Within the school grounds 

Some schools receive a large number of students via contract buses and, to minimise the risk of an accident when students are entering or leaving the buses, have created large and well-organised parking bays within the school grounds. 

The buses come into named bays and students can be released to board the buses in an orderly way. 

Occasionally, buses arrive late. ATL’s view is that you should not be expected to stay more than 15 minutes after the bus is due to arrive before reporting the matter and handing responsibility for the students left on site to a designated member of senior management. 

It should be up to the senior management to ensure that bus companies honour contractual times and, if necessary, either enforce any penalty allowed by the contract or find another contractor. 

Parents and staff should be told about the procedure to be used if buses arrive late. 

Outside the school grounds 

You may not realise that seeing students onto either hired transport or service buses outside the school grounds constitutes taking them off-site. 

Special care needs to be taken in these situations, especially if this involves seeing students across a road. 

While students are on the institution’s grounds, they are clearly under the discipline of the school staff, who have authority and are ‘in loco parentis’. Once the students are off the grounds and on the public highway, different circumstances apply. 

You should take great care before agreeing to see students onto vehicles outside the school/college grounds. ATL considers that you are not contractually obliged to do this. 

Crossing the road 

Only the police, traffic wardens and official school or college crossing patrols have the legal right to control traffic. If you assume responsibility for seeing children and young people across a road in the absence of a school or college crossing patrol, you must discharge this activity as a reasonable person and to the best of your ability.

You must realise that, in undertaking this responsibility, you are accepting a risk which you cannot control. For this reason, a safe crossing point must be chosen carefully. Most groups will probably require more than one adult to supervise the road crossing. 

If you are asked to look after students outside the school or college premises, ATL’s advice is that you are not obliged to do so. 

If you wish to volunteer for this task, it is essential that you:

• obtain written confirmation from your employer that, in the event of an accident befalling a student during that supervision, there is full insurance cover, and
• write to your employer, making it clear that you will carry out this task in a voluntary capacity, not because it is a duty that can be required of you.    

Likewise, if you travel to school or college on a hired bus, it should be made clear that you are not an escort for the students and are not responsible for their actions or behaviour.

Help and advice

For more detailed advice, please refer to ATL's publication Taking students off-site.

For individual queries, please contact ATL's London office, e-mail the helpdesk, or contact your branch secretary. You may also wish to call the out-of-office-hours helpline.

If you need confidential support and advice, don't forget you can also call ATL's stress, crisis or legal helplines.