School administrators get involved with every facet of student care from an administration point of view. They work in every level of education and job roles and tasks could be to manage financial budgets, supervise staff and students, assist with behaviour management, the list is almost endless.
In large schools then there would be numerous administrators that undertake specific tasks, but in most cases all this administration is left to one or two people. So when administration tasks spill over to things like arranging transport for school outings, most school administrators are a little out of their depth.
School Travel Manager has been designed so one of the benefits is to assist in administration and to aid travel organisation of students. But still an administrator is not normally familiar with coach companies and group transportation.
Selection of Coach Company
The usual guidelines for selecting a coach company is all based around a budget, but how can an administrator of an education facility possibly know which transport company is best and what vehicles are most suitable?
The time spent trying to sort out a situation such as this could be considerable if it is left to an inexperienced member of staff. The whole point of this is that do you really want to waste valuable time of an experienced member of staff who could be doing something more befitting their training.
The selection of a group transportation company to transport students is not easy, and really should be conducted by somebody who knows the transport industry and is familiar of how to vett suitable candidates.
The Estimation of Costs
To properly estimate if you are getting a good deal from you transport company many factors must be taken into consideration, and often the cheapest bidder in a tender proves to be the most expensive.
Reliability, condition of vehicles, safety standards, how big the fleet is, experience of drivers dealing with children, all need to be taken into account. And to do all of this properly will take a considerable amount of time.
A school principal will have to take into account two very valid points from this issue:-
- How long is it going to take a member of staff to organise all this, and could they be doing something more worthwhile?
- Secondly, can an inexperienced administrator be tasked with organising such a critical transportation matter? What happens if there is an accident? Perhaps the cheaper coach company does not have superior safety standards and the students are stranded? If this nightmare scenario becomes a reality what would be the cost to rectify the situation, and would there be any legal action taken against the school by disgruntled parents?
These are the true values that must be evaluated in designating an administrator to do a job that they are not experienced to do. If you want to find out more about the School Travel Manager software system contact us today and see how we can assist.