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

[combinationpadlock]

AIBU to think these kids need a little bit more of this plain speaking in their lives! If I had been that driver, I would simply have refused to drive them home, and just left them there. Poor guy had no choice but to make them behave, or not drive them as they were unsafe.

I imagine it has done them the world of good to hear what people actually think of them. I can't think why the school is complaining, rather than thanking him

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ced3z8kx9eqo

@IMustDoMoreExercise I'm amazed that anyone wants to be a teacher any more, never mind go on school trips, which are often outside normal working hours for no extra pay!

The teachers were responsible for the children and their abhorrent behaviour - not the bus driver.

The teachers were not ensuring the safety and comfort of all the yobs/students on that bus.

The 'teachers' had abandoned their duty of care.

Wrong.

It's the parents fault the kids are little shits, because they're responsible for raising them.

It's the teachers fault the behaviour on the coach escalated, because they were responsible for supervising them at the time.

If you're going to be a teacher and get paid to supervise children, you need to do it.

You can't sit back and do fuck all.

His language was completely inappropriate, but I do wonder what hapenned before this.
From the article it sounds like he pulled over part of the way through the journey, so we don't know what he had tried and what had hapenned before then. I'm guessing there were lots of 'please put your seatbelts on' being ignored. That doesn't in any way excuse him threatening to hit children, that's an absolute no. But I'm guessing if he had to pull over, that the teachers were not doing anything about it. I would be looking at their behaviour too. The driver is responsible for driving them safely, not for behaviour management, but if they are acting stupid, then it's distracting for him and potentially unsafe so he had to do something, but he definitely went too far.

I have taken children aged 5-10 on coach trips and we make sure they all have seat belts on and stay in their seats, no food on the coach only water bottles allowed, and that they keep the noise to a reasonable level, that's our responsibility. Parents know any poor behaviour and they will not be coming on a trip again, but we have never had to do that as we make sure they are respectful, thank the driver etc.

Well the driver spotted it and pulled the coach over. He also smelled the cigarette smoke.

That's when the teachers should have started doing their job, instead of leaving it to him.

Let's face it, he didn't go bawling his head off to those kids without provocation did he. I mean, why would he do that for no reason?

I really want that bus/coach driver to give his side of the story. We'll probably never hear it but I'd bet my house he'd tolerated hours of the kids flouting the rules of not smoking/sit down/buckle up and just snapped.

Did he approach the teachers (any 1 of the 7 of them?!) to say 'get these kids in line please'? He has safety protocols to follow and as other PPs have said, if there had been an accident and just 1 kid ended up in hospital or worse, dead as a result, the driver would have been bloody lynched by the parents. Yes, he did go a bit OTT but he just couldn't win in that situation.

I'd love to hear his side and his opinion of the seemingly useless teachers.

Can you imagine the stress of driving a 50+ seater coach with utter mayhem going on behind you?

What if he'd crashed?

Doesn't bear thinking about

Bus/Coach drivers who drive kids should be paid double

He perhaps went over the top but to put myself in his shoes; he is driving a bus and responsible for the safe journey of multiple children. If there was an accident, those not wearing seat belts could've been seriously injured or worse. That's hardly fair to him to put that worry on him. I know how stressed I got when I realised mid drive, that my niece had learned how to unclip her seatbelt while we were on the motorway. The panic I felt as I couldn't see a safe place to pull over at the moment in time.

These kids sound like a bunch of disrespectful little shits and if I found out that my child had been carrying on like this on the bus, there would be hell to pay.

Which is what you have to do...

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.

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

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

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 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

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.

@IMustDoMoreExercise

Loco parentis

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.

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.

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?!

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

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?

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

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.

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.

Oh do stop it

Are you this bored, really? 🙄