Leeds spent £1m on sending pupils to schools outside the city

More than 2,000 children in the city travel to school by taxi

More than £1m was spent on taxis to take children to schools outside Leeds over a year, figures show.

Councils are obliged to offer free home-to-school transport to some vulnerable children.

Some 2,392 children travelled to school by taxi, around 100 of them to schools outside the city.

The council said it tried to place pupils in city schools, but sometimes it was in the child's best interests to go elsewhere.

Children entitled to free transport include some with disabilities and those with special educational needs.

Figures obtained by the Local Democracy Reporting Service revealed the city paid £13m for taxi journeys for vulnerable pupils between April 2021 and March 2022.

This included £2.7m to pay people to accompany children and £1.1m, or about £22,000 each week, to transport children to schools in other local authority areas.

Due to the additional mileage involved, the average annual transport bill for a pupil going to school elsewhere was £11,400 while the average for a child attending school in Leeds was about £5,100.

A spokesperson for the authority said: "We are committed to placing children in schools within the city wherever possible, however sometimes to best meet a child's needs they need to be placed outside of the local authority area."

They said a number of factors were involved in choosing a school outside Leeds.

"This could include the need for a highly specialist place that meets an individual's needs, parental preferences or a school in a different authority being closer to a child's home when they live on the border of Leeds."