of early intervention and support in mainstream schools and unsustainable strain on local government finances.”
Efforts to improve inclusivity in mainstream schools have involved £740m in capital funding this year, they added, with more significant reforms due to be announced soon.
