Bus Operators Covid-19 Guidelines

Parents and students are advised of the following from our bus operators:

• All pupils (unless exempt) are required to wear face coverings on mainstream home to school transport.  Operators are required to ensure that drivers support the management of this. 

• Hand sanitiser must be available on all vehicles and pupils asked to use it before boarding the vehicle.

• Transport operators are required to clean frequently touched surfaces after each journey and carry out enhanced cleaning at the end of each day using disinfectant.  It should be evident that additional cleaning is taking place to provide reassurance to all concerned.

• Drivers are required to ensure good ventilation of fresh air wherever possible. 

• Department for Education guidance on Covid safe travel requires that pupils sit with the same constant group of children each day.  This means that drivers must be checking passes to ensure that pupils boarded at the bus stop allocated to them.  Bus passes have always been required for entry on to our vehicles so the children should be prepared for this and have them in hand ready and parents have been reminded of this.

• Operators are instructed to ensure vehicles are loaded up in bus stop order from the rear of the vehicle to support track and trace measures, should there be a confirmed COVID positive case. 

• Operators are asked to support ensuring social distancing is maintained whilst queuing, boarding and alighting a vehicle wherever possible.

• To support operators, we provided a passenger list in bus stop order at the start of the academic year.  Upon entry to the vehicle pupils should have passes in hand to show the driver, the driver must then record them accessing the vehicle on the appropriate day and journey.

• Passenger records must be maintained for 21 days and made available for the purpose of the track and trace process.  Sample requests of this data will be requested from you on a regular basis for compliance to this.