A six-year-old student of South Point High School’s afternoon section was put on a school bus ferrying morning section students home on the first day of the new session on Friday.
The child returned to the school after all the children had been dropped. He was “terrified and crying”, according to his parents but the school authorities sent him to his new class after offering him chocolates and water.
“Only about half an hour was left for the day when the boy entered Class IG,” a school official said.
The boy has never used a school bus and travels by pool car, his aunt Madhuchanda Dasgupta told Metro on Saturday. His parents had dropped him off as it was the first day of the new session and he was put on the bus soon after.
The child’s parents have not filed any official complaint but Dasgupta posted on Facebook about the child’s trauma.
The South Point School runs two sections. The morning section for Class I gets over at 11.15am and the afternoon section starts at 12.15pm.
The morning and afternoon section students are identified by the colour of the string on their identity cards — red for morning and blue for afternoon.
The child was in the morning section in the previous class. He had been transferred to the afternoon section in the new class at the request of his parents, a school official said.
Since Friday was the first day of the new session, he was still carrying his old identity card with the red string.
Someone overseeing students leaving the campus at the end of the morning section asked the child to show his card, Dasgupta said. “He took it out from his bag... the person just saw the colour of the string and put him on the bus without checking his class or section.”
She claimed the word “afternoon” was written prominently on his bag. “It is surprising that no one noticed it. All bus children have a separate badge. No one bothered to check if my nephew had one.”
She said the child’s mother was told that her son went missing but had been “rescued”. His mother, a Kasba resident, was not allowed to meet her son till the school got over, Dasgupta alleged.
Krishna Damani of South Point High School admitted the mistake but denied the charge of the child’s aunt that the school was not vigilant.
He said the school will identify the person who had put the child on the bus and take appropriate action.
“Our employees engaged in ferrying students on school buses are adequately trained. It is true that the boy was asked to board the bus when he should not have been. But the fact the child was brought back to the school safely shows the employee in the bus was vigilant,” Damani said.