Clause 1 - School travel schemes
School Transport Bill
9:25 am
Mr Stephen Twigg (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Schools), Department for Education and Skills; Enfield, Southgate, Labour)
Clearly, we want to support parents in making such choices and to ensure that the full
benefits of the specialist schools programme are enjoyed by those who can benefit from it. However, to repeat what I said just now, I do not want to create a position in which one child would get transport simply on the basis of having passed an aptitude test, while another in the same class would not. Through the Bill, as a consequence of the additional resources in the local system there is the potential for children attending specialist school who do not currently receive any assisted or free transport to gain access to subsidised transport whether or not they are at the school via the aptitude test. That is the route I want us to follow, rather than that of separating out the children who happen to be at the specialist school because of an aptitude test.