A parent’s nightmare is just another day on the school bus

When your child catches a school bus, you expect that they will be looked after, writes Maryam Ismail.

Every morning, you put your bundle of joy on the bus, sending him or her off to school. At least that’s what you think, anyway. But perhaps, like the father in the film Taken, you will get a heart-stopping phone call from a stranger. I know someone who got such a call and this is his story.

When this parent answered his phone, he heard an unfamiliar voice on the other end of the line say: “I have your daughter and she’s crying. I found your number on her name tag and so I’m calling you.”

Luckily the stranger was kind enough to deliver the child to her mother. He knew the routine, because, sadly, this kind of thing happens often. His own daughter had once been taken to the wrong bus stop and left with someone who was nice enough to call him. These are nursery schoolchildren: they don’t know their parents’ full names, or their mobile numbers or their home addresses.

Imagine the situation happening to you: when the bus gets to the right stop, you are stressed out because every child except yours has come off. You question the attendant and the driver, and you get blank looks. Suddenly, the attendant remembers that he left your child at another stop and offers to go back and look for them.

“It was as if she were just a set of lost keys,” the parent in question told me after his experience. When he went to the school to complain, the response was: “The bus service is optional and it’s only the first time, so what’s the big deal?”

When he went to the school’s transport company, the response was just as unbelievable: “I got your daughter confused with another child,” confessed the attendant. “I’m not used to driving this sort of bus,” said the driver.

Excuses like these are not good enough. What if a child was hurt, lost or worse? If it had been my child, I would have gone to the police and pressed for someone to be arrested.

My blood boiled as I read the inspection reports for this particular school, and found that it had rated poorly between 2009 and 2012. By last year the school was found to provide “a safe and caring environment”. I can only assume the performance of the school bus service was not part of this assessment.

The UAE is certainly one of the safest places in the world to live. Yet, when children are being let off at the wrong bus stop, it makes you stop and think.

I used to ride the school bus when I worked as a substitute teacher, and I found that the attendants had very little control over their young passengers.

Children can be very unruly; some of them are fearless bullies who are backed up by their parents and pay heed to no one.

Also, the bickering that goes on between the drivers, attendants and parents sets a poor example for the children and is dangerous.

The driver I had was so bad that by the time my children and I had got off the bus, it felt like our vertebrae had been jarred loose. We were queasy, hot and bothered.

As someone who homeschools my children, I am often asked: “Why don’t you send your kids to school?”

Truthfully, there are a lot of reasons, but the school bus service is definitely one of them. It seems to me that too few school administrators and transport company employees realise that the precious cargo they are carrying are ambassadors of the future who need to make it home safe and sound.

Maryam Ismail is a sociologist and teacher who divides her time between the US and the UAE

On Twitter: @supermothersoul