coach driver had to swear at and threaten school children to make them put seat belts on

YANBU I would assume he had already attempted to deal with it calmly.

I was actually in a school yesterday, in the HT's office while a parent in the room nextdoor literally screamed at their child that they needed to get better at managing their emotions....

We don’t know exactly what the staff were or were not doing - although I accept that it doesn’t look good.

I have years of experience taking student field trips - but 18/19/20 year olds, whom the university can remove from their course, are very different from 14/15 year olds. Even so, if I’d been a staff member in that coach I would have given the troublemakers a bollocking. The smokers in particular would never go on a trip again that I was leading. I am prepared to accept, though, that some SLTs do not support staff and would probably insist that the kids be allowed to go. Years ago, a teen at a school where my DM taught, was sent home from a school event for sneaking in vodka. His parent complained that he wasn’t given his raffle prize. The Head caved and handed over the Mars bar.

I started reading the comments BEFORE I read the article. I had assumed it was a school transport bus ( to and from school, no staff on board btw worst job i could think of and i taught for 16yrs).
Realised I was wrong so read the article.
The driver was in the wrong BUT what the hell were the school staff doing? It should never have been down to the driver to discipline the kids. The staff SHOULD have had control.

I REALLY hope the school have had their own investigation into what the school staff did/did not do! Massive risk assessment overhaul needed!

Because its their job, because they're the adults, because you lead by example, because if you want DC to respect you, you need to show them respect...? And yes, because some of these kids don't know any different because this is how they're treated at home. We need to show them different.

Perhaps the drivers parents needed to have done that too, raised a child who doesn't revert to threats of violence against minors as soon as he's upset!

Why are you insistent that there should be no parental or personal responsibility? That it's got to be down to other people?!
This is where everything falls down, both the parents and children/teens are told 'no no no, it's not your fault, you've been let down nothing you do is wrong, you've been made to do that, blame the system'.

To be honest if my son was behaving like that on the bus I'd have walloped his arse myself when he got in. But then none of mine would dare.

If you allow your kids to be feral little thugs the real world isn't going to make allowances for their age. Bring your kids up to behave respectfully to others and you won't have this problem.

That said, the threats to punch them were a bit much, I'd not be happy with that but I doubt I'd complain if they were behaving that appallingly.

Imagine that driver has an accident and one of those kids was killed because of their behaviour. He’d live with that for the rest of his life.

The threats of punching in the mouth are a bit far but it appears he had reached the very end of his tether. Therefore I sit on the fence a little with this. Threats are wrong, the swearing not so much. Teenagers can be arseholes!

Oh do stop it

Are you this bored, really? 🙄

Obviously the driver lost it but it’s easy to see why. This is why parents pay for private school or opt for places like the Michaela School where discipline is so regimented it sounds more like the army than education. Seven teachers and the pupils are acting like that? I can’t believe that all those teachers are just poor/ineffective. They are so used to dealing with this shit from pupils and know that they can’t win so they’re trying to avoid escalation. Can you imagine how those teenagers behave in the classroom? What it must be like to deal with teenagers behaving like that and know that you’ll get no support from management? How are the majority of DC, who are least willing to learn, supposed to get anything done when they’re around children behaving like that.

It'll that's what it takes, that's what it takes, or you don't run the trip.

It wouldn't be necessary if the school was properly run though.

I just cross my fingers and keep driving…! (I’m being sarcastic!!)

I think threatening violence was a bit OTT, but teenagers can be so disrespectful and frustrating. Smoking on the coach, not putting seat belts on and generally fucking around… I’m not surprised he lost his cool & typical one teen filmed it so they could be the victim 🙄

I would have just not driven and had all the parents called to collect them instead but he’d clearly had enough. Why should adults have to respect teenagers who are acting so vile?

What do you do if your child keeps taking their seatbelt off?

That'll reduce the number of seats available to the pupils. What teacher would sit next tl a pupil and face accusation of inappropriate behaviour?!

Oh come on, you can't blame the law here either for these completely ineffectual teachers.

What can they do if the kids keep taking their seat belts off?

Tell the driver to stop the coach while they ring the Head/SLT, instead of leaving it to the poor bloke to deal with.

Besides, he would be breaking the law if he continued the journey knowing they weren't wearing seatbelts and were smoking.

To be clear, I have complete sympathy with the bus driver, not so much the school.

Of course 7 staff can manage, 50 or so kids. Any children that unmanageable should either not have been on the trip, or had 121 support to remove them at the first sign that things were going pear shaped. If trips are that big a risk don't run them, or make them earned. It's nonsense to say there's nothing school can do. People may complain, but that's OK, the school's there to do it's job, not avoid complaints.

I think the school has a lot of questions to answer. If I was the coach company I'd refuse to work with them again.

@IMustDoMoreExercise

Loco parentis

Back the driver and say that although they don’t support his behaviour they understand it wasn’t possible to continue his journey safely the way they were.

They can sit a teacher on every other row through the bus. Or yes they can take turns walking up and down. That's what we do with our trips, to monitor and engage with the children, deal with travelsickness, homesickness etc

But the law doesn't allow them to do anything.

The only thing that worked was the coach driver and he lost his job.

What can they do if the kids keep taking their seat belts off?

They spread themselves through the coach, sitting next to the worst offenders. A coach with 53 seats will have about 13 rows of 4 plus extra seat at the back. With seven teachers they could have 1 on every other row to keep a close eye on their pupils

I suspect most of the general public would side with the driver.
Language and threats aside, I honestly wouldn't blame them.

You could say that about anything though; how do teachers usually deal with students? Surely they have a behaviour management system.

As a PP says, if they know they have particularly unruly students, surely A) They shouldn't have let them go in the first place or B) They should have a thorough risk assessment and plan in place for dealing with it.

It shouldn't have got to the stage where the coach driver was having to discipline for them!

And it wasn't just minor misdemeanors, it was smoking, walking around the coach, real safeguarding issues.