Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 31 MARCH 2004
MR PETER
HOUSDEN, MS
PENNY JONES
AND MR
PETER OPENSHAW
Q1 Chairman: We welcome you to the
Committee on the Draft School Transport Bill. We are very interested
to learn something about how the Department sees it, and the way
in which it will unravel or proceed, given that this is a Bill
that is almost unique in that there is so little detail in it.
It is the Committee's job to investigate. The Committee is very
interested in this, in terms of its traditional remit and our
increasing remit in relation to responsibilities for children
right across the piece, which makes this of greater significance.
Some of the questions will be about how far this Bill will enable
us to look at a very comprehensive way of addressing the movement
of children across local education and counterparties. What is
the origin of the Bill? What is the inspiration for the Bill?
Mr Housden: The legislation that
currently governs school transport, as you know, is of very long-standing.
We have seen in recent years a number of movements, particularly
in patterns of travelling, in congestion, in lengths of journeys
to school, and in the numbers of youngsters travelling by car.
That has been an issue for public policy for a few years now,
and those trends have been apparent. What has been encouraging
for us and ministers is that we have seen the success of school
travel plans where, with the Department for Transport, we have
provided some quite modest support for individual schools to look,
in their particular circumstances, at what they could do to encourage
more children to walk, to use a bike, or otherwise not to be increasing
the school run. You have seen there is a lot of creativity in
terms of how working with their local authority, both from the
education side and its wider transport responsibilities with transport
providers in the private sector, with parents with voluntary groups,
schools have been able to make quite significant shifts. Our action
plan gives some quite striking examples of what schools have done
there. The added bonus of course is that good schools have been
able to use that as an educational opportunity; so they have talked
with their youngsters and their parents about what sustainability
means, about the importance of exercise and so on. There is a
strong win-win in school travel planning; and hence the action
plan talks about extending that and giving every school the opportunity
and incentive to develop those.
Q2 Chairman: When did school travel
plans come in? What is the history of that initiative?
Ms Jones: The Department of Transport
started looking at travel planning not just for schools but for
workplaces as well, three or four years ago. We have got to the
situation now where at the end of March 2003 we had 2,500 schools
with travel plans, and there will be another 1,000 or 1,500 in
the year to 31 March 2004; so it is something that has been around
for a few years.
Q3 Chairman: The lead player being
the single institution, the school.
Ms Jones: Yes.
Q4 Chairman: What have been the successes
of that? What is good practice?
Ms Jones: We can certainly cite
a number of schools where we have seen a quite dramatic shift
in the mode of travel to school. To give an example, Holmer Green
School in Buckinghamshire started off with 62% of pupils travelling
to school by car, and it is now down to 26%, but we have seen
more modest shifts in secondary schools. I have one example where
there has been a 21% reduction in car travel; but you have also
got other secondary schools where, working together with local
transport authorities, schools have put in place sensible cycle
routes and have boosted cycling by 5-10%, perhaps making it 30-40%.
We have to look at what is appropriate for the circumstances of
the school.
Q5 Chairman: It is building
on that original initiative. Peter, I have broken into your train
of thought.
Mr Housden: I think that all of
that has been done within existing legislation. In parallel with
that has been running a dialogue with schools, local authorities,
the Local Government Association and others, about whether increased
legislative flexibility would help us take this a significant
step forward. This is what this draft bill is about. It reflects
a fair degree of consensus amongst the key players that it is
important to try and establish some pattern of flexibility. There
are two or three important things about it. First, it is based
on the idea of pilot schemes approved by the Secretary of State,
which have to demonstrate their effectiveness in terms of reducing
car use, and also their acceptability to the local community of
parents and other stakeholders; so they are very much based on
the principle of voluntary schemes. No local authority will ever
be required to adopt one; it is voluntary, based on extensive
consultation and on the particular local circumstances. They reflect
a desire to see whether you can move past the rigidities of the
current statutory walking distances, because any cut-off framed
in law and regulation like that leaves problems of equity at the
boundaries; so if you are not quite on the statutory distance,
then you get nothing. This is an opportunity for authorities,
building on the practices and partnerships that have underpinned
the success of school travel plans, to put forward a scheme, to
win local support for it, and to see what they can do to drive
forward on those objectives within their area.
Q6 Chairman: Most of us I imagine
would agree that it is quite an interesting way of looking at
changing something as complex as school transport, so pilots should
be encouraged. Are we sure that the assessment will be built in
to these pilots and that the assessment procedure will be sufficiently
rigorous to know whether we have achieved anything by them? What
is going to be the mark of success of a really successful project?
Mr Housden: We have got quite
an interesting layer of measures to be sure about how individual
schemes are being effective. We are keen always to balance here
good quality information to judge effectiveness against unnecessary
burdens on schools or other parties concerned. At each school
level we envisage that the school travel plan will have specific
measurable objectives built within it, and a mechanism to collect
those. In many cases, we have seen that done simply by hands-up
surveys in classrooms about how children are travelling and making
an educational process of that measurement over time. We have
also, through the pattern of school travel advisers, who we are
funding with the Department for Transport in local authorities,
the capacity to draw their intelligence alongside that about the
effectiveness of individual schemes. The Department for Transport's
travel survey, which is done every year, will over time give an
indication of trends. The final point on this, which is interesting,
is that Somerset is making use of the pupil level annual census
data that we have electronically established, so that each pupil
has a specific identifiable number with their address within the
schools information system and we are able to track precisely
which pupils live which distances from the school and those that
have actually changed their patterns of transport. This is a pilot
scheme that Somerset is interested in, but it will give us a further
level of intelligence about the effectiveness.
Q7 Chairman: Normally, pilots go
with some sweeteners of inducements to take them up. The rumour
out of the Department was that it was envisaged that as these
pilots were awarded, there would be some extra resource to go
with them. We are all aware of the increased sophistication of
transport logistic systems, using IT, global positioning satellites
and new vehicles. That is expensive. If you are going to go down
that route, it seems a little unkind not to operate inducements
in terms of at least capital investment.
Mr Housden: You would not want
me to comment on rumours, but let me say two things.
Q8 Chairman: You can tell us the
truth, if you like, or scotch the rumours!
Mr Housden: I would always endeavour
to do that. The capital incentives are available for all schools,
primary and secondary. You have an approved school travel plan,
so £5,000 for a primary school, £10,000 for a secondary
school. The action plan has now been published for five or six
months, and interestingly these are proving a significant inducement.
People are very interested to get hold of that level of capital
and to get an approved plan. The burden of your question is on
the wider pilots. We go back here to the £2 billion of public
money that is subsidising transport in local areas. Something
like half a billion of that is schools related. We know from our
knowledge of local areas that there is considerable scope for
greater integration—and you mentioned some of the technological
opportunities that are available now. If you take social services
transport, health transport, indeed the general way in which the
general public's transport, quite unconnected with schools, is
being subsidised; the way that vehicles are being used and deployed;
the nature of contracts that are being struck between public authorities
and bus contractors, all of that in many authorities is quite
piecemeal. The evidence of successful schemes suggests there is
quite a bit of mileage to get greater efficiency out of the £2
billion. Our ministers, either in the Department for Education
and Skills or the Department for Transport believe that direct
financial incentives were necessary for large public authorities.
Q9 Chairman: Putting that to one
side, when you talk about an overall cost of £2 billion,
that is fine; but do these pilots allow scope for any of these
projects to look at transport for children right across the piece,
or indeed transport for health or education? Some of us would
have thought that given the different demands of transporting
children to clinics, and patients to hospitals and other health
facilities, an integrated system that did not have a boundary
between education and health or anything else, might be something
that pilots ought to look at. Are they going to be able to look
more broadly?
Mr Housden: Absolutely. You have
caught the essence of the scheme there really, because each local
circumstance will be different. The pattern of health-related
transport in a rural area, for example, would be markedly different
than one in an urban area. The scheme does give the opportunity
for all local partners to think about that. You are right also
to say that the local transport authority will have an interest
in the whole of its population in school and out, so children's
transport can very much come to the fore. There are no specific
requirements or developments in there that say in relation to
health or any other part of the community or its interests "thou
shalt be involved" but the scope is clearly there. An interesting
dimension to this also is about transport for older people. You
have seen some progressive transport authorities do some exciting
things about increasing the capacity for mobility for older people
who do not own cars. All of that can be brought into the development
of these local schemes.
Q10 Chairman: My colleagues will
want to go into some depth on that, but there is one last question
from me on that. What about an overall sustainability evaluation
of these new proposals? It is all very well introducing a whole
new package of systems through pilots, but could it be that the
different ways we are approaching this kind of school transport
and broader public transport issue could add up to greater pollution
of the environment, more mileage, more global warming? Is going
to be built into this a very clear mandate to have the sustainability
of these projects carefully evaluate?
Mr Housden: Yes, in both senses
of the word sustainability. It is emphatically aimed at reducing
car use and congestion. The separation of those two is interesting,
but they are both factors that directly cause pollution. That
is what it is about, and providing a better service for people
in that context. The voluntary, local, consensus-built approach
to the pilots is the key to the other sense of sustainability,
that these are not things that are forced on communities, which
gives the opportunity for people to bring as much as they can
into a local solution that meets their needs.
Q11 You gave a very reasonable introduction,
well-reasoned introduction, as to why it came about initially.
When you start to think about it, if it is congestion, then it
is other people's use of the road and pollution, and in fact it
is not child-centred. You went on to talk about individual schools
coming up with their plan, but I still do not get a sense from
reading the Draft Bill as to where the priorities of the Department
for Education and Skills really lie. If a group of governors and
an LEA are sitting around a table, what are you asking them to
look at first? What is the real priority for their pilot scheme?
How would you judge it in priority terms?
Mr Housden: All schools have the
responsibility to be good citizens. In helping their community,
their parents and their children, to think about sustainable means
of transport, that is a prime example of how they can fulfil their
responsibility, because they and the whole community will suffer
from pollution and congestion. There are also some pretty well-evidenced
health benefits from cycling and walking and other non sedentary
ways of getting to school. Both of those things will be important
for youngsters. The local school's circumstances, almost by definition,
will be particular and they will need to reach a view about what
changes and what facilities and what incentives will matter for
them. But in terms of how you pitch this to a governing body or
an individual school, it is about wider community benefit, which
will have direct benefits for the pupils and all the people involved
in the school as citizens and individually, who can actually form
part of a very important education experience. This is not just
plucked out of the air, but school travel advisers and planning
experience so far tells us that, properly handled, this can be
a rich experience educationally.
Q12 Valerie Davey: One obvious way
of stopping the congestion would be to change the time of going
to school. If that is the top priority and local people are going
to work at eight or nine, then the schools should not open until
half past nine; but that does not address the other issues that
you then come on to, although it might make it safer for children
to walk to school if there were not so many cars on the road.
Therefore the scheme that any individual school comes up with
is interesting, but if you talk about the community, there does
not seem to be a sufficiently integrated approach, so you are
not encouraging LEAs to do things together and you are not encouraging
schools to be seen to be doing it together. How wide is the community
in the pilots that you want to encourage?
Mr Housden: There are two very
important points there. On the "togetherness" point,
very many schools will have to do this together, will they not?
Primary and secondary schools on the same site—and there
are plenty of those—will certainly be encouraged by local
authorities to do that. You are also right to say that the local
authority boundaries are quite arbitrary in relation to this,
and it will often be necessary for two, three or four authorities
to plan together. Although the law requires that each individual
local authority will need to be making an application for a pilot
scheme, the capacity for those to be jointly conceived is very
much within our thinking. Can I return to your point about staggered
opening hours, because it is critical really. We are not proposing
to take away from individual schools the decision that their governors
can make about their opening hours because we think that that
is absolutely fundamental to the ethos, spirit and capacity of
the school to shape its experience for youngsters. What that does
not mean, however, is that we are not encouraging conversations
about whether co-ordination of that can help better use of transport,
because there is an efficiency question here, and also possibly
reduced congestion. It illustrates though the balance that you
have to strike in all of this, because you are seeing countervailing
trends at the moment quite a number of schools in the secondary
sphere wanting to co-ordinate their opening and closing times
so that they can together offer, particularly students of 14-plus
a richer range of options on the vocational side. This is a good
example of the balance you have to strike in all of this, but
we are not proposing to take away from an individual school that
capacity to shape its own opening and closing times, but would
like them to think about in a wider context.
Q13 Valerie Davey: You mentioned
£5,000 in primary and £10,000 for secondary as an inducement.
Did you say that was capital?
Mr Housden: Yes, it is capital.
Q14 Valerie Davey: We could get more
children going to one particular school if we could offer more
for a crossing lady or a crossing patrol person. If they have
not got it within their school funding, the LEA does not think
it is a priority, but more youngsters would definitely walk to
school if that crossing were safer. I am sorry that it is solely
capital.
Mr Housden: Yes. In terms of revenue
investment, that would be a matter to be locally funded and developed;
but the capital funding is that from the Department, yes.
Q15 Paul Holmes: Given that LEAs
have so much flexibility and freedom of operation anyway, why
do we need a transport bill to allow pilots when LEAs could do
most of this anyway? What is the key difference?
Mr Housden: You are right to say
that local authorities have got, within the existing legislation,
more scope than many of them are currently exploiting; and there
is quite a wide variety of practice. I think the stumbling block
for those at the sharper end of practice, who have been wanting
to push the boundaries out progressively, has been the statutory
walking distances; that they are constrained by all of that. There
is some evidence to back up the view that a sensible, sustainable
regime of charging would enable them, with appropriate safeguards,
to increase the overall level of public satisfaction; so more
parents would be happy about how their youngsters were travelling
safely to school, and would be able to take further steps to reduce
car use on the school run. Essentially, it is about providing
a framework from which you could safely remove the existing quite
rigid requirements.
Q16 Paul Holmes: If the Secretary
of State just altered that basic regulation about the distance
to school, could he not then leave it to all the LEAs to experiment
as they liked, rather than having a bill with a lot of fanfare
and up to 20 pilots. The cynics would say that this is just a
way of appearing to do something and putting everything off until
2011.
Mr Housden: I think it is a reflection
of what we see as the complexity of this, and wanting to proceed
carefully. We have the sense that if this was an easy problem
to resolve, it would have been sorted quite a while ago. There
certainly will be sensitivities. People who receive free transport
will want to scrutinise very carefully any proposal in their area,
will they not? To get the maximum benefit from this, the range
of potential players and organisations that have to be involved
is pretty wide. The pilot mechanism is fairly widely drawn and
quite large—we are thinking about as many as 20 over this
period—and giving them a fairly extended time period to
prove their success or otherwise, and then allowing those regulations
to lapse and then it becoming a general capacity for any authority
that wants to do it, but without requiring all authorities. It
is an interesting way of framing a law, is it not? A council that
reaches the view that the existing statutory walking distance
is no barrier, and that they can make progress satisfactorily
now under existing law, will be able so to do. It will be interesting
to see how that moves. We are trying to strike that balance.
Q17 Paul Holmes: A lot of the lobbying
from LEAs is that they want a change in the rules. How far has
that been thrown into focus as an unforeseen consequence of LMS
for schools? Schools welcomed LMS; government then puts pressure
on LEAs to spend less and less centrally; so the transport budget
now makes up a bigger and bigger percentage of a smaller and smaller
chunk that the LEAs control. How far is it an unforeseen consequence
of that process?
Mr Housden: You are absolutely
right to say that there are pressures upon local authority budgets
that have run since 1998-99, but progressively the Government
remains very committed to maximising the amount of money that
is in school budgets, and this is part of all of that. Local authorities
in addition, as you suggest, have faced increased pressures on
this budget, particularly in relation to special educational needs,
which we might come on to later. There is a big impetus, is there
not, for local authorities to look hard at the value for money
they are getting? In many cases, that is what has driven the integration
that the Chairman referred to earlier, but we think that is good,
and a sensible use of public money.
Q18 Chairman: Are you saying that
if many other authorities are stimulated into having a project,
then the Department would smile on that? They would not be part
of the pilot because you are restricting those to 20 or 26, as
a I read the Bill, but quite honestly, if my own authority of
Kirklees did not get chosen they could get on with it anyway,
because they would be able to under the current legislation.
Mr Housden: They would be bound
by the statutory distances if they were not part of the formal
pilot arrangements, but all other of it they could do. The action
plan and the Bill need to be seen together, and we hope that the
combination of those two will create that sort of bow wave you
describe.
Q19 Mr Gibb: My understanding of
the Draft Bill, clause 1, paragraphs 2 and 3, is that a local
authority is required to provide transport if the distance exceeds
the walking distance, but you may provide schemes if the distance
is under that. I do not understand why you do not just change
the walking distance. What is the Government's view about what
is reasonable for a child to walk to school, assuming, all things
being equal, that it is safe for a child to walk to school? Why
is it that three miles for a child over eight and two miles for
a child under eight is considered as reasonable when it is what
should be regarded as reasonable?
Mr Housden: It is a judgment of
Solomon as to what ought to be regarded as reasonable. Our sense
has been that what has been regarded as reasonable has got a shorter
and shorter distance over the years. If you pitched your mind
back 40 or 50 years, I understand the nation as a whole was much
more willing, and in some senses had no choice but to walk long
distances. Those statutory requirements reflect that sort of period.
All the evidence that comes to us is that parents are concerned
about traffic danger and stranger danger—all those sorts
of issues which have made them more nervous about youngsters walking
or cycling to school; hence the importance of travel plans which
can remove some of the burdens and barriers to that. We have also
seen changing patterns of employment and more women in the labour
market particularly, which has meant that people are more willing
and needing to take their youngsters to school in a car. Therefore,
rather than set a new framework, a new judgment about what is
reasonable, we are encouraging local communities to think about
a solution that does not require that type of rigidity. If, for
example, you were to agree in the House that a different set of
numbers was appropriate with statutory walking distances, you
would just be setting another rigid barrier, which the people
just the other side of in distance terms would be disappointed
by. If you are just short of three miles, or you have an unsafe
walking route, you have got cause for a grievance—and I
am sure you will have constituency cases of that type that come
up. It is a matter of finding a more flexible approach to that,
which is locally built, and that is what we are interested in
doing.
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