Home to school transport

1.Please state any changes to the eligibility criteria or service offer under the council’s home to school transport policy (as per section 50B of the Education Act 1996) that have been enacted since April 2010. Non-substantive, purely technical alterations can be left out. Please state the month that each took effect, and provide any impact assessment that was carried out.

Changes to Devon’s education transport policy since 2010 increased the contributions to costs for transport support wheere they were not the result of a statutory entitlement to support (where a concessionary or spare seat is made available to a passenger) or where the law provides for the Local Authority to impose a contribution towards costs for post-16 passengers. Contributions were increased for September of the academic years 2014, 2015 and 2016.

For September 2017, the focus of post-16 education transport provision was to meet the statutory requirement to support students where not to do so would be an obstacle to continuing in education. Before that, we exercised our  discretion to provide transport for all students who met eligibility criteria rather than being a safety net where no other arrangements could be made.

Transport to faith and selective schools was last reviewed for September 2011 to ensure that transport was not provided on a discretionary basis.

An Impact Assessment is carried out each year. No changes have impacted on statutory requirements.

2. For each of the following academic years – 2010/11, 2014/15, 2017/18, 2018/19 – please state the number of children aged 5-16 who received free home to school transport from (or funded by) the council (as per section 50B of the Education Act 1996).

2010 -2011  – 15,256
2014 – 2015 –  13,730

2015 – 2016 – not requested

2017 – 2018 – 13,491
2018 – 2019 – 13,547

3. For each of the following academic years – 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19 = please state the number of children of compulsory school age with SEND statements or ECHPs who were being educated outside the local authority area

Our statutory returns report on calendar year so for children of compulsory school age outside of Devon: 2016 = 157; 2017 = 193; 2018 = 213

4. Please list the ‘out of area’ local authorities where children from your local authority with SEND statements or ECHPs are currently in compulsory education, together with the number of children being educated in each local authority (where the number is three or fewer, please list the local authority even if the number is not provided)

Bradford; Bristol; Bury; Cambridge; Cornwall = 11; Dorset = 9; Hampshire; Hertfordshire; Kent; Oxfordshire; Plymouth = 80; Somerset = 26; Torbay = 73; West Berkshire; Worcestershire

5. Does the council identifiably record the cost of external legal advice and representation for first tier and upper tier SEND tribunal cases (i.e. SENDIST)?

No

If the response to question 5 is ‘no’ please ignore question 6.

6. How much did the council spend on external legal advice and representation on first tier and upper tier SEND tribunal cases each financial year for 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19 (year to date)? If possible, please split the expenditure between cases won by the council and cases lost by the council. There is no need to split the figures between first tier and upper tier expenditure.

Please see the answer to the previous question.