A tale of one town: why transport policy is an educational access issue.

This is the irst part of HEPI’s themed week of blogs all about commuter students.

This blog was authored by Rose Stephenson, Director of Policy and Strategy at HEPI.

Access to education for rural students

I work in London on a regular basis, conveniently hopping on tubes and buses with only a few minutes’ wait each time. I use this brilliant transport infrastructure to get to events, speaking engagements and roundtables to discuss higher education policy. If the event topic touches on access issues, I will raise the lack of public transport to education in rural areas. This often results in a sea of blank faces from policymakers who have just experienced the magic of Transport for London and cannot comprehend a patchy, unreliable, unintegrated transport system – but this is the reality for many students living rurally.

When I’m not in London, I reside in a small market town on the edge of the Cotswolds. It is heaven. However, if you do not have a car or cannot drive, access to public services, including further and higher education, is extremely challenging. Allow me to share some examples. There are six universities within an hour’s drive. However, the shortest daily commute using public transport (there and back) is 2 hours and 46 minutes to the Royal College of Agriculture. The next-shortest daily commute would be 4 hours to UWE. I can drive to the University of Bath in 50 minutes, yet a daily commute on public transport would take 6 hours and requires three buses and two trains in each direction.

The 2026 HEPI and Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey demonstrates that rural students are much more likely to complete their studies online, with a quarter of students living in a village being likely to do so. While this may be a positive choice for some of these students (many of whom were juggling multiple responsibilities), this raises serious questions about the realities and limitations of student choice and access for those living in rural locales.

This is an issue for Further Education Students also. Local authorities have a duty to provide free transport for eligible children of compulsory school age. This local authority duty ends when a child is older than ‘compulsory school age’, generally at the end of Year 11.

So, while the Government states that young adults ‘must’ stay in education or training to 18 (there are no legal consequences if they do not), the local authority no longer has a duty to provide transport to get them there. FE students from my town can access SGS College in Stroud in a speedy 51 minutes (each way), however, because buses only run a few times a day, they have to arrive in Stroud before 8am and hang around after college waiting for a return journey home. In researching this blog, local parents shared concerns about their children having to wait at a bus stop for an hour or an hour and a half, either for the first bus after college or because of frequent missed connections.

Parents also told me:

I have no idea where my year 11 will be able to get to next year, we are seriously considering that our only option may be to get him on the moped.

Young people are seriously disadvantaged when faced with a lack of public transport that is fit for purpose to reliably access further education, apprenticeship training and employment. Not everyone can drive or afford to learn to drive and run a car, not everyone has parents who can afford the buses to college, and not everyone has parents who can work flexibly to take their children to and from college and apprenticeship placements. 

I also spoke to a careers professional working rurally, who told me:

There is a careers evening in the autumn of Year 11. This helps to raise aspirations by talking about exciting courses in Bristol – but they can’t get there. I explore options with them, but they don’t have parents who can rearrange work schedules. Not everyone can have these conversations at home.

There was a firm view from both parents and professionals that the students most affected by the lack of public transport were those from widening participation backgrounds.

Recommendations

There are two policy issues here:

1. The ending of local authority responsibility (and therefore funding) to support young people in accessing education when they reach 16. There are currently a million NEETS in the UK. Ensuring that those who want to access further education can do so would be a positive step to preventing this number from growing.
2. The policy blind spot of transport connectivity and higher education (and kudos to colleagues at Wonkhe who have been highlighting this issue for a while).

The Department for Transport publishes a Transport Connectivity Metric. The overview of this metric states:

The Department for Transport has developed the connectivity metric, which measures an individual’s ability to reach employment, services and social engagements.

However, in relation to education, the document goes on to outline:

Education covers primary and secondary schools, further education (ages 16-18), special needs schools and private education. Universities are excluded due to the complexity in pinpointing single access points, as they typically consist of numerous buildings, including administrative and non-educational facilities.

The Department for Transport must develop a more focused approach to transport and higher education, particularly for students living in rural areas. With an increased number of students choosing, or having to, live at home, there is a real risk that some students will be unable to access higher education or will only be able to access their course through an online provider, restricting their choice of course, institution and mode of study.

Photo credit: Pauline McGuinness