Extract of Northumberland Home to School Transport Policy
13. Responsibility of parents / guardians
Pupils are collected as close to their home as is reasonably possible. Please note, private driveways or roads not owned or maintained by Northumberland County Council are not included in such measurements.
Parents must arrange for their children to travel in safety between the home and the transport picking-up and setting-down points.
They are also responsible for their children while they are waiting for transport and when they leave the transport at the end of the day.
Children should be at pickup points in the morning at least 5 minutes before pickup times.
14. Behaviour on school transport
Parents and children themselves are responsible for their behaviour on transport.
It is expected that each school will promote appropriate standards of behaviour by children on their journey to and from school. Legislation empowers head teachers to take action to address unacceptable behaviour even though it takes place outside the school premises. Exclusion from school transport is sanctioned under these regulations. A leaflet outlining how pupils are expected to behave on home to school transport is issued to parents before places on transport are allocated. Where a safety issue has been brought to the attention of the school, then the school must, in law, deal with it. Failure to do this would be negligent. For example, if a parent informed a school that children were regularly fighting on the journey and distracting the driver from his important task of driving safely and that this was happening once the vehicle left the school, the school must then take some action to try and prevent this from happening or, in some cases, they must warn parents of the problem.
