Dubai: By the start of the new academic year in the UAE in September around 1,000 new women school bus supervisors will hop on board as many buses. The new force will serve around 40 schools, mostly in Dubai and a number in the northern emirates that follow the Ministry of Education curriculum.
Needless to say, women bus supervisors are in big demand. It is partly because in Dubai women supervisors are mandatory for buses transporting schoolgirls or very young children.
But it is also down to a well-known fact. “Women are better caretakers,” said Mohammad Al Hammadi, performance coordinator for Dubai and northern emirates at Emirates Transport, the UAE’s biggest school transport provider that is behind the hiring spree.
“Private schools ask for female supervisors. We anticipate demand to increase. In Dubai, it is one of the rules,” Al Hammadi said.
Emirates Transport already has 5,500 men and women supervisors working for both government and private schools across the UAE. Every bus supervisor is required to have 12 hours of compulsory training every academic school semester.
Besides transport and safety issues, the new recruits are trained in “child handling and interaction” skills, he added. Considering each bus ferries dozens of children twice a day, those skills can be the need for the hour. After all, fights, quarrels, ill and crying children are part of the journey sometimes. Dealing with children is a skill and an art, Al Hammadi added.
So what does it take to be a good bus supervisor?
“Our training team goes into detail in discussing the points related to the art of dealing with children: You don’t scold the child in front of his or her peers. You have to earn the child’s trust. Earning the child’s trust isn’t a 1-2-3 procedure,” he said, stressing that is something which is closer to an art rather than a hard science.
And despite the strict rules in place, children by their nature will not be in compliance occasionally.
“You have to be lenient to an extent. The extent is not to hit the child. If the child makes a mistake, the child should be advised and shown that what he or she did was a mistake. Then he or she is warned and the parents are contacted. And — depending on the mistake and how severe it is and if it is the third or fourth time — the school will ban the child from entering the school bus.”
The age group of the supervisors is between 20 to 45, and they hail from the UAE, other Arab countries, Comoros Islands, India, Pakistan and the Philippines, among other nationalities. Some of them are experienced supervisors while others are new to the profession.
