A former schools minister has pressed Department for Education officials on how the government will ensure that pupils are not blocked from accessing free breakfast clubs due to a lack of transport.
One of Labour’s key manifesto pledges is to roll out fully-funded breakfast clubs to all primary schools in England.
But, speaking at a meeting of the Commons Public Accounts Committee today, former schools minister Catherine McKinnell highlighted that home-to-school transport policy requirements do not cover pupils’ attendance at breakfast clubs.
Ms McKinnell, who was this Labour government’s schools minister until September, said: “We know [breakfast clubs] are a key part of the child poverty strategy and also generally improve school outcomes. But at the moment the doesn’t cover breakfast clubs as a requirement.
“We know that low-income families are the ones that will really benefit from breakfast clubs. So what are the plans to make sure that all children can access them, and that transport is not the barrier to that?”
Transport to school breakfast clubs
Juliet Chua, the DfE’s director general for schools, said the government was using a “test and learn” approach to rolling out breakfast clubs.
She said: “The initial early adopters have given us a real insight, and that represents schools in a whole range of different areas with different characteristics.
“The expectations on those schools are that parents and carers actually can use the breakfast offer to be able to drop off early, for the child to be able to access that provision to support parents to be able to get to work.”
As an example, Ms Chua highlighted a special school - one of the early adopters of a free breakfast club - where “previously, you’d seen children waiting in the car park in their transportation for school to start” who now were able to attend a breakfast club.
“This is an area which we’ll continue to monitor, as clearly we want to make sure breakfast clubs are really successful,” she added.
Ms McKinnell asked whether providing transport to breakfast clubs would become a statutory requirement.
DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood said that any change of policy would be a matter for ministers.
The questions came in a Public Accounts Committee session on home-to-school transport.
Committee chair Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative MP for North Cotswolds, said the cost of home-to-school transport had risen to £2.3 billion by 2022-23.
He said that the biggest spending pressures came from the provision for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), for whom the cost has doubled in the space of a decade.
More inclusive schools ‘will cut transport costs’
Giving evidence, Ms Acland-Hood said: “By far and away, the biggest driver of cost in the system as a whole is in the SEND provision, and it relates to the number of children travelling longer distances, and somewhat to the types of transport and the cost of that transport.”
She pointed to the importance of the government’s SEND reforms in reducing this spending.
“Fundamentally, if we can succeed in the SEND reforms, and particularly in the aim that ministers have set of having more children able to attend an inclusive local school that is nearby, that is the single thing we can do that will make the biggest difference,” she said.
Recent government data shows that nearly half a million children are eligible to have their transport to school funded by local authorities.
Around 40 per cent of under-16 pupils using home-to-school transport have SEND (180,000 pupils) and around 290,000 (60 per cent) are using it for reasons other than SEND, data shows.
These other reasons can include long walking distances to school, or a lack of safe walking routes.
‘It doesn’t have to be a door-to-door service’
The committee heard two sets of evidence this afternoon.
In the first session, Ms McKinnell asked a panel of council and charity representatives what they would do if they were designing a home-to-school transport system from scratch.
Rose McArthur, chair of the Home to School Transport working group for ADEPT (Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning and Transport), said there were problems with the description of “home-to-school” transport, and with people’s expectations of the service.
For example, journeys did not have to be to school but could be “to a bus stop” or a walking route.
Pointing to the costs involved, she said: “We are wanting to get children to education, but how that happens doesn’t have to be a door-to door service.
“I think there is an expectation that has been built in and a level of over-provision that has been built in.”
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