SEND transport training requirements: what the statutory guidance says

Which guidance applies

The document is Travel to school for children of compulsory school age, statutory guidance from the Department for Education. It replaced the 2014 home-to-school guidance in June 2023 and was most recently updated in May 2026. It is addressed to local authorities in England, which must have regard to it when arranging home-to-school travel.

It is not addressed to drivers, passenger assistants or operators directly. Instead, the local authority turns it into requirements — usually through its contracts and framework agreements with transport operators, and its own job descriptions for directly employed staff. That is why two authorities can ask for slightly different things: the guidance sets the floor, and each authority decides how to meet it.

Post-16 transport is covered by separate guidance, and taxi and private hire drivers have an additional set of expectations from their licensing authority (more on that below).

What training the guidance requires

The core of it is paragraph 103:

“Local authorities should ensure that drivers and passenger assistants working on dedicated school transport have undertaken appropriate training and that this is kept up to date.”

Travel to school for children of compulsory school age, paragraph 103

The same paragraph makes the authority responsible for deciding what training is required, how it is delivered and how often it is refreshed, and says those decisions should be informed by risk assessment. Paragraph 104 adds that training can be delivered by the authority, the travel operator or an external provider, and that it need not always be a formal course — a child’s parents, for example, may be the experts in calming that child when they become distressed.

Paragraph 106 then sets the minimum. Training should include:

1. Safeguarding.
2. The handling of emergency situations — for example, what to do in a medical emergency or after a road accident.
3. Equality — for example, recognising, supporting and communicating with children with disabilities.
4. Any training required to meet the specific needs of the children travelling — for example, administering their emergency medication or managing their behaviour.

Paragraph 107 recommends that emergency training includes basic life support, and notes that bus and coach drivers may already have covered this through their Driver CPC.

The other training duties in the guidance

• Knowing each child’s needs (paragraph 97). The driver and any passenger assistant should be aware of the needs of the children they carry, know how to respond to them, and have had any training necessary to do so.
• Emergency medication (paragraph 98). There is no expectation that routine medication is given on the journey, but where emergency medication may be needed, the person administering it should be trained by a health care professional.
• Safeguarding and reporting (paragraph 102). Drivers and passenger assistants should have the safeguarding training their role needs and know how to report concerns about the children in their care.
• Behaviour (paragraph 113). Drivers and passenger assistants should have any training they need to manage children’s behaviour while travelling.
• The officers who arrange travel (paragraph 108). Authorities should also consider the training their own travel officers need, and the guidance recommends this includes equality training.

DBS checks for drivers and passenger assistants

Paragraph 102 says local authorities should ensure that an enhanced DBS check with a check of the children’s barred list has been carried out for drivers and passenger assistants involved in providing dedicated school transport. Annex 2 explains why: driving a vehicle used only to carry children and the people supervising them is regulated activity when it is done as part of a job at least once a week (or on more than three days in any 30-day period), and the guidance says dedicated school transport will almost always meet that test.

Licensed taxi and private hire drivers are usually already checked by their licensing authority, which checks both the children’s and adults’ barred lists. The home-to-school authority can rely on that check or carry out its own. The guidance also expects licensed drivers to evidence continuous registration with the DBS Update Service so that new information can be checked every six months.

An enhanced check cannot be requested by an individual for themselves — it is applied for through an employer, the local authority or a licensing authority. A training course does not replace it.

Taxi and private hire drivers: two sets of expectations

If you drive a licensed taxi or private hire vehicle on a school contract, a second document applies. The Department for Transport’s Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards (July 2020) say licensing authorities should require drivers to undertake safeguarding training, including how to recognise county lines exploitation.

That licensing training is general — it is written for any passenger a driver might carry. The home-to-school guidance goes further for dedicated school transport: equality, communicating with disabled children, emergencies and each child’s specific needs. A driver on a SEND contract may therefore need both: licensing safeguarding training and subject-specific SEND transport training.

Where PATS and MiDAS fit

The Passenger Assistant Training Scheme (PATS) and the Minibus Driver Awareness Scheme (MiDAS), both run through the Community Transport Association, are long-established and are named in some authorities’ contracts. The statutory guidance itself does not name any scheme or provider: it sets the topics and leaves the choice to the authority.

So the practical advice is simple. Read your contract or job description. If it names a specific scheme, that is what you need — or ask the authority, in writing, whether it accepts other training as meeting the requirement. If it lists topics, check each one is evidenced for each member of staff on the route.

How to evidence training when you are asked

Commissioners, contract managers and auditors ask the same question: can you show that the person in the vehicle was prepared for this? A defensible record has, for each driver and passenger assistant:

• what was completed, by whom and on what date;
• which of the paragraph 106 areas it covered;
• when it expires or is due for refresh;
• a certificate an outside party can verify independently; and
• any child-specific training — such as emergency medication given by a health care professional — recorded separately, because a general course does not cover it.

How our certificate maps to the guidance

We wrote the Professional Certificate in SEND Passenger Transport to the law, statutory guidance and terminology of England. This is how its ten modules line up with the areas above — including what it does not replace.

Each completion produces a dated certificate with a unique verification ID, and employers can download their team’s certificates from one dashboard. The programme is independently assessed and CPD Certified by The CPD Certification Service. It is a provider certificate, not a regulated qualification.

Some local authorities also require epilepsy training for staff on their school transport contracts. Our Epilepsy Awareness for SEND Passenger Transport course covers that, and our guide to what to do if a passenger has a seizure sets out the steps.