In his regular column, the Frome MP writes:

In what seems like a lifetime ago, and for many years, I taught music in an inner-city comprehensive in London. It was a difficult school, with morning knife-checks, serious drug problems and fairly regular physical attacks on teachers. Many pupils came from enormously troubled backgrounds, and it was something of a challenge to get many of them to appear at school at all.

But it was a deeply satisfying and rewarding job. To be able to show the students that their horizons could be lifted and help them find the confidence both to reach higher and believe in themselves was a highlight of my life. School really is vital. Education works.

Here in Somerset, especially in the rural villages that surround Frome, we have a rather different problem. Unlike the school of my past where parents, carers and children often had no interest in attending school, in Somerset the problem is reversed. Here, they desperately want to get to school but many are finding it increasingly difficult.

A growing number of people are contacting me, in some distress, saying they simply cannot get their children to school. With rural bus services becoming ever less frequent, and school buses often filled to capacity, they have no way of accessing school.

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In the Commons this week, I told the Education Minister of my concerns. I asked him what specific steps his Department is taking to help ensure that children in rural communities with limited public transport are able to attend school.

In fact, local authorities are obliged to provide transport for children of compulsory school age to attend their nearest school if they cannot walk there because of distance, route safety or special needs. During the next spending review period, authorities will receive an extra £1.6 billion a year to maintain vital services such as these.

The Minister assured me that the Department regularly talks to the Department for Transport about school transport, and last year gave Somerset over £1.1 million of additional funding for school and college transport.

But it doesn't seem to be getting through. My conversations with our local authorities have been disappointingly fruitless, and my efforts to get to the root of the problem with both local bus companies and with schools about their own bus provision, have not so far managed to solve the problem.

More action needs to be taken. I am now bringing together all stakeholders: parents and carers, schools, bus companies and local authorities to understand where the addition money has gone, why children are being left in the cold, and what can be done to unlock the cash and offer the provision to all.

When I was teaching, I understood the problems facing both parents and children, and their reasons for not seeing education and meaningful. In Somerset now, there seems to be a lack of understanding of the depth of the problem we face and how best to resolve it. I intend to find out.