Bus passes for 11-15 year olds

It was fun and educational in a very innocent way!

We couldn't have walked to school because it was just too far. My own DC have all done a similar journey but with head phones in......They missed out!

From what Minibags tells me, mamardoit, it's pretty similar to that now. The drivers are still friendly and tolerant and the kids turn into decent adults.

I lived in a rural area and the only way to secondary school was on a contract bus.

The only adult on our bus was the driver. The journey there was usually uneventful some were a bit noisey but mostly DC doing last minuet homework. Me and my best friend used to test each others french and latin vocabulary.

The journey back was the opposite. Lots of smoking, shouting and rude signs at class mates walking home......not me it was the boys!
Sometimes the older ones would sing 'rugby' songs. At 11 we didn't always understand them but we joined in the chorus!

Even the bus driver used to sing along to 'Roll me over in the clover, Roll me over lay me down and do it again.

This was 50 years ago.

14 year old boys, (generation after generation of them) for some reason, seem to think spitting is a brilliant way to impress girls. Bless them. So gauche. And so obviously never read Freud.

jane and lily, I guess the people I know, and the school teachers here, are not indolent then. I don't think it's a case of "allowing" teenagers to test boundaries. Any healthy teenager will test boundaries. You have to be one step ahead. It's not the kids' fault if the adults in their lives aren't ready to keep re-drawing the boundaries.

Which is not to say it's easy, and I am sorry if you have to live among rude people.

I hope all goes well for your grand-daughter's transfer to high school, glam. The local authority here lays on schools buses to collect and deliver schoolkids who live more than three miles away from school. There is only the one high school to serve a huge rural area and not enough (or even any in some places) public service buses. DD's journey takes about half an hour and the high school and 14 primary schools that feed into it work very hard in the final year of primary school to help the kids adjust, including arranging for them to spend two days in the high school, travelling to and fro on the school buses, during their last few weeks at primary. DD wasn't streetwise either but she managed fine. I got a resounding NO when I asked if she wanted me to come to the bus-stop with her the first day!

I think well thought out arrangements and systems between schools saves a lot of bother when the primary school kids move up. Most then find the change relatively easy. Mind you, DD's final year primary school teacher was superb. I'm sure that helped. When some parents worried about their children not being ready for high school, she would retort: "My job is to get them ready!" and she did

Well said*Lilygran*.
It's all very well allowing young people to test the boundaries, but only if the grownups are not too indolent to set them.

I don't think it would have been schoolchildren doing the spitting in those days, nanaej!

I guess spitting must always have been an issue, even in the 'good old days' because I remember no spitting signs on buses in the 60s!!

Bags I am reading the posts purely out of interest as DGD2 moves to her senior school in September this year she has passed the 11+ to go to a school which is out of area and will take her 50mins by bus to get there, she is not a "street wise" child but certainly not shy and I worry as to how she will cope with the journey each way on her own as it is inconcievable for DD or myself to go with her on the bus for the first few times and she has said no-no to being taken by car.I think DD will be counting the minutes until she see's the bus coming down the Rd when the time arrive's.

Bags I can't remember where you live except it's Scotland. I live in a very large northern English city, perhaps things are different here. Do the local teenagers spit on the floor on the buses you travel on? Of course, most of them don't and wouldn't think of it. But what proportion of young bus passengers spitting and swearing does it take to make the journey hideous for other passengers? Many, even most, adolescents behave sensibly in public and I hope my DS did and that my DGS will also. I grew up in a small market town and one reason we watched our conduct was that a lot of people knew a lot of people and everyone knew our uniform. You would be reported to the Head for any annoyance suffered by adult, reasonable or not. But life and society have changed. When I started teaching, children stood when an adult came into the room. By the time I retired we had the police regularly on campus looking for students carrying drugs and weapons. There is a problem and I think the root is that we make unjustified excuses for bad behaviour and don't challenge it in public. It isn't just up to the schools.

Mind you, girls aren't expected to be ladylike any more, thank goodness. We were; I got terribly ticked off for walking out of school on a sunny summer day with my blouse sleeves tidily rolled up – showing the school up. Aye, right.

And as for not wearing one's school hat!!! Well, the sky would fall down.

DD's school has two lessons before morning break, then two before lunch, then two more before closing time at 3.30. This is not very dissimilar to what happened in my grammar school: three shorter lessons before morning break, two more before lunch (longer lunch break) then three in the afternoon, before finishing at 3.45. She has three double periods of PE each week and there are various after school sports clubs run by teachers. We had two PE sessions and people who got into teams practised at lunchtime.

The classrooms are not overcrowded and the school is well equipped.

I do wish people would stop talking schools down. Kids are just kids. Lively and loud. Get over it!

Good point lilygran - it is part of a wider picture - decline of proper school meals, teachers no longer doing "duties" - so schools have to pay someone else etc
And they are high energy creatures who have been coralled - often in very poky classrooms which would be illegally crowded for adults - on hard chairs , with a bunch of people not of their choosing, for several hours. And expected to not wriggle in their seats and obey the rules. (ofsted can downgrade a lesson if the students are fidgety!)
I would not like to have to be a 14 year old school student for a single day.

I think one of the reasons for the excess of high spirits (!) is the reduction in break times in secondary schools over the last few years. When I last taught in secondary, in the 70s, there was over an hour for lunch (two sittings) and a morning and afternoon break of 15 minutes. School ended around 4pm. Now there are no or very short breaks, short lunch breaks and school ends around three. And we used to have a lot of timetabled physical activity. So they hit the homeward bus fizzing with energy.

It's the "what happens if I do such and such?" investigation. Like wearing trainers to school instead of black leather shoes. Testing, testing....

Actually, listening to Minibags's "verbal challenges" of authority, I think it can be quite subtle. She may not be aware she's doing it, but I think she is learning all the nuances of 'bad' words – what is acceptable, where, if ever, and so on. It's part of the growing up learning curve. If she uses a word inappropriately, or rudely, I tell her that probably isn't a good time to use that word, and why. She takes my comments on board. In essence, I see such teenage behaviour as investigative.

Bravado between themselves. The teenage years are very competitive. It's all about proving yourself 'somebody', being accepted in the 'in' group. Different kids use different 'techniques'. Swearing just happens to be one of the easiest and therefore one of the most common. It's also about pushing boundaries. Therefore >> normal. So long as they are not swearing at people, but only among themselves for the sake of swearing, it's essentially harmless. Most grow out of it.

I'm not so sure about that, Bags. They seem to use it even when they don't know there are any adults around.

They are only using 'bad' language because they know adults disapprove. It's best to just ignore it, I think, or to smile placidly to show that you aren't in the least bit impressed. Perhaps they don't realise we've heard it all before. It's just bravado. Shrug it off.

It's not the noise so much as the incredibly bad language used by lots of school children. I live in a supposedly very nice area too!

I like the bustle and noise of teenagers as well. Have any of you who have posted comments like this recently travelled on a bus full of schoolchildren on their way home? The well-behaved ones shriek at each other to be heard above the general din, the quiet reserved ones sit quietly and the delinquents fight, swear, spit ( a LOT of spitting), carve graffiti on the seats, write on the windows, smoke....... We're not talking cheerful high spirits here.

I wouldn't like to walk three miles in driving rain or snow!
I quite like the bustle and noise of teenagers/children.

I think that's fair enough bags especially if it reduces car use too!

My DD and DGD 1 have a one & half mile walk to & from school and takes them about 15 minutes on a good day..but in icy wind and snow the up hill trek home is grim but manageable! 2 miles plus in awful weather is miserable for younger kids at the end of a busy school day!
After dropping DGD1 at school DD has another similar distance to go to work and to take DGD2 to nursery so the younger one does a lot of walking every day with her mum!

Here primary school pupils get free bus travel if they live more than two miles away from school, or if the route is too dangerous (e.g. no pavement along rural roads and an unfenced sea wall to fall off). Secondary schools pupils get a free pass if they live over three miles away.

Well, we call it free, but we pay for it via council tax of course.