Guarding the Children

You might have heard of the case of Isabelle McCullough who is a pupil at Normanby-by-Spital Primary School, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire and is picked up by the school bus from the top of her road, where she lives in Glentham. These two villages are two kilometres apart along a country lane and as the lane enters Glentham the lane becomes urbanised into a street. At the point where Isabelle is dropped off by the bus there are pavements on both sides of the street.

To get the school bus in the morning Isabelle simple walks twenty metres from her home (past the car that is parked on the footway) to where the bus stops. She does not even walk across a domestic driveway. On the way back from school the bus drops her off on the other side of the bus route so she has to cross the street to get home. Apparently the traffic volume is very low.

I would have thought that if the bus driver and/or the inspector felt that the parents should be at the bus stop to collect her – to help her across the street – then they should have talked to the parents first.

Even if a child walking across a street in such a situation is seen as a problem, it seems strange to me that the matter is passed from the driver to the inspector on through the bus company headquarters to the government in Lincoln.

Surely the boot should be on the other foot. Why is it that motorists are able to be seen as a threat to village children?

What a funny old world we live in.