£1.7 Billion Before the Bell: Read our FULL Report on the UK SEND Transport Crisis

Nearly £2 billion was spent by local authorities on SEND students in 2025, not on supporting their needs, not on training for teachers, not even on improving facilities in mainstream schools.

Instead, in new research commissioned by MVA, it has been revealed that this money has been spent on transporting children with SEND needs to and from school, with these costs making up more than a quarter of some authorities' education budgets.

You can read this research in full here, where an in-built AI chatbot will allow you to ask the report questions about the findings.

This is in a landscape where 8 in 10 local councils are warning that the costs of supporting children with SEND needs may lead to insolvency, according to recent survey by the Local Government Association, and more than a third of students with an EHCP persistently absent from school due to unmet needs.

In the words of our Founder, Hugh Viney:

This does not need to be happening.

The answer to the various crises facing SEND children and their families in UK schools is not in pouring huge amounts of money into ensuring children with special educational needs physically get to a school building. The answer is in investing in (and perhaps even setting up!) schools that meet those needs in whatever form works best for those children.

Those schools do not need to be Minerva Virtual Academy. They don't even need to be online, although MVA's GCSE results for SEND students last year suggests a positive correlation.

We have to stop treating the symptoms and start looking at the root systems that have not worked for a long time – otherwise, the multiple crises we face will not go anywhere, and the bill will simply keep on rising.

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