You may be aware that in recent months Northumberland County Council launched a new approach in delivery of school transport for our children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, this approach allowing schools to take more control of this function for carefully selected cohorts of pupils.
Northumberland County Council now have examples in place and working well where we have devolved funding to the school to allow carefully selected cohorts of pupils to be transported to and from school, by the school, using the schools own mode of transport. This is providing benefits to the children (and their families), the school and to us at Northumberland County Council. The Councils passenger transport team have also contributed to enabling these arrangements by offering their experience in this field to assist and support schools with their plans.
Given the confidence we now have that this approach to transport works very well for certain carefully selected groups of children we are seeking further expressions of interest from our special schools and specialist support bases.
If you would like to explore the option to be awarded funding to transport groups of children to and from your own school then please email: mark.cusack@northumberland.gov.uk
