The above petition was also received on 9th March 2011 as a response to the Review of School Transport for Statutory School Age Pupils. The response to this petition at that time was included within the paper to Cabinet, dated 21st March 2011, sections 9.16 and 9.17 The current positon is that Hertfordshire has in excess of 220 schools that are their own admission authority and this number is growing as more schools decide to become academies. Many of them operate their own set of admission arrangements and these can include a variety of criteria which do not focus at all on catchments areas, or only partially. The admission arrangements for community co-educational and single sex schools in Hertfordshire are based on ‘priority area’s’, where there can be a number of community schools within a ‘priority area’. Therefore, it would not be practical to operate a ‘catchment’ area criterion to the school transport policy in a consistent way, even if the Council wished to do so on a discretionary basis. The Council’s policy is to comply with its obligation to provide free transport for all pupils of compulsory age (5-16) if their nearest suitable school is: • beyond 2 miles (if below the age of 8); or • beyond 3 miles (if aged between 8 and 16)