Varee School

[scorecard]

Can I please ask the parents of current students to comment:

- Is the service reliable

- Does it cover the entire CM city / suburbs area?

- Is there any other school staff on the bus besides the driver?

- Do they separate the kindergarten / primary age kids from the high schools kids?

- Do the drivers drive with care and not too fast?

Sorry for being so detail oriented, friend had a very bad experience of all of the above (different school in another part of Thailand) and when the school manager was confronted she just laughed.

[Greenside]

You raise some interesting questions and I will ask the staff when I drop my stepson off in the morning and post their response.

I think that Varee shares some of the routes with Montfort so the facts about buses will probably apply to many schools. One point I have heard from friends and which prompted us to choose to live near the school, is that given the traffic and the need to cover quite large areas in some cases the day can get impossibly long, especially for little people.

I doubt there are any school staff on the buses besides the driver since they are mini buses and I'd be surprised if the kids are bused by age group either. I'll let you know tomorrow.

[Firelily]

I'm not in Waree - but I would think schoolbus services are similar across town. My main concern as a teacher is that the first children get picked up shortly after 6 a.m., and the schoolbus leaves campus at 5:30 p.m. The duty teacher on the bus does not get home before dark. If your child is the last one to be dropped off.... I think it is simply cruel that children, especially kindergarten or lower primary kids, only go home to sleep. But of course many Thai parents think they are giving the best possible to their kids. If I had a kid, I would get them out of school at 3:30 sharp, or hire someone to collect them.

[Greenside]

OK, here are the answers from a senior member of the admin staff at Varee Chiangmai School. Firstly you should know that the bus services are run by independent contractors - i.e. the same guys that drive tourists to Tiger Kingdom and the Night Safari during the day. This is true for most, if not all schools in the city who claim to have a bus service. Some drivers serve more than one school if the routing and demand allow.

This being the case, no school has absolute control over how they operate other than the sanction of banning them from the premises but my guess is that regular work of this kind contributes significantly to the lease payments most of them make and so is valuable enough to keep them focused on pleasing the customers.

She tells me.....

1. The service is reliable to the extent that they don't receive any significant number of complaints from parents and children are not arriving late due to the failure of the bus services.
   
2. The coverage of city and suburbs is good but some routes are oversubscribed while others run at less than capacity. (My comment: This being Thailand that probably indicates that some drivers operate buses that carry more kids than they should, just like songthaws do so I would suggest checking personally to be sure.)
   
3. The driver is the only adult routinely on board the bus.
   
4. Buses carry whichever kids are on the route they serve.
   
5. Safety - this is Thailand and no road travel is likely to be anywhere near as safe as that of a Western country. Google didn't come up with a terrifying catalogue of disasters and in my three years in CM I've not been aware of a serious accident, but that's not saying a whole lot.
   

My advice is to minimise travel to and from your kids' school if at all possible. It's wearing on them, on you, the environment and besides didn't many of us come to Thailand to get away from things like commutes and traffic. Some chance

[Chunkton]

I have observed numerous school vans driving in a dangerous manner (ie the usual), and have even been almost run off the road on my bike by a couple. I drive my kids to school myself, and would never trust them to a Thai van driver, regardless the inconvenience.

[Loaded]

I have observed numerous school vans driving in a dangerous manner (ie the usual), and have even been almost run off the road on my bike by a couple. I drive my kids to school myself, and would never trust them to a Thai van driver, regardless the inconvenience.

I'm with you. I've seen them exit my moo ban and drive the wrong way up a two-lane carriageway so that they can cut across the road instead of driving north and doing a u-turn. The drivers always seem to be trying to race the clock and I've seen a lot of very dangerous overtaking and cutting in. I know this is normal driving and Thais don't tend to see the dangers but I would be very reluctant to trust one with a child of mine despite the convenience.

[scorecard]

Dear CM members,

Thanks for all the informative replies.

From your comments I've made a decision - find the school first then buy a house closer to the school.

Again, thanks, much appreciated.

Kind regards.