1.  It is extremely welcome that the Government has chosen to look at school transport now. In principle, the Committee supports the Government's decision to address the problem of school travel and welcomes the close co-operation of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Department for Transport (DfT) on this Bill. However, even our brief examination of the bill has raised questions about the proposals in the draft Bill itself. (Paragraph 12)

2.  Despite the general agreement that the walking distances contained in the Education Act 1996 were no longer appropriate, the draft Bill specifies that "walking distance" has the meaning given by section 444(5) of that Act; this must be readdressed. (Paragraph 14)

3.   The Committee agrees that in many cases walking to school will be the healthiest and most environmentally friendly option. Setting a limit beyond which free transport will be provided gives a clear signal that below that limit it is reasonable for children to walk. The question is what limit is appropriate. (Paragraph 15)

4.  Any new system should ensure that expenditure savings on school transport can be taken into account when investment decisions on infrastructure measures, such as providing safe footpaths or cycle routes, are made. (Paragraph 16)

5.  If people's habits are going to be changed, there must be clear limits to walking distance based on age combined with a legal definition of a safe route which is sufficiently flexible to reflect the range of different conditions that children face on their journey to school. Where there is no safe route, free bus transport should be provided. Ultimately, we hope that more children will walk or cycle to school; that will only happen if their parents are convinced it is safe for them to do so. (Paragraph 18)

6.  Local Transport Plan (LTP) funding should not be restricted to "hard" measures; local authorities should be able to use it for training and other "soft" measures if they wish. (Paragraph 22)

7.  We would urge the Department for Education and Skills to encourage schools involvement in schemes such as the golden boot challenge. (Paragraph 24)

8.  We were disappointed by the attitude of the Secondary Heads Association toward school travel plans. We appreciate that many schools feel burdened by the need to respond to countless initiatives, but schools have responsibilities for their pupils' wider education. We do not think it is inevitable that school travel plans will conflict with the national curriculum. We support the work that the Department for Education and Skills and the Department for Transport are doing to persuade schools to take travel plans seriously. We hope our colleagues in the Education and Skills Committee will explore the effects of such plans on school resources further. (Paragraph 25)

9.  We were surprised that the Government admits that it does not know about the effects of the best value regime on the quality of school buses. It is clear from our evidence that many authorities interpret "best value" as "lowest cost". This must be wrong. The Government should set national minimum standards for LEA school bus contracts. (Paragraph 33)

10.  The current system produces some school buses which are demonstrably dangerous. This should not be allowed. (Paragraph 34)

11.  It is unacceptable for school children to be forced to use the oldest buses on the road. (Paragraph 35)

12.  The journey to school will be safer and pleasanter if escorts are used on school buses. The Department for Transport and the Department for Education and Skills should promote the use of support staff for such purposes and should offer incentives. (Paragraph 37)

13.  The Committee welcomes the Government's willingness to make some changes to the Transport Act 1985 but is disappointed that the Bill does not give the LEAs more discretion to propose changes to the legal and regulatory framework when they pilot school travel schemes. It should be possible for local authorities to look at ways of integrating their school transport with other public transport they support. As the lead Department, the Department for Transport should, as a matter of urgency, establish a working group to consider how services could be integrated, and what regulatory changes are needed. These are pilot schemes, and that each scheme must be approved by the Government before being put into place; authorities should have far more freedom to experiment with new ways of specifying and providing school transport as part of a wider transport system. Tendering issues should be addressed as a school transport issue. (Paragraph 44)

14.  Any charging schemes should include a family ticket or a discount for more than one child. (Paragraph 47)

15.  Any scheme must ensure that means testing does not deter children who are entitled to free school transport from using it. The effects of schemes must be monitored and if monitoring shows that some of the arrangements piloted are preventing poor children using school transport they should be stopped. (Paragraph 50)

16.  If only one of the pilot travel schemes includes a "yellow bus" scheme we recommend that the scheme is conducted on a large enough scale to assess its potential impact on modal shift. Unnecessary regulatory obstacles to using "yellow buses" for complementary purposes should be removed. (Paragraph 55)

17.  It is essential that the effects on congestion of the pilot schemes are monitored. It is far from clear how schemes will be evaluated when local authorities say that they do not monitor congestion around schools or indeed know how to measure it. This must be part of the assessment of schemes' success. (Paragraph 57)

18.  Any congestion performance indicators that are developed should include all modes of transport, and should measure the effects of change on pedestrians and cyclists. (Paragraph 58)

19.  The Committee supports the idea of pilot schemes. However, the Government's leisurely approach is an indulgence. As we have demonstrated, school transport is in crisis now and the effects of this crisis are felt by everyone who needs to travel at peak hours. The pilots should be limited to two years duration. In addition, the Government and local authorities should do all they can to ensure that the first pilots can be implemented as quickly as possible after Royal Assent. An experiment which does not end until 2011 is not addressing this problem with the urgency its needs. If the Bill is passed next year, we believe that a significant number of pilots should have been completed by 2008. (Paragraph 59)

20.  We are disappointed that the Government has not provided for the pilot schemes to be far more radical. It is inappropriate to leave it entirely to local authorities to identify and bring forward possible models for new school transport arrangements. The Government should itself identify a range of problems it wishes to solve, and a range of possible solutions to test. (Paragraph 60)

21.  In effect, the Secretary of State for Education in England and the National Assembly in Wales would have power to determine the way in which school transport should be provided, without any further report on the success of schemes, or sanction by Parliament. This is not acceptable. There are serious practical questions to be asked. It is not clear whether local authorities will be free to choose to provide services in the way they do now if the pilots are continued after 2011, nor whether the aim is to have a restricted range of standards for provision throughout England or Wales, or to allow local authorities to run a wide variety of schemes. Although the Bill itself appears to leave local authorities the option of continuing under the current legislative framework, the Government would be able to indicate support for particular schemes and will presumably be able to support local authorities using such schemes. We hope the Education and Skills Committee will look further at this issue. (Paragraph 61)

22.  The Department for Transport should take a lead in encouraging local authorities to integrate their school transport provision with other services, such as access to health facilities, or transport for social services, and working out a suitable action plan with the DfEs and other interested parties. At least one of the pilots should address this. (Paragraph 62)

23.   If the Government wishes the pilot schemes to be tested properly, it must bear some of the costs of developing its new policy. (Paragraph 63)

24.  We draw the evidence we have been given to the attention of the Education and Skills Committee, which is better placed than we to balance potential cost savings from staggering school hours with the potential disruption it might cause to the schools and LEAs involved. (Paragraph 65)