60 minutes maximum school bus trip time

The Minister of Education, Sarah Bint Youssef Al Amiri, in her response to a parliamentary question from Council Member Naima Abdullah Al-Sharhan regarding “the length of time students stay on school buses and the duration of some trips reaching two hours or more,” denied the existence of any data registered with the Ministry about the duration of any school bus trip reaching two hours.

She indicated that the maximum is 45 minutes for kindergarten students and 60 minutes for the rest of the students, explaining that the compliance rate was 98.5% in the first semester of this academic year, while there are exceptional cases that cannot be controlled on some days, such as weather conditions or the presence of an accident on the roads, stressing that the school transportation time indicator has achieved significant progress with a 50% reduction in school trip time.

The Minister said: “There are also some challenges facing school transportation, such as late registration from parents, which radically affects the proper planning of bus routes.”

She stressed that “the Ministry conducts a periodic review of traffic routes, and a special section for transportation quality has been created within the Ministry’s organizational staff to follow up on daily operational operations and consider any complaint we receive.”