Hitting the headlines at the moment is the discussion between the two ‘Katies’ in the Celebrity Big Brother house regarding school transport for her son Harvey who has severe and complex disabilities.
Most of the headlines seem to focus the debate on whether Katie Price should pay the alleged £1,000 per day for a taxi for her son to go to his special school because she can afford it.
Apart from the fact that I don’t think it was wise for her to discuss this on national television, the semantics such as 'state hand-outs', and 'taxpayers’ money' being used around this story are missing the point.
Legally, every child must go to, and has a right to attend school to receive an education. The current law requires local authorities to undertake their duty of organising admissions and transport to fulfil this law.
A child is then allocated to the ‘nearest, most appropriate’ school to their home. If this place happens to be a certain distance away from home, then the child is entitled to transport to get there.
When a child has a ‘Statement of Special Educational Needs’ (now called an ‘Education, Health & Care plan), the same rules apply.
The reason why transport costs are very high for all local authorities is because of the following reasons:
- The law requires them to provide transport to the nearest, most appropriate school SEN law requires them to not allow the cost of transport to be a barrier to the child accessing such a school
- There are not enough Special Educational Needs provision to meet ever increasing demand
- The fact that we assume that one individual who is in the media can and should pay for this transport means that we should also compel all parents who can afford £800 per year to pay a school bus pass to get their children to school when they had no control over where their child was placed.
If we think that Katie should pay, then everyone should pay who can afford it.
But how can that be right if none of us have the control over school provision and location in our authority?
School transport is not a ‘state benefit’, or a ‘cash hand-out’, it’s a right if there are no schools nearby.
There are thousands of children nationwide receiving transport that in some cases is much higher than this alleged price tag.
So maybe the answer lies in supporting local authorities in the notion of building future school provision needs and increasing the ‘invest to save’ in derelict or disused buildings to create more schools (particularly special schools).
Additionally, increasing the investment in specialist provision in mainstream schools would also provide increased options for children and less transport required.
Forget about the ‘Price’ tag and focus on the provision gap.
Sue Naughton-Marsh is a behavioural change consultant with specialist experience of helping bring down the cost of school transport.
