School bus behaviour!

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Bad behaviour on school bus. Normal? Speaking as I have no idea, as I never went to school on a bus however my partner did but at that point they’d have bus captains etc, which doesn’t seem to happen these days.

anyway, around 7-8 mile 20 minute trips and my daughter has just started year 7, I have heard things about our local school bus and the behaviour of students from our village having a bit of a reputation, the school try and sort it and say they don’t tolerate it but doesn’t seem to change anything from what I’ve heard.

Dd is a sensitive soul with some SEN which doesn’t help, however the behaviour on the bus is awful. Kids will talk, sing, listen to music etc which is not the issue. It’s kids coming up and down the stairs (double decker) whilst in motion, moving around, shouting, screaming, chucking things around (including food items!). Dd sits on the bottom as it seems worse up the top. Bus driver can’t do much but did stop to shout at some of them today. I heard in the past it’s turned around gone back to school on the way home so the teachers could control them. There has also been bullying and nasty behaviour on the bus. Thankfully dd will just put her headphones on and try distract herself, but if doesn’t improve, I’ll start driving her but I was hoping that the bus would help her independence.

dd also thinks that some kids on the too deck vape.

we live in a nice little village with no anti social behaviour problems and always find the kids pleasant around her when out & about so I don’t know why the kids turn into little shits on the bus, it’s really strange.

or is just all kids on school buses?! Curious to know!

it doesn’t help that sometimes the bus is 30 minutes later picking up in the afternoon so the kids are left waiting, whilst all other kids have been picked up (all the other buses get there early it seems!) and they are all waiting around getting bored, not that is an excuse for poor behaviour.

Sounds normal to me. I just wish the kids around here would actually GO upstairs on buses, no schools kids seems to do that anymore around here?! So all the anti social behaviour is downstairs, and before it’s suggested I go upstairs I am disabled. But yes that behaviour sounds very normal here, we have them all running on the back and not paying, pushing past people trying to get off and blocking them from getting off, driver does nothing, I can’t understand why they don’t park further down and make them walk to the bus so they can’t do it.

Fifteen years since my last child left secondary - and it was like this then too. Very very hard on the more sensitive children or those with SEN.

Somewhat similar with my dd. She doesn’t feel comfortable going up and down the stairs as she has dyspraxia as she struggles on her feet and spatial awareness. A few of them do sit at the bottom but it does tend to be the quieter ones.

this bus is just a school service, not a public bus and they all have passes, else they can’t get on!

At the minute dd seems okay with headphones and sitting at the bottom, but I do worry!

it’s all new to me. I never gave it a second thought before as I always walked or got a lift as lived in a town with secondary school in walking distance.

Sounds very familiar, sad to say. I drop mine off partway to school in the morning on the way to work, then they walk the rest, and in the evening they choose to walk into town and catch the regular public bus home rather than get on the schools service bus. Dd has come home covered in food, chewing gum stuck in her coat and hair, they are throwing water around, throwing baby wipes (?!) and they behave like animals. Dd has autism and noise is a real trigger for her, so she only lasted a few weeks before she started to try and avoid school because of the bus. It’s horrendous.

I don’t know how the drivers cope but they at least have a sealed cab so they can get on with their job. Because the school service covers 4 schools, none of them want to get involved.

It was like this when I used to do the 45 min school bus ride back in the 90s. Younger kids downstairs and near the front, older kids claimed upstairs and back seats. Swearing, fighting, smoking etc If we got the good driver he’d let us all jump out and buy sweets at the newsagents near one of the stops and then jump back on to finish the ride. One particularly memorable journey where a fight ended up with an upstairs window being shattered and raining glass on everyone getting off the bus at one of the stops.

I've said this on another thread but my heart rate always goes up when I go to the top deck of a bus (my kids love it) and I still don't look at the people on the back seat.

It's not right and shouldn't be normalised at all but like some PP have said it does sound familiar. Tell her to stick to the lower deck, the worst behaviour is usually on the top deck.

Oh I see, theres no school buses here, sadly 😢

Thanks all, it’s really hard. The older ones on this bus aren’t the issue, it’s the younger ones I believe! Hopefully they will calm down 🤦‍♀️

My sons school have given the private bus companies permission to ban persistent offenders I think they have only done it once to my knowledge ( easy because they have to show passes)

it is quite the opposite here, there are some public buses that are used for school journeys, but generally it’s contracted buses for school runs. They can’t just hop onto any bus with their pass either. But we do live semi rural and our local public transport is poor!

I think our bus was technically open to the public but unsurprisingly the public avoided using them.

I have heard of this locally too but then they started putting the bus problem kids into taxis which often contained either SEN children or children living off the main bus route and it wasn’t fair on those children either, even though they were more likely to behave in a taxi!

I don’t blame them!

Sounds familiar from 20 years ago. Pretty sure they had a bus turn around then. We were a mini bus full and the longest journey. The bus would turn up plonk itself at the front of the bus bay and load us all on and depart. That was surprising effective. Every seat occupied, no space, no waiting time.