Education Minister Paul Givan told the Assembly on 6 October that most of the outstanding home-to-school taxi contracts have been provisionally awarded. The awards are not finished. He said they are waiting on compliance checks.
Maurice Bradley, the DUP MLA for East Londonderry, had asked about transport for children with disabilities and special educational needs, including wheelchair-accessible vehicles. In a follow-up he asked about the outstanding taxi contracts, because some children in his constituency travel a long way to specialist provision.
The 62 contracts
Givan said that at the middle of September, 62 contracts were still in the Education Authority's evaluation. That affected 135 pupils whose taxi arrangements had not been confirmed. The Authority has since told him that the large majority have been provisionally awarded. He did not say how many are left, or name the operators.
Where there is no bus, no Authority fleet vehicle and no taxi, parents can be paid instead. He called that suboptimal, and said the Authority is still trying to put transport in place.
The Authority arranges transport for a pupil with a statement of special educational needs one child at a time. It can use its own yellow buses, which include wheelchair-accessible vehicles, a Translink pass, or a private operator. When it hires a private operator it specifies wheelchair access or other specialist needs.
What the Authority said in September
On 4 September the Authority said it had tendered more than 1,200 runs for the new school year, and that tendered mileage rates were down by about 15 per cent. It also said some bids were still far above the Department for Infrastructure's taxi rates. Its example was a run of just under 20 miles where the lowest bid was about £250 a day, which it put at £42,000 a year and more than three times those rates. Once term had started, it said it would award the remaining runs to the lowest bidder so the children could get to school. That statement is not the same as the minister's figure of 62 contracts still open at mid-September.
Givan tied the transport cost to long journeys and a shortage of specialist places. He said the department has a 10-year plan for the special school estate, and that a paper on dedicated funding for specialist provision is before the Executive and is still being blocked by Sinn Féin.