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Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 3:08 pm on 11 January 2023.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 3:08, 11 January 2023

That's a really important question, and thank you for it. I think the distance threshold, as the Member was referring to in his question, is important. It's a key issue, but that's one of a number of considerations in the area of home-to-school transport. That now accounts for a quarter of all local authority direct spending on education, and it's going up. So, it's a significant call on public funds, and we must make sure those funds are spent in the best possible way to make sure we get our kids to school. But it's part of a broader programme of work, and the Deputy Minister is listening as attentively as I am to the Member's question. That's partly about improving operator provision and better aligning transport with other wider policy aims. I think we're all agreed that what needs to happen isn't just a tweak to the Measure, but something probably much more ambitious than that. The Government's published a White Paper, as the Member will know, which sets out an ambitious vision for transforming bus services generally in Wales. I think it's pretty clear—and I know the Deputy Minister for Climate Change also feels very strongly—that looking at home-to-school transport entirely separately from the broader bus network doesn't make sense at all. So, the kind of thing that the Member has referred to in his question, certainly personally, I would be very interested in looking at.