School transport as a mandatory municipal task: what the district actually owes

Responsibility sits in the school acts of the federal states. Rhineland-Palatinate puts it most plainly. Under section 69 (1) of the Schulgesetz, the districts and independent cities are responsible as a mandatory self-government task for arranging transport to the primary schools and special schools located in their area, provided the children are resident in the state and the journey to school is unreasonable on foot. The same applies to the route to the nearest Realschule plus, to the nearest lower secondary stage of an integrated comprehensive school or a Gymnasium, and to pupils with special educational needs.

Brandenburg regulates responsibility more briefly. Under section 112 of the Brandenburgisches Schulgesetz, the districts and independent cities are the bodies responsible for school transport for children attending state schools and approved private schools who live in their area. The detail they settle on their own responsibility by bylaw, including the eligibility conditions and the application and billing procedure. Since a citizens initiative, the districts are no longer required by statute to set any parental contribution at all.

North Rhine-Westphalia departs from this noticeably. Section 3 of the Schuelerfahrkostenverordnung says in a single sentence what surprises many of those involved: the Schultraeger is under no obligation to provide transport. It decides on the type and extent, and the accompanying administrative guidance adds that the regulation only creates a duty to bear costs. Where a Schultraeger sets up no dedicated pupil transport, it has to bear the cost of transport by private vehicle. Anyone talking nationally about “the transport duty of the districts” is therefore already talking past part of the country.

A Satzung is local law, adopted by the Kreistag (the elected district council). The district of Dahme-Spreewald adopted its school transport bylaw on 7 May 2025, based on section 131 (1) in conjunction with sections 3 and 28 (2) no. 9 of the Brandenburg municipal constitution and on section 112 BbgSchulG. It applies from 1 August 2025 and replaced the predecessor bylaw of 2017 together with five amending bylaws.

The dates reveal the real workload. Between the council decision in May and the start of the school year in August lie, in a larger district, several thousand decision notices and, if distance thresholds shift, a changed demand for dedicated transport. The bylaw anticipated that. Anyone who held an entitlement on 31 July 2025 keeps it as long as home address and school stay the same.

The building blocks resemble each other, the numbers do not. A comparison of three sets of rules shows the range.

• Minimum distance, Dahme-Spreewald. A pupil travel pass is granted from a 2 km journey in years 1 to 6, from 3 km in years 7 to 10 and from 4 km from year 11 onwards.
• Minimum distance, North Rhine-Westphalia. Under section 5 (2) SchfkVO, travel costs are treated as necessary from 2 km in primary education, from 3.5 km in lower secondary education including year 10 of the Gymnasium, and from 5 km in upper secondary education.
• Minimum distance, Rhineland-Palatinate. Section 69 (2) SchulG treats the journey as unreasonable if the shortest route on foot that is not particularly dangerous exceeds two kilometres to a primary school or four kilometres to a secondary school.
• Journey time. Dahme-Spreewald draws the line at 45 minutes for years 1 to 6, 60 minutes for years 7 to 10 and 90 minutes from year 11, in each case for a one-way trip.
• Waiting time. The same district permits 30, 45 and 60 minutes respectively before and after lessons, and adds a grace period of 10 minutes after the end of lessons for leaving the school grounds.
• Walk to the stop. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the walk to the nearest stop counts as reasonable under section 13 (2) SchfkVO up to 1.0 km for primary and special schools and up to 2.0 km for all other years.

The sharpest reasonableness limit sits in section 13 (3) SchfkVO. Public transport is unreasonable where, even using the most favourable connection, the outward and return journeys together take more than three hours, or where the child usually has to leave home before six in the morning. For primary schools, the corresponding classes of special schools and special-school kindergartens, the journey should not exceed one hour each way, and regular waiting times at school should not add up to more than 45 minutes.

Kilometres can be measured. Danger cannot, and this is exactly where the longest file notes are written. North Rhine-Westphalia has at least given the term some content. Under section 6 (2) SchfkVO, a route is particularly dangerous if it mostly runs along a busy road without a pavement or a walkable verge, or if a busy road has to be crossed without any particular provision for pedestrians. Where that applies, travel costs arise irrespective of the length of the route.

The administrative guidance on that provision recommends obtaining a statement from the Kreispolizeibehoerde (the district police authority) to assess the local traffic situation, and names marked pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and school crossing patrols as counterweights. Anyone in the Schulverwaltungsamt (the school administration office) who writes a refusal without having requested that statement has little to work with in the objection procedure.

Brandenburg bylaws sometimes work with a coarser grid. Dahme-Spreewald grants transport to children in years 1 to 6 even below the distance thresholds where the route runs outside built-up areas and the road to be used has neither a cycle path nor a pavement. That is easier to check and in exchange produces borderline cases right at the town sign.

Irrespective of any distance, travel costs arise where a child cannot cover the route to school unaided for health reasons or because of a physical or intellectual disability. Section 6 (1) SchfkVO requires proof by medical certificate and, in particularly doubtful cases, allows a school medical or public health officer report. Where the need is obvious, the certificate can be waived, and the administrative guidance expressly wants that documented in the file.

The Dahme-Spreewald bylaw goes a step further and drops the case-by-case assessment for certain areas of special need. Anyone attending the nearest school with a focus on intellectual development, physical and motor development or vision is entitled to Schuelerspezialverkehr (dedicated pupil transport by minibus or car). Whether an escort travels along is decided by the district on production of a disability pass carrying the relevant marker or a medical certificate. If you want the detail on when an escort becomes billable, our article on the escort in school transport covers it.

Rhineland-Palatinate ties the escort directly to the school act. Section 69 (5) SchulG requires escorts to be provided when transporting pupils with special educational needs where the nature and degree of the disability make that necessary. The same provision limits the use of permitted standing places on school buses to shorter routes and to 70 per cent.

The disputes repeat themselves across district boundaries. Six constellations fill most of the objection files.

• Not the nearest school. Where a different school is chosen, costs are covered only up to the level of the nearest one. In Rhineland-Palatinate, differences of up to five kilometres are disregarded, and a school that was the nearest at the time of admission counts as such for the duration of attendance.
• Argument about the measurement. Dahme-Spreewald measures from the front door of the home to the main entrance of the school by postal address, and from the entrance to the plot where the property is fenced. Anyone recalculating with a route planner almost always arrives at a different figure.
• Shared custody and second homes. Where children live under a genuine shared residence arrangement, Dahme-Spreewald also counts the home of the other parent, but only against suitable proof.
• Waiting time at the edges of the timetable. A single afternoon with a free period does not tip the calculation, because the assessment starts from the general start and end of lessons and is carried out separately for each leg.
• Roadworks. A temporary overrun of journey or waiting time caused by works on roads or on the rail network does not, as a rule, make the route unreasonable under the bylaw, and so does not trigger dedicated transport.
• Late applications. In Dahme-Spreewald, applications for the coming school year should be filed by 1 March. After that, an existing entitlement cannot always be put into practice by the start of term, which every August produces phone calls that are no longer a legal question but a capacity problem.

On top of that come peripheral topics that are permanently present in daily operations. In Dahme-Spreewald there is no entitlement to transport between the Hort (after-school care club) and home, nor any entitlement to have journey times adapted to family needs or to individual door-to-door transport. What counts is the pick-up point set by the district.

Between the decision notice and the vehicle lies a reporting chain that appears in no bylaw and still has to work every day. It has four links.

1. 1Approval in the school administration officeThe case officer checks distance, reasonableness and evidence, and issues the decision notice. It contains the school, the approval period and the mode of transport, and in dedicated transport also details on wheelchair, booster seat or escort.
2. 2Handover to the transport operatorThe district reports the approved case to the contracted company. Where the features from the decision notice are missing here, the dispatcher plans on whatever the parents say on the phone, and the later invoice diverges from what was approved.
3. 3Changes during the school yearA house move, a change of school, a new medical certificate or the loss of the entitlement all have to travel back. The Dahme-Spreewald bylaw requires any change to the details to be reported without delay and any non-use of dedicated transport to be notified in writing without delay.
4. 4Daily reports from operationsThe sick note at 6:40, the driver stuck in traffic, the child who is not at the pick-up point. These events matter for billing and still tend to disappear into phone notes instead of staying attached to the case.

For districts that want to map this chain digitally, we have collected the requirements of school authorities and school administration offices in a separate overview for schools and school authorities. The practical benefit lies less in the planning itself than in having the approved features, the route actually driven and the absences sitting on the same record.

In local audits under section 101 (3) sentence 1 BbgKVerf, the Rechnungspruefungsamt (the internal audit office of a district) answers directly to the Kreistag and is directly subordinate to it in its subject-matter work, as the audit regulations of the district of Oder-Spree of 8 May 2024 put it. In its substantive assessment it is independent and bound only by the law. Audits therefore do not start with how well the transport operator negotiates, but with the question of whether every journey paid for has a basis.

A file becomes robust when three layers can be joined up without anyone having to ask. First the decision notice, with the legal basis, the period and the approved mode of transport. Second the service actually delivered per school day, including cancellations. Third the invoice line that traces back to both. Supervisory touchpoints come on top. Under section 14 (2) SchfkVO, newly established dedicated pupil transport in North Rhine-Westphalia must as a rule be notified to the Bezirksregierung (the regional government authority) two months before it starts.

The procurement side runs in parallel. Anyone awarding dedicated transport to a company on a permanent basis quickly moves above the thresholds from which an EU-wide tender is required; we have set out the current values and how they are calculated in an article on the EU thresholds for 2026. For the audit this means that the specification, the bylaw and the billing have to speak the same language. A specification that says nothing more than “transport of pupils”, while the bylaw differentiates by year group, journey time and area of special need, creates precisely the gap that is later argued over.