Frayed nerves for drivers

Press, 23 February 1989, Page 10

Frayed nerves for drivers

Any parent who suffers frayed nerves simply from ferrying a carload of children to Saturday morning sports will be full of admiration for the stamina of school bus drivers. How do they stand the din? How can they concentrate on the road and keep order at the same time? “A lot depends on the driver’s personality,” admits Tony Purcell of the C.T.B. “The drivers can make or break these trips. If they let the kids rule the roost, they’ve had it.” Because of the way the shift-system works, most trips are done, by, the same driver and the chief Tony >. DaviS, .3 feels this helps. “It means ' the driver sets the rules from the start.” While both men maintain that responsibility for the discipline of students lies with the school, teachers rarely travel on

the buses out of school hours, so a lot is up to the driver — and the students themselves. In fact, they find, discipline is generally not a problem. “Most schools monitor the buses pretty closely,” says Tony Purcell. “You expect a lot of noise, of course,” adds Tony Davis. “There are safety considerations also if lots of kids are running round the bus and it has to stop suddenly." Where several schools share a bus, he admits there may be “a bit of friction.” Occasionally, fights break out/ Every driver has a favourite method of dealing with problems. Some take 'names, some threaten to report miscreants < or threaten to make them get off the bus. > Tony Davis tells of one driver whose ploy; when behaviour gets out of hand, is to stop the bus,<

and start reading a book, saying: “Well, I don’t know what time you kids want to get home, but I’m getting paid for this.” If drivers report problems they cannot handle, the Transport Board will visit the school, threatening to withdraw the service if things do not improve. Usually the matter is raised in assembly. Some schools delegate students as bus monitors, others operate a notebook system. On each trip, the driver is asked to sign and comment. It is a system Tony Davis approves of.

He still treasures one memory from his days as a school bus driver. “As the kids got on, each one said good morning. When we arrived, though I opened both doors, they all filed out at the front and said, ‘Thank you, - driver’.” Needless to say, the comments in that notebook were always rosy.