SINGAPORE – Townsville Primary School pupils will get help from bus ambassadors to commute to and from school on service 261 under a trial scheme that kicked off on May 9 in Ang Mo Kio.
Ambassadors will accompany pupils on service 261 in the morning and afternoon to and from the school and Ang Mo Kio Bus Interchange as part of the scheme, which is a collaboration between the school and public bus operator SBS Transit (SBST).
Primary 6 pupil Napassanun Rungvittayanun, who commutes daily to and from the school in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10 on bus service 261, said some pupils fall asleep on the bus and miss their stop.
“With a bus ambassador, students can be reminded to leave the bus on time,” the 12-year-old added.
Housewife Suma Vinakota, 42, whose child is a pupil at Townsville Primary, said the initiative would give parents more reassurance.
“They can be assured there is an ambassador on the bus and no child is left behind,” she added. “I was just speaking to another mum whose younger daughter is in Primary 2 and is going to take the bus. She said that since there is an ambassador on the bus, she is more confident to send her daughter on the bus.”
SBST said the initiative aims to make public transport a viable option for young school-going children in the light of the shortage of private school bus drivers.
Dubbed the School-Friendly Public Bus Service, the trial will run until the end of the school year in November.
It will see ambassadors accompany pupils as young as six years old from Ang Mo Kio Bus Interchange to Townsville Primary on buses at 6.58am, 7.02am and 7.06am, and on the return journey at 1.28pm, 1.35pm and 1.42pm.
The current team of ambassadors consists of two parent volunteers from Townsville Primary and one SBST staff member, though eight more parent volunteers have expressed interest in being ambassadors, said an SBST spokesperson.
The bus company also said it is open to recruiting more ambassadors who may not be parents of pupils of the school.
Housewife Surangpimol Treerapongse, 48, a Townsville Primary parent volunteer and bus ambassador under the project, said: “This is a creative project that helps parents ensure their kids will be safely on the way to school.”
In the mornings, the bus ambassadors will board the bus at the interchange with pupils, ensure that all pupils alight at the correct stop and usher them across the road and to the school gate.
In the afternoons, ambassadors will walk pupils from the school gate to the bus stop across the road, and accompany them to the interchange on service 261.
SBST said the company will expand the initiative to other areas where it operates if it determines there is strong uptake and demand for the service.
The public transport operator also plans to conduct two surveys, in June and November, to gather feedback and assess if improvements can be made.
Townsville Primary principal Eddie Foo said parents have expressed gratitude for the initiative, as they can now feel assured when leaving their children under the care of ambassadors at the school bus stop.
Ang Mo Kio GRC MP Gan Thiam Poh said some residents have told him they have to rush to take their children to school before heading to work. He hopes the scheme can help give parents peace of mind.
This initiative comes amid the private school bus driver shortage that surfaced in 2023, as the shrinking and ageing population of private bus drivers has seen the industry face a manpower crunch.
Bus operators – including ComfortDelGro Bus, a subsidiary of SBST’s parent firm ComfortDelGro – ended some school bus services as a result of the lack of drivers, leaving students and parents in need of transportation.
In response, the Ministry of Education in June 2023 rolled out measures to tackle the school bus driver crunch, including letting school buses use common pick-up and drop-off points from 2024 and increasing the foreign worker quota for school bus drivers.
