Secondary school bus - wwyd

[MadamPatti]

My son is in year 7 and gets a school bus to school. It's about a 40 min journey. It's normally utter chaos on the bus. He hates it but has no other choice. The behaviour seems to have got worse lately. For about the last four weeks there has been a water fight on the way home, Probably started as part of the bottle flip challenge, but with no lids.

I monitor the situation as best I can, my son and his friend won't join in and try to discourage others.

Yesterday, he was hit by several flying bottles, and when he stood up to get off at his stop he fell over on all the water. Another older child said if he hadn't got up by the time he needed to get off, he would stomp on him. Son arrives home in tears, not for the first time.

I just don't know what to do. I am aware that kids of this age need to sort things out themselves. Also, I wouldn't class what goes on as bullying, as none of it is personally directed at him. Yesterday he was just in the way. Virtually everyone on the bus seems to be involved. Son can be a bit serious, with some tendencies to exaggerate, and if he knows he's in the right he refuses to back down.

Are these essentially low level behaviour problems sufficiently serious to inform school?? He's not being bullied in my opinion. I think that at secondary they need to learn to sort things out for themselves a bit more and I don't want to overreact. WWYD??

Thanks

I believe in God
I believe X was excluded from a school bus service
I believe some people are too thick to argue with

Phew, so you do understand that children can be excluded from school buses for bad behaviour.

not long term they can't, fixed term, as in for one day, or two days in extreme cases.

User you are in fact incorrect on the permissibility of withdrawing school transport point. The DfE statutory guidance is that a number of LAs have done this on the ground of bad behaviour and heads may be within their rights to exclude for behaviour on school buses.

You need to contact other parents, as the kids are in danger if the driver is regularly distracted. Then contact the transport co-ordinator at the school, the Head, and the transport/education department of your local council. The more people do it, the quicker they will listen. It took around 6 weeks when there were a few kids on the bus throwing things at the driver (bottles, tennis balls) and my DDs just didn't feel safe. Thankfully it was only ever on the way home and I got them myself for a while until the kids were dealt with - they got excluded temporarily and their parents had to deal with their behaviour. School tried to wash their hands of it but don't let them. I think 2 kids lost their bus places in the end.

Are you very familiar with the case law on exclusion user??

Hurrah! And without having to call the police.

Why such horror and disbelief at the police controlling school buses? ALL school buses in this borough are monitored and controlled by the police every day, they have to be,

do you actually think this is because teachers "throw their hands up in the air"?

or because the behaviour of so many teens on their way home from school is rowdy, antisocial, criminal and dangerous.

are schools or teachers in any way responsible for that? can they do anything to change it in any way? No, to both. Not that they do nothing, but that there is very little they can do.

I saw a group of about 10 year 10 boys behaving badly on the bus last week. Very badly - I was able to identify 2 of them, they were "spoken to" - but I couldn't identify the other 8, so nothing and they two that were "spoken to" were only "spoken to" - nothing else we can do.

Are you very familiar with the case law on exclusion user??

yes

User you are in fact incorrect on the permissibility of withdrawing school transport point. The DfE statutory guidance is that a number of LAs have done this on the ground of bad behaviour and heads may be within their rights to exclude for behaviour on school buses.

yes, short term. But very long complicated time consuming and inefficient procedure

unless bus provides cctv

User which legal cases are you refering to??

Morning all!
Nothing much to add, other than to clarify a few queries. Bus is laid on by school, and we pay a set fee per annum. I happened to speak to the bus company this week regarding some lost property, and the lovely lady in their office said that there had been cctv, but it had been vandalised and not replaced. I have previously advised ds to sit downstairs, however there would appear to be a few intimidating kids there as well, although I couldn't get out of him what exactly they had done or said.

I have mulled over in the past few weeks whether to mention the water fights as at the time it was fairly low level antics. Maybe if I had we wouldn't have arrived at the stage we are now.

I'll next update on Monday, after I've spoken to the deputy. My feeling is he'll crack down hard.

Good luck op. Despite what user says the head does have the power to take action in accordance with behaviour policy, even if the behaviour is outside school.

No decent school wants a bad reputation! No decent head wants complaints from Joe Pubic about their stridents -

A good school wants to be part of the wider community

Exactly Astro55 Heads need the school to have a good reputation - that is why they try so hard with league tables and results. No point in having good results if parents won't choose the school because of poor behaviour and poor management.
Good luck on Monday. He will need to crack down hard. It is very easy- my son's school only had to send home letters threatening to take away the bus place- they didn't actually have to do it. Parents knew it would be followed through.
If I were the bus driver I wouldn't need CCTV - I should just make sure that someone from senior management came to the bus at the end of the day and I would point out the pupils that I would refuse to take on safety grounds, unless they behaved appropriately.

Don't let them get away with telling you that it is not their responsibility- it most certainly is the right of your child, and all children, to travel to school unmolested and safely.

I have to say I really do feel sorry for school bus drivers.

A bus full of teenagers with no additional support cannot be easy, especially if there is behaviour like the OP describes going on. It would feel intimidating, not to mention being a dangerous distraction.

I know that the vast majority of teenagers are well behaved, by the way. I don't want to tar all with the same brush. The culprits here do need to be identified and dealt with.

DS's school bus had a similar problem 2 years ago. His school take the view that they are responsible for the behaviour of pupils wearing school uniform, which includes traveling on buses to & from school. The school acted, children were excluded, teachers went on the bus randomly, drivers were asked to identify who was causing trouble, pupils were interviewed and parents informed. It got sorted out within 4-6 ( can't remember exactly) weeks. No idea what the legalities are- but it was the school that acted. The school is strict & generally pupil behaviour is good.

Just a last update. I spoke to the deputy head yesterday. He said that the behaviour was unacceptable. He spoke to the boys at home time and said there had been a number of complaints. Bags were checked for water bottles. Journey home was uneventful. Nice to have a happy child back. Deputy head said that for future reference even quite low level misbehaviour was worth mentioning to him. He was happy to deal with poor behaviour, but could do nothing if he wasn't informed. So when this (or something similar) happens again, I'm going to give it a couple of days / a week, and if nothing improves, report it. Thank you for all your contributions.

Well done. Any good school would take responsibility - especially when it is a simple thing to sort.

We would have the deputy head travel on our bus home as the behaviour was so bad the bus company refused to take us otherwise.

I can never tell with 'userxyz' usernames, but i do know that one with very similar posting style and 'not my responsibility' attitude was claiming in another thread a few weeks back that nobody in schools cared about attendance, and that essentially they as an individual did not care about safeguarding and did not see it as any part of their responsibility (despite it being their statutory duty). I understand that they are a disaffected member of staff in a difficult school, but I would say both on that thread and this one they represented a strand of teacher opinion and attitude that I have found to be vanishingly rare in RL.

I would say that as a general rule, schools that I have dealings with care about any behaviour by their students when wearing school uniform or in any way clearly linked to the school (e.g. on trips, residentials etc). That is the case regardless of the circumstances, location or academic standing of the school, but is in general tightly linked to the overall 'quality' of the school - ie the only schools that don't care are also terrible schools, not because of their raw results, but because the lack of behaviour management and weak leadership.

My DS was badly bullied on the school bus. I had endless meetings with the school and they did try to help but nothing improved. My view was that they needed to put a teacher on the bus but they refused. Eventually he changed schools so he could use public buses rather than the school bus. Public buses are better because your DC can avoid difficult pupils if needed.

Sorry op but I think the behaviour on the bus is the top of the iceberg of what goes on at school.