BAD behaviour on Hyndburn school buses is being kept in check – by putting the pupils in charge.

At least 25 prefects from St Christopher’s CE High School receive a free bus pass in turn for maintaining order on bus journeys and ultimately have the authority to ban their peers from a bus.

The scheme has been rolled out by Lancashire County Council’s Safer Travel Unit (STU) and is in place in schools across the county.

Each bus is allocated four prefects from Year 10 and Year 11, and deputy head and STU liaison Steve Green feels the initiative has helped cut down on misbehaviour on journeys to and from school, especially as not all buses are fitted with CCTV.

He said: "We appoint bus prefects to each of our school buses – the ones that take most of the pupils, not the public transport ones. They’re the eyes and ears of ourselves so if there is something, they can report back to myself or the STU.

"There’s also a website and we contact each other through emails and the bus companies have links as well if a bus driver wants to report an incident."

The project is also reinforced for Year 7 pupils through the Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) lessons.

Mr Green added: "It can be all sorts from low level misbehaviour to health and safety issues like not sitting down, not following drivers’ instructions, smoking and anti-social behaviour.

"But in theory if an incident happened on a bus and CCTV got sent through I could view it before the bus actually arrived at school.

"It seems to have cut down the number of incidents. When I come in each morning there are people outside the doors reporting incidents to ourselves. It’s not perfect and depends on the personality of the pupil.

"Some are strong and others tend to soak it up. The drivers are aware that the prefects are on the bus and some of them get to know the drivers very well. They work as a team."

stuart.pike@menmedia.co.uk