Making Up A Scandal Out Of Whole Cloth

Two nine-year-old schoolchildren were stranded after a bus driver asked them to get off and escort a four-year-old back to her missed stop.

Shock! Horror! OUTRAGE!!!!

Declan Anstee and Olivia Flexman, both pupils at St Joseph’s School in Christchurch, did as they were told but found themselves struggling to find the girl’s home along one of the area’s busiest roads, it is claimed.

Neither of the children knew the girl, who is a pupil of Burton Primary School and she couldn’t remember her bus stop.

And when the bus driver got to the children’s intended stop, their mothers say they were told their missing children must have got off already or missed the bus at school.

Now that bit is a worry. Assuming it’s true.

A Dorset County Council spokesman said: “The safety of children is our number one priority and we take these reports extremely seriously.

“The county council acted immediately by sending a senior compliance officer to speak to parents, the school and the bus operator and ensure that children’s safety is maintained.

Starting today we will ensure that a member of county council staff personally supervises the bus until we are confident that the problem has been resolved.”

Which might take some time, as the comments (once you get past the ones calling for the bus driver to be flogged, tarred and feathered and then buried alive, before being dug up again to be burned at the stake) show:

Bigbobrob says...

This is NOT what happened I was there talking to the driver, my children were on that same bus.

The story fails to mention this is a school bus, set up by Dorset county council, the usual company set up to take the children are experiencing problems so the bus company concerned have been drafted in to help out until the problems are resolved. The bus driver asked every child there if their parents would be there at the bus stops to meet them, 60% of the children said NO! The little girl was crying and the bus driver was asking her what was the matter, Declan and Olivia got out of their seats and explain she never got off the stop she should have and then gave the impression they knew her and led her off the bus to walk her back, the driver and I then discussed how bad Dorset County Council are to expect 4 year old children to get on a bus by themselves!

Question is... Why wasn't the parent of the 4 year old girl there to meet her off the bus stop!!!

Quite.

But then ‘Useless parent treats state-provided transportation service as free babysitting service’ isn’t such a great headline, is it?