Background

Although the buses – public and school buses – serve a large proportion of Swanmore pupils, they are not Swanmore College buses and this means that many decisions about how the buses are run, including pick -up and drop-off times, location of bus stops and the routes taken are not under our control. That said, our administration team work tirelessly twice a day to ensure that the vast number of pupils can travel safely to and from college. Their goal is always to communicate swiftly with the bus companies and parent/carers if an issue arises to enable pupil safety and wellbeing to be a priority.

Pupil Voice

Pupils have mixed views about their experiences travelling on a bus – some have a simple journey to and from school every day without incident. Some have shared that it can be frustrating when buses arrive late to school because of local traffic. For others, the concern is low-level behaviour that can spoil a journey. Many pupils have used the After College Bus and KS4 pupils find this particularly useful to support them with after college revision sessions.

Q) The Biggest Challenge?

A) Stopping anti-social behaviour.

A small number of pupils do not feel able to respect their fellow travellers and engage in behaviour that they would not consider doing if they were on the college premises. Swearing, throwing food and graffiti are some of the behaviours that we are made aware of, but innocent bus users do not always feel willing or able to report the pupils who are making these poor choices. This means that anti-social behaviour can go without consequence.

How can you help?

If your child travels by bus, we would be interested in knowing about their experience. How do you ensure that they are able to travel safely without having to contend with poor behaviour? If your child witnessed poor behaviour, would they report it? If not, why not? We would like to understand what measures we need to put in place to make these journeys safe and incident free. We don’t want pupils to think they are powerless to stop anti-social behaviour, but we need your help to tackle it. Also, if you think your child is making poor choices, please talk to us. We must work together to keep all our pupils safe when travelling by bus.