I don’t know how many times I’ve written about the Test Valley School bus run but here’s another! Incidentally, typing ‘test valley school bus’ into google.co.uk puts this blog’s pages into positions 3 and 4.

Last week, on Wednesday, as I arrived at the school and opened the doors they charged onto the bus like an army unit trying to seize control of a building. “STOP” was loudly shouted by someone outside of the bus. It was the Deputy Head of the school who made them all get off, line up and enter the bus singly showing their bus passes. Still one kid tried to hide behind another and not show a pass, this kid lost his pass over a month ago and his parents are arguing about the cost they have to pay to replace it. He’s been told, in the presence of teaching staff, that his parents have had sufficient time to replace the pass and that he must pay if he wishes to travel. Very grudgingly he paid. All the time the Deputy Head was there the behaviour was OK. But once I closed the doors and pulled off all hell let loose. I’ve described the bus before as being like a cage full of baboons into which someone has thrown a firework! I still can’t think of any other description which comes to describing how it is. The bell is constantly rung, the windows are being opened and banged shut because the make a loud noise when you do that and worst of all many are standing or running around. Three times I pulled the bus over and told them to sit down and each time as soon as we moved off they were up again. We’ve been told to remove the pass from any child who misbehaves and to hand it into our Operations Manager who will then take the matter up with the school. When I stopped for the fourth time and told them to sit they refused and argued, I asked for their passes and was again refused. They were totally out of control. I used my mobile to call our Operations Manager to inform him of the situation and were were hardly able to converse due to the noise they were making. Then one of the kids tried to open the door so with one hand I was pressing the door close button and holding the ‘phone in the other. Then they forced the door open and about 10 or 12 rushed out into the road – this a winding country main road with no verge. The only funny thing in this was the look on their faces as they wandered about in the road, the look said “we got out, what do we do now”? The Ops Manager could hear all this happening and I asked what I should do. He told me that since they’d forced their way off the bus then to leave them there and continue the journey. That’s what I did.

The next day I had the same duty so it meant I’d be doing the Test Valley School run again. This time the company gave me a bus with CCTV on it so everything could be recorded. When I got to the school things were very different, school staff were there as well as a someone from Hampshire County Council. It seems that the more decent kids were as fed up with situation as the bus drivers are and had named the miscreants to the school and HCC. They had a list of names and I was asked to identify any they missed. As the kids boarded their passes were checked against the list and if their name was on it their pass was taken off them and they given a letter for their parents saying that they were no longer allowed on the bus! I’m not sure exactly how many passes were withdrawn but I guess around 8.

I spoke to the driver who did the run on Friday and he said that without the troublemakers it had been a lovely quiet run.