When the school run is cancelled: notification chains and duty of supervision

The administrative regulations on § 57 (1) SchulG North Rhine-Westphalia are unusually clear here. Under BASS 12-08 Nr. 1, I (1), the school duty of supervision does not extend to the journey to school or from school back home. Under II (7) sits the sentence that counts in a dispute. The school journey ends and begins at the boundary of the school grounds, not at the school building. The gate is the line, not the front door.

Supervision is also bounded in time. In North Rhine-Westphalia, 15 minutes before lessons begin and after they end is normally reasonable, rising to 30 minutes for pupils who have to arrive earlier or leave later by bus. Number 5 (1) of the Brandenburg administrative regulations on the duty of care and supervision puts it in almost identical wording.

For a disruption this produces an asymmetry. A replacement vehicle that drops the children at 7:05 instead of 7:45 shifts the start of supervision to the moment the children set foot on the school grounds. The timetable makes no difference. For that situation, the NRW regulation requires that a suitable room be made available to pupils who travel by bus.

A child standing alone at a distant stop at 7:20, by contrast, falls within the responsibility of its parents or guardians. Number 3 (1) of the Brandenburg regulation assigns them the school journey expressly; minors carry a share of responsibility appropriate to their age and maturity. That does not release the school from acting. It answers the liability question.

The accident insurance institutions have set out the responsibilities in a diagram in DGUV Information 202-046 "Mit dem Bus zur Schule" (October 2024 edition). Between home and the stop, supervision rests with the parents or guardians, the transport contract with the Schultraeger, and inside the vehicle the bus operator is responsible for safety.

Two exceptions soften this line. A stop outside the school grounds can be attributed to the school where there is a spatial and functional connection to school operations. And the NRW regulation provides for supervision of the bus stop by teachers where the Schulkonferenz (the school governing body made up of staff, parents and pupils) has established a particular hazard at that stop and supervision is possible without disproportionate effort because of the short distance. That is a resolution with a date on it.

In Lower Saxony the basic rule looks different. § 62 (1) of the Niedersaechsisches Schulgesetz (the Lower Saxony School Act) expressly counts stops on school premises among the places where teachers have to supervise. Anyone issuing the same guidance sheet to a school in Hanover and one in Herne is getting one of the two wrong.

There is no nationwide reporting deadline for a cancelled school run. On the parents side, § 43 (2) of the School Act of North Rhine-Westphalia requires the school to be notified without delay where a child is prevented from attending for unforeseeable reasons. The NRW Ministry of Education states this without qualification, for every absence.

Whether the absence is excused turns on a single distinction. Under number 2.1 of the administrative regulations on attendance at lessons, an unforeseeable failure of local public transport can be an admissible reason for missing school, as can sudden extreme weather. If the disruption to the school journey was announced in advance, attendance remains compulsory. An announced strike is therefore treated differently from the sick call at 6:40.

For the transport operator, the duty to report follows from the contract with the Schultraeger and from nothing else. If no deadline is written there, there is none. A chain that appears in the specification of services and also holds up day to day looks roughly like this:

1. Transport operator to the Schultraeger, immediately on becoming aware. With the route number, the stops affected and a statement of whether a replacement is running. A fixed time in the contract, 6:00 for early routes for instance, makes the commitment verifiable.
2. Transport operator to the families affected. They need to know before the child leaves the house. Who sends this message belongs in the contract.
3. Transport operator or Schultraeger to the school office, before lessons begin. The school needs the list of names. Without it the cancellation shows up in the class register as nine unexcused absences.
4. School office to the class teachers. Mark the absences as transport-related straight away.
5. Confirmation by midday if the return journey is affected too. Otherwise the morning repeats itself at 15:30.

Two cases look alike and run differently. In the first, a child does not appear in the classroom in the morning although it should have boarded. In the second, the child fails to arrive in the afternoon and the call comes from home.

The circular decree on monitoring compulsory school attendance requires, for North Rhine-Westphalia, that absences be established and documented completely and promptly, and it declares documentation only at the end of the school half-year to be inadmissible. Responsibility usually sits with the class teacher. In an acute case that means a query before the second lesson.

The notification chain is short. First the family, then the transport operator, then the Schultraeger, and if the whereabouts of a primary school child remain unclear after that, the police. The order and the people responsible belong in a written procedure pinned up in the school office.

• Time at which the absence was first established and who established it
• Route, stop, vehicle and driving staff, as far as known
• Time, number dialled and outcome of the call to the parents or guardians, including unsuccessful attempts
• Information from the transport operator, in particular whether the child boarded
• Time at which school management and the Schultraeger were informed
• If involved: time of the report to the police and the case number
• Time the matter was resolved and who gave the family the final update

These notes are not there to cover the school office, they are the basis of an accident report. Pupils are covered by statutory accident insurance while attending school under § 2 (1) no. 8 (b) SGB VII, and § 8 (2) no. 1 SGB VII extends that cover to the direct journey to and from the place of activity. Under DGUV Information 202-046 it applies regardless of the mode of transport. The child whose father drives it himself on the day of the cancellation is insured.

The statistics of the German Social Accident Insurance record 87,345 reportable school journey accidents for 2024 alongside 1,012,096 school accidents. Whether the school supervised at the point in question is irrelevant to insurance cover. In conversations with parents the two questions still merge into one on a regular basis.

Under DGUV Information 202-046, school bus services are commissioned by the Schultraeger, usually the municipality, the city or the district. It concludes the contract with the bus operator. The school is not a party to it and in all likelihood has never seen it.

How far that duty reaches varies between states. The administrative regulation on the Schuelerfahrkostenverordnung of North Rhine-Westphalia makes clear that the Schultraeger owes only a duty to bear the costs and no duty to transport; under § 3 it decides on the nature and extent of school transport. § 114 of the Niedersaechsisches Schulgesetz, by contrast, obliges the districts either to transport eligible children under reasonable conditions or to reimburse the necessary expenditure.

For the school office this has one concrete consequence. A pure duty to bear costs gives rise to no claim to a replacement vehicle on the morning of a cancellation. The case officer in the school administration department can only do what the contract allows.

Two further duties of the Schultraeger get overlooked. Under its public law duty to maintain safe traffic conditions, DGUV Information 202-046 has it design the school journey and the associated bus stops safely. For waiting times caused by the timetable, number 3 (3) of the Brandenburg supervision regulation requires a suitable room. The complaint about an unlit stop therefore goes to the Schultraeger.

One special case deserves attention. Where a child travels with an approved escort, a replacement vehicle without an escort is not an equivalent service but a fresh disruption. Who approves the escort is covered in the article on escorts in school transport. We collect further topics for schools and school authorities.

In a disruption, parents need four pieces of information before the child leaves the house. Which route is affected. From when and for how long. Whether a replacement is running. Who to contact with questions.

What breaks the communication is an unclear split of roles. The school office informs about lessons and care, while the journey is covered by whoever schedules it. As soon as both half know the same thing and pick up the phone at the same time, every call back lands at the school.

The bottleneck is usually the distribution list. A parent and passenger platform with a status message attached to the route reaches the affected families in one step and logs when each piece of information went out.

After the third cancellation of the same route in one half-year, a head teacher writes to the Schultraeger. A list of the dates affected and a request to check whether the operator met the agreed reporting deadlines are both worth including. The list builds itself if absences are marked as transport-related from the start.