Free school transport applications made easier in Kent
Many parents with children entitled to free transport to school in Kent will find the process for obtaining the relevant passes has been made much easier for the coming year.
Historically, all parents have been asked to apply for free school transport and wait while their child’s eligibility is assessed by Transport Officers.
However, the team has been working hard to implement a number of improvements to the free school transport assessment processes, which has resulted in changes to how this year’s applications will be managed.
Due to these internal changes, KCC can now advise many parents of their child’s eligibility without the need for an application by using a geographic information system which automatically identifies a child’s nearest school and confirms whether it is further than the relevant statutory distance of three miles.
A KCC spokesperson said:
“This change will remove much of the work associated with the mainstream process during the team’s busiest period, which would allow significantly more capacity to be allocated to the completion of transport applications for children with special education needs which require more detailed examination of pupils’ individual requirements.
“We were expecting the process to remain unchanged this year, but we have seen a significant increase in SEN applications in what is already the department’s busiest period.
“The transport sector continues to be put under considerable pressure as a result of current world events, so KCC is doing everything in its power to ensure the transition to the new school year goes smoothly.
“We hope that this simplifies the tasks that parents are required to complete before their child starts school this year.”
When notified of the free transport offer, parents will be asked to consider whether or not their child will make full and regular use of it during the forthcoming school year. KCC will incur costs assuming travel on every school day for all pupils, so it would be an inefficient use of public resources to claim transport that will not be used as a child’s main method to access school.
KCC will contact mainstream families this week to let them know if their child is eligible for free school transport. Eligible families will then be contacted again in the next few weeks so that additional information can be provided about the child, including a passport style photo so that a pass can be produced.
Murray Evans
Kent County Council
