Pick-up is still there: who monitors school routes
Last week, an accident involving a school bus occurred in the Nizhny Novgorod region. A fuel tanker crashed into a car that was taking children to school. Fortunately, no one was injured, and the truck driver was found guilty of the accident. There are probably hundreds of thousands of children riding school buses in Russia every day, but problems with school routes remain acute. At the same time, little is known at the federal level about their scale, since the authority on this issue has been transferred to local authorities. Judging by the appeals to the president's direct line, the main problems remain in those localities where drivers receive minimum wages. For more information, see the Izvestia article.
How often do school buses get into accidents?
A fuel tanker crashed into a bus carrying children from the village of Burtsevo to school in Bogorodsk on the morning of March 5 on the 430th km of the Kasimov–Murom–Nizhny Novgorod highway. There were 17 children on the school bus. The car was entering the highway from an adjacent road when a truck drove into the oncoming lane, which did not brake in front of the car that stopped in front of it. Fortunately, people were not injured.
After the incident, the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, instructed to submit a report on the progress of the inspection after the accident.
This is not the first accident involving school transport. At the end of January, a Hyundai ix35 collided with a bus carrying 20 students in the Oktyabrsky district of the Volgograd region. The children were on their way home after school. Then there were casualties — a 10-year-old child died on the way to the hospital. Another 11 passengers suffered injuries of varying severity. The school bus driver was named as the culprit in the accident.
Two weeks earlier, an accident with a school bus occurred in Biysk, Altai Territory. Four children asked for help.
In the first half of the school year, there were at least six more accidents involving school buses in which children were injured: twice in the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Chelyabinsk and Nizhny Novgorod regions, the Perm Territory and Yakutia. More than 20 schoolchildren were injured.
What are the main problems on school routes?
The Popular Front told Izvestia that the problem of road construction and the safety of children on their way to educational institutions, as well as the shortage of school buses, is still very acute. The direct line of the head of state on this topic "receives thousands of requests."
— The main problem that people are talking about is the shortage of drivers. The reason is extremely low salaries and the unwillingness of a number of regions to systematically take control of the problem," said Sergey Sokolov, first deputy head of the Executive committee of the Popular Front. — The experts of the Popular Front also note the inadequate condition of the road network and infrastructure along the routes of school buses, problems with maintenance, repair and operation, and the need for school buses not only in rural areas and small towns, but also in large cities, especially in areas of new development where there is still no full-fledged social infrastructure. infrastructure.
The "People's Front" gave several examples of appeals from a direct line. They mainly concern the salaries of drivers. Drivers from the Kabansky district of the Republic of Buryatia, the Kstovsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod Region, the Okulovsky District of the Novgorod Region, the Udmurt Republic and the Stavropol Territory complained about low payments.
"We transport more than 400 children per day. We're taking you to school, and after lunch we're taking you home from school... Such a responsible job, and the salary is only 20 thousand," one of the appeals said.
Another appeal came from the Leningrad region from the father of a large suburban low-rise residential complex "EcoCity" in the village of Mistolovo, Vsevolozhsky district. The nearest school from the village is 10 km from the residential complex, but the educational institution does not have its own bus. It was claimed that the district administration did not respond to the problem of lack of transport.
Izvestia sent requests to the specified regions with questions about specific requests.
Dmitry Kazakov, chairman of the Teacher trade union, who teaches at a school in the Nizhny Novgorod region, notes that a few years ago, the buses themselves that transported children were in poor condition. However, later they began to buy them. The Popular Front confirms this — in four calendar years, from 2021 to 2024, 13,945 buses were purchased on behalf of the president (as of December 2024). Sergey Sokolov called it a good result.
But the problem of small salaries, Dmitry Kazakov notes, remains. According to him, the fact is that it is impossible to pay incentive drivers, so they "sit on a bare salary."
— My friend the driver received about 25 thousand rubles, and the director independently made him a small additional payment, — he told "Izvestia". — At the same time, the responsibility is high, they often work six days a week, the volume is quite large: in addition to the delivery itself, it is necessary to ensure that the car is in proper condition, undergo regular inspections, and fill out numerous documents. Violations can result in a very serious fine, but it is almost impossible to avoid violations.
Dmitry Kazakov says that the bus does not make one flight. In one of the schools where he used to work, there were seven villages and villages from where the driver needed to pick up the children. To do this, we had to make two or three flights.
A number of regions to which Izvestia sent inquiries spoke about the situation with drivers' salaries. In the Ivanovo region, they receive up to 40 thousand rubles, in the Penza region the average salary is more than 29 thousand rubles, in Mari El — about 30 thousand rubles, in the Tyumen region the earnings of drivers range from 43 to 54 thousand rubles. A number of regions are trying to find ways to raise salaries. In particular, since January 1, the Samara region has been indexed by 9.2% to 50.9 thousand rubles. In the Omsk region, an additional 53.4 million rubles will be allocated this year to increase the salaries of school drivers in order to bring the average salary to 33.4 thousand rubles. In the Saratov region, a monthly regional incentive payment of 5,000 rubles was established to address the personnel shortage.
Who is responsible for school routes
Nikolay Makhnev, Executive Director of the Rural Schools of the Russian Federation project, explains that school routes are mainly the concern of local authorities, the leadership of educational departments and schools.
"Somewhere buses are attached to car farms, and drivers receive salaries there; somewhere to schools, and then the responsibility and problems of school principals increase many times," he told Izvestia.
Alexey Smirnov, the founder of InnovaTransport, an expert in transport consulting, explained that most often the route is organized by the school and it is responsible for transporting children, and drivers are either its employees or hired through specialized organizations within the framework of procurement legislation. In the latter case, the transportation is carried out by professional drivers working at a motor transport company.
Izvestia sent inquiries to all regions of Russia (with the exception of the new subjects of the Russian Federation) asking about school routes. At the time of publication, 15 regions of the Russian Federation responded, and only in them more than 160 thousand schoolchildren are transported daily. For example, in the Samara region — 17.8 thousand. children, in Tula — more than 10 thousand, in the Republic of Mari El — 7.3 thousand, in the Kostroma region — 3.1 thousand, in Vologda — 7.8 thousand, in Yaroslavl — 9.1 thousand, in Chelyabinsk — almost 20 thousand, in Sverdlovsk — more than 22 thousand, in Tyumen — more than 30 thousand.
At the same time, no one has any all—Russian statistics on how many school routes there are in the country and how many children are transported along them, says Tatiana Rakulova, director of the NGO "Association of Passenger Carriers". The Ministry of Education explained to Izvestia that they did not have authority on school routes, and Rostransnadzor also indicated that their accounting, as well as information on updating the bus fleet and staffing, was not within the department's competence. The organization of school routes is the responsibility of the school and the responsibility of local authorities. At the same time, the functions of the organizer can be transferred to a regional or municipal operator, which provides centralized transportation services for students, according to Rostransnadzor. But the responsibility is primarily borne by the headmaster.
Nikolay Makhnev believes that in every region it is necessary to create a regional enterprise "School Bus" in order to remove this burden of responsibility from school management and improve the quality and safety of trips. By the way, this practice already exists. So, in Magadan, the transportation of students is carried out by UIA "Avtokart", subordinate to the Department of Education of the Mayor's office. The institution has 10 routes that transport more than 530 people. There are four flights per day for each of them. Avtopark employs nine drivers, and the staff, as stated in Magadan, is fully staffed. In the Kaluga Region, there is a state-owned institution called the School Bus. It is the largest trucking company in the region, with 356 buses for schoolchildren in its fleet. Every day, they transport more than 12,000 children to their place of study along 292 routes.
It should be noted that earlier there were initiatives to create a single transport operator to manage the transportation of schoolchildren, but Tatyana Rakulova calls this the utopian dreams of those who want to make money from it. She believes that such issues should be left at the municipal level.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
