How a lack of accountability can leave schools vulnerable to safety and efficiency issues.
The relationship between schools and school bus operators needs to be strong and have good communication at its heart. Especially with the safety of children and students at stake.
This article looks at what factors create a lack of operator accountability and how this can leave schools vulnerable to criticism from parents.
Bad student experience
Middleman technology brokers
Using a technology broker as a middleman to help run your school transport, means that operators get short-changed. With less money going to the operator, they don’t have the funds to run their best vehicles. This impacts the quality of transport that students witness. It also increases the likelihood of incidents and parent complaints due to the use of incident prone vehicles.
Schools blamed for operational issues
If there is a problem where the operator is at fault, then the schools are the ones who get in trouble with parents/guardians, not the operators. Without schools being able to see what the cause of the problem is, a lot of these issues will go unchecked and continue to happen. This can ruin the reputation of a school.
Safety
No visibility on operations
If schools cannot hold school bus operators to account, then operators may miss safety concerns without schools knowing. These issues would only be known to the school when a serious problem escalates. Incidents like this put the safety of students at risk, as they are often only realised when it is too late. An example of this could be, an operator doesn’t properly track a driver’s behaviour and erratic braking causes a student to have an injury. If this driver’s behaviour had been recorded, both the school and operator would have been alerted. The operator could then have dealt with the driver before an accident even occurred.
Efficiency
Routes may not be optimised
A lack of visibility of routes taken by drivers means that both schools and operators cannot see whether there are ways to improve inefficiencies. Having visibility of service means that if there are any problems, then pinpointing the issues and resolving them is quick and easy. If there is a road closure, for example, then any other school buses using that same road can be easily redirected.
For more information about how our technology can improve communication with your operator and improve your overall school bus service, then please see our Rygo page.
