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

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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

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!

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.

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'.

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!

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.

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!

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 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....

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

I think he was a bit more than upset. He was right to be extremely concerned about dangerous behaviour. A kid larking about in the aisle becomes a missile in a collision, and any disturbance prevents the driver from concentrating,

The driver has been sacked and has paid a high price. Let’s hope those causing trouble and smoking face at least some penalty. Mine would be in so much trouble if he’d joined in.

Yes, the best response of the driver would have been to park up and refuse to move until the staff dealt with the troublemakers. But presumably he would have faced consequences for not driving.

So stop the coach and talk about feelings and things and the dangers of lung cancer and secondhand smoking?

Nope, not the fucking time for the bleeding hearts brigade to start that.

The teachers should have told the driver to stop while they contact the school.

Teachers should have dealt with the kids, and if they were actually smoking on the bus, they should have been dealt with appropriately by the teaching staff. The driver should have pulled over and refused to carry on until the kids were under control, and the teaching staff should have ensured this for everyone's safety. It sounds like the teachers weren't doing their job on ensuring the kids safety and compliance of the rules, so the driver had to step in and do it his way, which may not have been the right way, but if no one else was going to do it, what choice did he have? Yes I'm sure it could have been handled better, but he was probably fed up and annoyed that the disrespect and attitude of these kids was being allowed. He's the one who's responsible for driving the coach and getting the kids safely back to school, and had to do something if the teachers weren't stepping up. Disciplining kids isn't part of his job, but he was forced into that role when the ones who should have been enforcing the rules failed to do so.

Absolutely, actually the staff should have done it long before it got to that stage. No need for shouting and swearing.

All the other work is done beforehand, so you don't get these situations.

Where's the teachers?

Regardless, no it was not acceptable to speak to children like that. Yes deal with the trouble makers in a mature way and speak to the school to make them aware.

My DS would've been very upset by that aggressively behaviour from an adult, he has SEN and that would've been appalling for him to witness, I'm sure not every child on that bus was an issue so why threaten them all?

If my child showed me that video I would be contacting the police for threatening a minor.

Disgusting male.

Reduce the number of seats? How? They are all still taking up a seat on the bus, but probably all sitting in a group at one end of the bus.
A teacher cannot be on their own with a child, but they aren't on their own, they are on a bus with 50 other children and adults

As people may guess from my user name, I am an ex school bus driver. I have used this name on here before.

Driver is expected to do his job and do the job of the SEVEN teachers who are present but ineffectual.

Driver manages it.

If he gets the sack, so should the SEVEN teachers.

Would your child not be upset at the chaos and smoking on the bus, that the teachers were obviously NOT dealing with, so therefore not safeguarding your child?

"Disgusting male".

What about "Disgusting teachers" letting your child down massively?

Ah but if the driver stopped the bus to await SLT (?) you'd have the bleeding heart brigade, the parents and the pupils sad facing to the media about being 'held hostage'!

It's a job where threats, abuse and violence have become normalised and no one cares.

Then people wonder why we are short of bus drivers.

I have sympathy for him but he should have parked the bus up and awaited the school to deal with it. That is the standard way of dealing with it.

Absolutely, not to mention "disgusting parents" too, raising feral shits.

I've no doubt that there was a lot more that went on before the video started that led the driver to lay the law down like he did.

Everyone saying the bus driver should have pulled over (which I agree with from a safety point of view) what if he had somewhere to be after work and couldn’t wait for a group of kids old enough to know better. And parents don’t tend to be supportive of kids returning late back from school trips, even if the reason is their poppets misbehaving.

The teachers needed to have better behaviour management strategies, it never should have reached the point that the driver lost the rag. The teachers presumably have a relationship with the kids and should have been sorting it out.

As a parent I’d go through my kids like a dose of salts if they were in any way involved in this kind of behaviour. They certainly wouldn’t be going on a school trip in the near future. It’s an all round failure of discipline.

It’s loser parents creating a society of feral teens. The teachers not bothering to look after the kid’s either on the bus and tell them to behave responsibly and respectfully. The driver was saying how it is. Good man. Safety of the passengers was top in his mind. What a difficult situation for him. The feral kids on that bus need borstal. The loser parents need benefits stopping and therefore having to work. The teachers need sacking.

The loser parents need benefits stopping and therefore having to work.

Nice assumption about the parents, in my experience “professional” parents are some of the most difficult to deal with.

The loser parents need benefits stopping and therefore having to work.

And what about the loser working parents who also allow their kids to turn feral?

Stop their wages?