To think school children have as much right to board the bus as 'workers'?

[FranSanDisco]

DD (Year 7) rang this morning to say the bus driver was refusing to let any school children on the bus and would only take 'workers'. The bus already had some school children on but only a few seats were left. The driver yelled 'get off my bus' to any brave children to tried to get on (DD is not brave). Has this happened to any of your children and is this common practice?

[mummytime]

For my DCs school most of the scheduled buses are specifically run at that time or routes extended for the school/s. I would complain to the bus company. Their school starts at 8:30 too.

[Tailtwister]

How ridiculous! They are 'workers' in a sense. They have to get to school on time, just like people have to get to work on time.

I would be reporting the incident to the school and bus company.

[ChaoticismyLife]

Agree with other's, report the incident.

[DeWe]

If you have a fairly caring school, then I'd get the school to complain, assuming the children ended up late. I suspect that would have more effect.

However, as a bus user, I have some sympathy for the driver. Children pay 2/3rds fare here, so they haven't even got the excuse of a free ride, and there'll always be a few doing 5 minutes up the road on a beautiful summer day.
When they're wanting to get off some of them will continuously press the bell, and they leave huge amounts of litter behind.

This sounds very generalising, which it is, and some of the children were delightful, but I did feel for the people who tidied up after them. We used to say we could always tell the buses that had done school pick up simply because of the mess that was left behind.

[LadySybildeChocolate]

This happened to ds a few weeks ago. There's an express coach which goes into the city centre from here (it misses out loads of stops so is quicker), I tried to get on with him (he's 13), and was told by the driver that children are not allowed as it's a 'commuter bus'. I explained that we were commuting, and wouldn't be getting off until the end of the line, he said it didn't matter and ds wasn't allowed on. I caught a different bus with ds, then went into the customer service office at the bus station and complained. The manager was rather annoyed, and apologised. We caught the express coach home.

Complain, OP.

[Bosgrove]

As I live in London my children benefit from the free travel on buses and tube,but it seems to me that a lot of secondary school children abuse the system.

We have to walk passed a large secondary school on the way home from the primary and the behaviour of the children is really bad. They push and shove each other, pile in the bus through the exit doors while the driver is trying to let let people out and generally have no regard for other passengers.

As the catchment for this school is less than 1 mile, most if not all of them would probably be walking if their parents had to pay for their fares.

The school has to has senior staff maning the bus stops and there are often community police there as well, and still a teenage girl ended up kicking a bus that she had been refused travel on (tried to get on through the wrong door and wouldn't show her pass - my Mum was on the bus, so I was filled in later).

Complain to the bus company, but be aware that there may have been a reason for the bus drivers position.