-Kelly-

Children locked on bus for six hours
11:46 AEST Tue Aug 30 2005
AAP
Western Australia's education authority has ordered an inquiry into why three young children were locked in a school bus for six hours after the driver forgot to drop them off at kindergarten.

Officials from the WA department of education and the Public Transport Authority (PTA), who contracted the driver, were in the Great Southern town of Darkan on Monday to meet the parents of the three children, aged four, and the school's principal.

Both authorities said the incident, which happened last Thursday, was very worrying and could have ended in tragedy if conditions in the town, 200km south of Perth, had been hotter.

A spokesman for the PTA said the female driver was supposed to deliver the children to the Darkan kindergarten, after having dropped off some older students to the local high school, which is located on the same campus.

Instead, she drove past the kindergarten and on to her house, where she parked the vehicle and locked it while the children were still inside.

PTA spokesman David Hynes said the incident had been very regrettable.

"It is clearly something we are not happy about," Mr Hynes said.

"There are many what ifs, it was an unfortunate incident and we were lucky that we got out of it as relatively lightly as we did."

Jan Workman, Narrogin education district director, also said the incident was extremely worrying.

"The parents mainly are concerned for the future of their child on the bus, and how they feel about going on the bus now and also about how they feel about coming to school. And of course we are also concerned about that," Ms Workman told ABC radio.

Ms Workman, and the PTA, said changes to procedures would be implemented immediately to prevent a repeat of the incident.


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Lain

So many crazy things happening in Australia! What's up with that?

-Kelly-

That's nothing a child was locked up in a Child center after dark, alone