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All Aboard
Having the right to choose which school we send our children to has become increasingly important for parents. Recent reforms to the school admissions process have ensured that parents now have more freedom regarding where their son or daughter is taught.

But are the amount of options available the same for every family?

Those who can afford to move closer to their preferred school and those with cars will have more options open to them. Without a car or the money for the daily bus fare, a poorer family may find themselves with a restricted choice of school.

All Change
With the Education and Inspection Act 2006, we saw key changes to the assessment criteria for free home-to-school transport in an effort to bridge this gap. The less wealthy are now more likely to get free school transport to take advantage of better schools in their area. Every child eligible for free school meals or whose family are in receipt of the highest working family tax credits will have greater access to free school transport and therefore, more choice regarding which school they attend.

The Dilemma
However, the new system has created a dilemma for authorities. Suddenly there is a great deal more eligibility criteria that need to be examined to define who will be entitled to free school transport. No longer is it a simple calculation of the distance between home and school, but a child’s age, access to benefits, tax credits and other qualifying circumstances. This could create a data management headache that busy authority teams could do without.

Say Good-Bye to the Old…
Technology can help manage this new task for authorities; enabling them to deal with the multiple new criteria easily. However, with some authorities still having to use a trundle wheel to manually measure distances between a pupil’s home and school, this may mean significant changes to current practices.

…And Hello to the New
With the right technology, details of which pupils are on free school meals, their school choices and their addresses can be used to automatically provide details of the children who are eligible for free transport based on the new guidelines.

An overdue farewell could be bid to the trundle wheel by the introduction of a geographic information system. This would help organise address information into suggested transport route maps and display details of whether existing school vehicles are full or have spare capacity for a new child; saving precious time for authorities.

The transport changes will give more children access to the quality, free education they deserve. And if authorities make use of the technology available to help them to administer the changes, the new criteria will not cause an additional burden for busy authority staff. Those eligible for free school transport will receive it.

www.capita-cs.co.uk