Maintaining Service Quality First Student
First Student transports nearly one million students to and from school every day. The safety and security of these students is our highest priority and we seek to lead the industry in ensuring it.
Our customer satisfaction surveys indicate that safety and driver behaviour are the issues of greatest concern. We continue to develop our driver training programmes to ensure we meet customers' expectations. In addition to comprehensive training in safety, injury prevention and defensive driving, our drivers are trained to manage issues that are particular to the school bus industry.
- Drivers and attendants have been trained to recognise and prevent bullying and sexual harassment.
- Driver training focuses on the characteristics of young and developmentally disabled children to keep these special riders safe on the bus.
- Students and drivers are trained on the 'five safety rules for students' to help children understand the key safety issues involved with safe bus riding and how they can help create a safe bus environment.
- Training in security awareness and six specific types of security events enable both drivers and attendants to respond effectively and protect our passengers' safety.
Each First Student driver and attendant must pass a physical performance and dexterity test to establish whether they are able to carry out both the routine and emergency physical requirements of the job. Extensive background checks are conducted on all employees over and above those required by any state regulations.
Our operations are drug- and alcohol-free workplaces and we have a zero tolerance policy. All managers and employees are subject to pre-employment and random drug and alcohol testing.
We continue to receive numerous commendations on the quality of our services and the benefits they bring to our customers.
"I am very pleased with the bus routes that have been taken over by First Student. Since First Student has taken over our route that had the most discipline issues, no behaviour problems have been reported from the First Student driver.In addition, no parent complaints have been filed about the drivers or buses." Livonia High
"I am writing to commend you and your staff for the superlative work performed on January 10th (2007) during that very intense blizzard which hit Saskatoon." Cosmopolitan Industries Ltd, Saskatoon.
"First Student has an excellent safety record with the Bristol Public Schools and the company provides an extensive safety programme for drivers and staff. A key factor making the student transportation partnership work is the daily communication between parties." Bristol Public Schools, Connecticut
"First Student has consistently performed above and beyond the call of duty. They regularly and willingly support school administration at Board meetings. During times of severe weather, they respond in advance with early bus start-ups and extra mechanics on-site. Their management staff continually looks for ways to improve routes thereby increasing efficiencies. They have a 'we can do it' attitude that is second to none." Board of Education, Connecticut
We will continue to seek to increase passenger satisfaction levels. A key development this year has been the allocation of additional resource to follow up issues raised in our annual customer satisfaction surveys. We are also exploring further vehicle maintenance procedure improvements to maximise service reliability. In unannounced vehicle inspections less than 0.5% of the fleet were identified with problems that could keep them from service. Most of these were corrected on the spot.