Pupils, teachers and Nottingham City Transport (NCT) are working together to make travelling to school and back safer throughout the Nottingham conurbation.
NCT transports 6,500 school pupils to and from school every week. Although most journeys take place on regular buses, NCT also runs 16 dedicated school buses that run without any financial support from local authorities. While most journeys from school and back are incident-free, NCT is forced to spend £10,000 per month replacing damaged seats and windows on buses, with most of this damage being done by children.
The initiative, titled Safemark, and part of the city's Respect for Transport campaign, involves sixth form pupils working as good behaviour ‘mentors' for their colleagues and agreed codes of conduct for pupil behaviour when travelling on school buses.
Now, the 25 schools which have so far signed up to take part in Safemark with NCT are to be recognised at an awards ceremony held at the Council House in Nottingham .
The event, held at 12 noon on February 11, 2005, will see the awarding of 'Safemarks' and certificates to participating schools that have agreed to use a Safemark Code of Conduct. They will be awarded by Cllr Graham Chapman, who is responsible for education in the city.
NCT launched its Safemark scheme to secondary schools in Nottingham last year, based upon a similar scheme operated by the Yorkshire PTE.
The scheme is designed to:
- Ensure school children's safety on NCT buses
- Improve school children's behaviour on NCT buses
- Reduce the levels of driver abuse and vandalism encountered by NCT from school children using these services
- Raise school pupils awareness of the need to respect: public transport; other members of the public using the bus and the drivers operating their service
- Work in partnership with pupils, schools, parents, and local authorities to raise awareness of issues regarding the transportation of school children on buses
- Create good communication channels to deal with matters quickly as they arise.
In other words, a school ‘Safemark' signifies co-operation between NCT and educational establishments in working together to safely convey students to and from their schools.
At the Council House ceremony, awards will be also handed out to the winners of a school Safemark design competition, with the winners receiving a free school trip for their class. These designs have been used as the basis for the logo now used by NCT for Safemark.
It is intended that the awards will become an annual event and that they can be later extended to primary schools and other transportation companies including the NET tram.
Another initiative launched under Safemark is the Mentor scheme. This is designed to improve pupils' safety and behaviour on buses, when travelling to and from school, by promoting co-operation between schools and transport companies such as NCT.
Harry Carlton School, in East Leake , has been trialling this scheme with NCT. It uses designated sixth form mentors, who travel free on the buses in exchange for monitoring fellow pupils and reporting poor behaviour. This scheme has been very successful and has allowed problems to be nipped in the bud before they escalate.
Harry Carlton School head teacher, Graham Legg, will be speaking about the scheme at the awards ceremony. Rushcliffe School is now planning to appoint a number of Sixth Form mentors as part of the Safemark initiative following the success of this initiative.
Barrie Burch , Commercial Manager for NCT, said: "As a result of the Safemark initiative, we now have regular dialogue with the schools, and have noticed a marked improvement in resolving problems on our buses with school children, we are very encouraged by the results of this initiative."
The Safemark initiative is part of the Respect for Transport campaign, which is improving the safety of public transport in Nottingham and is backed by Nottingham City Council, NCT, NET, Nottinghamshire Police, British Transport Police, JC Decaux and the Big Wheel.
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