Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 352)
WEDNESDAY 12 MAY 2004
CLLR TONY
PAGE, CLLR
RAMON WILKINSON
AND CLLR
PATRICK COLEMAN
Q340 Mr Chaytor: It would be helpful,
the issue being that there are far fewer children on free school
meals with rising levels of employment and therefore working families
tax credit is a better indicator of low income across the board.
Cllr Page: I take that point.
Cllr Wilkinson: And a number of
children actually do not claim.
Q341 Mr Gibb: Mr Wilkinson, you raised
the issue of diversity. You were keen for there to be a diverse
range of pilot schemes. You then made a comment which I am interested
to know a little more about, that once the pilot had happened
and had been evaluated, you were intimating that you would want
a sort of national standard of policy relating to this kind of
area; is that what you were saying?
Cllr Wilkinson: No, I am not after
a nationalised one size fits all. What I am looking for is the
opportunity for Government to distribute what it considers to
be best practice, still allowing local authorities to deliver
their home to school transport on a locality basis, in other words
what it is they would want to see right for their communities.
Q342 Mr Gibb: But the broader thrust
of policy, ie best practice, would be decided nationally?
Cllr Wilkinson: No. There may
be several areas of best practice. I would expect each pilot to
come out with areas of best practice. They should be distributed
to all local authorities for an opportunity for them to compare
what they have with what other local authorities are doing and
consider whether or not they might like to adopt some of those.
I do not agree with national prescription.
Mr Gibb: And, if they do not adopt best
practice, then that is fine?
Q343 Paul Holmes: Just touching on
the issue we were talking about with the first set of witnesses,
I was wondering if the LGA had looked at the fact that the European
Convention on Human Rights says you cannot discriminate against
parents on the grounds of faith or philosophy. The Committee has
had advice that that does seem to imply if an LEA is providing
free school transport to faith schools, it must also in terms
of equity provide free transport for those parents who want their
children to go to a non-faith school. Have you looked at this
issue?
Cllr Page: We have not been given
any legal guidance on that; it has cropped up in our discussions.
Cllr Wilkinson: We discussed this
sitting at the back and said, "We don't want to get into
that"!
Cllr Page: He has let the cat
out of the bag!
Cllr Wilkinson: Listening to the
debate you were having, we recognised this is an area we must
take back to the LGA to get a view on. It seems to be prevailing
more and more and it is an important issue I think.
Cllr Page: At the end of the day,
Chairman, this may be something which can only be tested in the
courts. It is regrettable to have to say that but it is probably
the likely outcome.
Q344 Chairman: We are having some
evidence tomorrow on special educational needs. What is the view
of the LGA in terms of the proportion? It is very significant.
The proportion of the school transport costs which are down to
special educational needs has grown steadily as a greater proportion
of the whole. Any views on that? Will the Bill do anything to
change your ability to cope with that?
Cllr Wilkinson: I think you can
take it as read that every pilot will be looking at the question
of special educational needs transport, because you are right,
it is growing like Topsy every year. Most LEAs are struggling
with these sort of costs. I have to say that most now are looking
also at the policy of special educational needs and how they deliver
to young children with special needs. Certainly as far as Cambridgeshire
is concerned, we have 1,200 special needs pupils who use home-school
transport, mostly through the private sector, so we have taxis
and private vehicles. That is quite an expensive service. What
happened is that as the statementing process during the 1990s
was growing, because most of the schools were looking for additional
funding coming through the statementing process, coupled with
that statement generally is the method of transport for that child
to go to school. The difficulty is, if you couple with that parental
preference—and very much in special needs it is more towards
choice than preference—then you do get children who can
be driven past one special school to go to another special school
because that is the parent's choice and that is written into the
statement. In Cambridgeshire over the past few months, we have
looked at all of our special needs children and which schools
they are going to, what routes they are taking, and I have to
say it is something I am very concerned about because there is
no rationality about it whatsoever. I think most LEAs in the country
find themselves in a very similar position. So part of that pilot,
I am quite sure, will be looking at special educational needs.
Cllr Page: I agree with what Ramon
says, and there is sometimes a false view that somehow all children
with special educational needs cannot use public transport, and
that is wrong. Indeed, there is a case for saying that it is sometimes
part of the "therapy" to encourage the use of public
transport, so clearly there is scope within these pilots to address
that. But I make that point, in case you are under the impression
that we view it as solely taxis or private cars delivering.
Q345 Valerie Davey: Is this not another
area where you have two different policies? There is the inclusion
policy, which means more youngsters with special needs are going
to many more different schools, but it has a knock-on effect on
the transport?
Cllr Wilkinson: Many of the special
schools they go to are actually their local mainstream schools.
Q346 Valerie Davey: Exactly.
Cllr Wilkinson: That will ease
the burden as far as special educational needs transport is concerned.
Q347 Valerie Davey: It is swings
and roundabouts?
Cllr Wilkinson: It is swings and
roundabouts as far as we are concerned. If I give you a couple
of figures which just puts this into context, for Cambridgeshire
the cost of providing transport for 1,200 special needs children
is £4,777,000 per year. That equates to £3,980 per pupil
per annum just for transport. If you put that against the primary
school children who use home-school transport, 2,200—a thousand
more—primary school children, the cost of that is £1.9
million, which equals out at £868 per child. So there are
some real big differences there which we need to explore.
Q348 Chairman: That is most useful.
We will be going into that tomorrow. Will the pilots be able to
look at fully integrated transport provision across health, social
services, a really joined-up approach? Do you feel it will be
the ability of the pilots to do that?
Cllr Wilkinson: There is an expectation
on the LGA that one or two of the pilots ought to be looking at
that. I do not know if any LEAs at the moment are putting that
forward. When you look at what is happening in the outside world,
as it were, there is much more work and collaboration between
LEAs and primary care trusts with the on-coming Children Trusts,
for instance, and the Every Child Matters and the new Children's
Bill, so you have to look at integration and integrated services.
So the LGA's expectation is that one or two of those pilots would
be looking at that sort of pilot, yes.
Q349 Chairman: It is a pity we have
not got the three of you still here because the last bit of this
is, how difficult is it going to be to persuade? Some of the witnesses
we have had have said the real break-through would be to have
staggered school starting times on the American model. How easy
is that going to be to sell in Reading or Cambridgeshire?
Cllr Wilkinson: Incredibly difficult,
incredibly difficult. There is no doubt the Government recognises
there is going to be some flak around on this, particularly about
the charging policy and the possibility of staggering school times.
I am concerned that the local education authority could compel
a governing body into staggering or changing its opening and closing
times for a school. There would need to be other changes because
that knocks on into the school LEA's code of practice, and there
would need to be some changes there if that were to happen. I
would not want to go down that path, frankly. I think that once
governing bodies recognise there is an impact for them—the
higher the charges for home-school transport the less they get
into their own budgets—once we can get that home to them,
maybe we will get some co-operation. Could I finish on one other
point which I think is very important? We are now developing nationwide
clusters of schools—you can call them what you like, federations,
confederations. If you look at the Huntingdon area, you have the
HuntSNet schools where you have 22 primary schools, two secondary
schools, a further education college and a special school, collaborating
formally together, and one of the areas we are looking at is an
opportunity for that collaborative to look at the home-school
transport policy within that particular area. If you look at Kent,
they have 22 large clusters of schools which are working together
and delivering a whole range of policy. For instance, they have
a zero exclusion across a cluster, because the clusters manage
that themselves by sending children or moving children across
the collaboratives. There is a whole range of things we want to
be looking at and I am hoping the pilots might be looking at that
as well.
Q350 Chairman: Thanks for that. Last
word, Tony?
Cllr Page: It is a major problem
but I do think there does need to be some form of reserve power
in the Bill because in my experience, certainly in Reading where
the schools sometimes approach the bus company to vary the bus
times and then the cost implications are explained to them and
we have had some movement on their part, within the context of
a pilot I think there will be a need for the cluster approach,
but also at the end of the day if the local education authority
sees the benefit of staggered hours it has also got to be given
powers to see that through. I cannot see the pilots will work
if any one school has got the veto power over this.
Q351 Chairman: A very final question,
because we will not be quorate if any more Members go to Prime
Minister's Questions, and it has been very good to have you in
front of us and get this quality of contribution. You suggested
this Bill needs some serious amendment if it is going to work
and you have suggested some amendments, will it work without the
amendments being accepted?
Cllr Page: Local authorities will
obviously consider it, but unless there are those sort of amendments
made I do not think you will see the innovation that the Government
would like to see coming forward and we would like to see coming
forward. The issue of pump-priming is fundamental to all of this.
If the Government embraced all the changes we are putting forward
and said, "We are not going to come up with any pump-priming",
unfortunately a lot of us will have wasted a lot of time.
Q352 Chairman: Excellent. I think
we have the message, we will pass it on in some form or another
when we report. Thank you again.
Cllr Page: Thank you, Chairman.
I am sorry our colleague had to leave early.
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