Ajman : Ajman Police rescued a six-year-old Afghan girl who was left behind on her school bus by the driver and the supervisor. The girl fell asleep on way to school and both the driver and supervisor failed to notice that she had not disembarked from the bus when dropping off the rest of the students at one of the private schools in Sharjah.

The incident took place last Wednesday.

The girl was found terrified and in tears in the bus, which was parked in an industrial area of Ajman.

Police received a call from a Sudanese man, H.M.A., who said he had spotted a girl in a school bus parked in an industrial area in Ajman at around 10am.

The police rushed to the scene of the incident and rescued the girl, who was taken to Khalifa Hospital to ensure she was all right and then contacted the child’s mother. The girl is safe and back home with her mother.

Police have arrested the Indian driver, who was identified as H .K .A., and the supervisor and the school management was interrogated.

Investigations revealed that the supervisor did not notice the girl had failed to arrive for classes, although she was registered in the bus attendance sheet. The supervisor and the driver did not make sure that all the students had got off the bus, police said. The driver, working with a private transport company in Dubai, lives in Ajman, and after making the school trip in the morning, went back to his residence to rest before returning to pick up the students and drop them home after school.

The driver was charged with neglect and endangering the lives of others while the supervisor was charged with neglect.

The Indian driver and the supervisor, an Arab woman, have been referred to the public prosecution for further action.

The incident comes seven months after a three-year-old girl died after being left in a school bus in Abu Dhabi. In October last year, Nizaha Aalaa died of suffocation when she was locked in the bus after it arrived at school. The Al Worood Academy Private School student had fallen asleep in the back seat and her body was found at 11.45am.

Colonel Ali Al Matroushi, director of Ajman police stations, told Gulf News that "it is mandatory for all school bus drivers to check the bus and make sure that no pupil has been left behind before they lock the vehicle and leave."

Meanwhile, the school management, who preferred not to be named, told Gulf News that the incident was the first of its kind to have occurred in the history of the school. They were shocked to hear about the incident from the police and said the school has a clean record.

The school pursues a strict policy of training its supervisors as well as drivers in pupil safety and also educates them on the correct manner of dealing with children, said the management.

In the wake of this unfortunate incident, the management has sent a warning letter to the transport company and asked them to change the driver and also informed them to strictly abide by the conditions of their contract in maintaining the safety and security of their pupils.

Education authorities, the school management suggested, must make all private schools sign a contract with a transport company such as the Emirates Transport Company just like government schools do to transport their pupils to and back from school.

To prevent any such incident from recurring, the school is planning to install CCTV cameras in all their school buses to ensure the safety and security of its pupils.

The supervisor was suspended from her work pending the conclusion of police investigations, said the school management.

Meanwhile, the mother of the girl told Gulf News that she was extremely satisfied with the way the school was so responsive and helpful towards their family following the incident. She said the principal had been cooperative the whole time.

Her daughter, she said, was initially upset by her experience and kept crying as she recalled the incident but soon put it behind her and has resumed going back to school.

Col Al Matroushi urged all private schools to sign a contract with a trusted transport company.

Supervisors should also be trained and know how to deal with children, he said.

Col Al Matroushi said the driver, H. K. A., had failed to perform his duty and has been referred to the prosecution to face trial.

Earlier this month, the Al Worood Academy school administrator was given a suspended three-year jail sentence and fined Dh20,000 for failing to check student records that day. The driver and attendant were also fined Dh20,000 each and they, along with the administrator and the school, were ordered to pay blood money of Dh200,000 to Nizaha’s family.

The court has also ordered the school to shut down permanently and fined it Dh 150,000. Abu Dhabi: Jail time and fines were issued to those found guilty in the case of four-year-old Nizahaa Ala’a, who tragically died in her school bus last October.
The Abu Dhabi Court of Misdemeanour sentenced the Filipina bus attendant F.A., the Pakistani bus driver, A.L., and the Lebanese school employee, L.A., to three years in jail in addition to a Dh20,000 fine each for negligence.
The order for closure of the Al Worood Academy Private School still stands and the institution will have to pay Dh150,000 in total for both charges against it. These include causing the wrongful death of the child and endangerment of schoolchildren on board its buses.
The Indian transport company owner, R.A., will serve a sentence of six months in addition to a fine of Dh500,000 for hiring unlicensed personnel.
The medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the victim revealed that she was found with bruises on the internal left side of her head. These were likely caused by falling or hitting her head, he told the court earlier.
As a result, five people who are believed to have been involved in the incident were apprehended and stood trial in December 2014.
According to court records, F.A. admitted to prosecutors that she had failed to conduct a thorough check of the bus including its back seats before she ordered the driver to lock the vehicle. In turn, A.L. told the court that he was given instructions prohibiting him from making contact with the students.
Meanwhile, L.A. said that she should not go to prison for taking on the role of two of her colleagues who were absent on the day. The school’s principal expressed his sincerest condolences to the family of the victim.
A lawyer who was defending L.A. and A.A. said that the principal had attempted to contact the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) to negotiate a change in the transport company he had hired and to ask for a raise in school fees to allow him to do so.
“Two weeks prior to the incident, he had even contacted the Community Police, asking them to come and inspect his vehicles and see whether they are up to standard and to then issue a report on this basis. As a principal, his job should be to ensure that the children get the best education, not to take over transportation responsibilities as well, as Adec has instructed,” Gulf News reported the lawyer as saying earlier.
The driver and bus attendant had been imprisoned since the incident and had no lawyer representing them at court.

The verdict is subject to appeal.
October 8, 2014: Nizahaa’s death takes place
December 14, 2014: Case postponed for third time
December 16, 2014: Head of Family Prosecution presents the case against the defendants and the medical examiner is briefly questioned by the defence team.
January 18, 2015: Lawyers defending the school’s principal, supervisor and transport company owner present their arguments.
February 8, 2015: Verdict announced while two defendants remain legally unrepresented.

DUBAI: Developers and computer software engineers in Dubai designed a unique computer solution for schools to cope with various issues, especially the maintaining of student attendance, while the parents of absent students will be informed via SMS as soon as a teacher completes the attendance

The development has brought relief for teachers who face the very tiresome task of informing the parents of absent students.

“In a recent case, the school administration had admitted that it is not practically possible to make calls to the parents of absent children when the number reaches as high as 1,000 in some days. Keeping this in mind and other solutions for the teachers, parents and management of the schools, we at Ilmasoft has developed a complete solution, Ilma Smart Institute Management System (ISIMS),” said Syed Iftikhar Shah, CEO Ilmasoft, in an exclusive interview with The Gulf Today on Sunday.

The Dubai-based Ilmasoft has been working on various projects especially developing mobile phone applications for various clients from educational instates to corporate sectors.


The ISIMS has been designed to address a wide range of solutions from easing the administrative task of organising classroom activities digitally. “The system we designed will not only manage all activities online, but teachers will have the ability to organise classroom-based activities like timetables, notices, syllabi and other activities online, while student-related activities like attendance, fee submission, and report cards will also be available online to check at anytime,” he said.

Through this system, parents will be able to monitor the progress of their children by internet or through the use of mobile app operated by user ID and password access.

“In the last couple of days, we have tested this (ISIMS) module in-house and made it perfectly user friendly for teachers as well as parents. This system could be used by an individual school or by a chain of schools managing various campuses,” he said The software has been designed with the aim of informing the parents about the progress of their children online, making it easier for the school to inform parents about their kids absence via SMS as soon as the teacher finishes attendance. The data will be updated through a cloud-service and could be checked by parents with smart phones or tablets via app.

“Through this system, parents will be informed immediately, as the attendance is marked in the school early morning by a class teacher. If the absence is marked, immediate alert notifications will be sent to the parent’s smartphone and also an SMS to their phone numbers, indicating that their child is absent. This way if the child is missing, timely actions can be made,” elaborated Iftikhar Shah.

The other features of ISIMS will be accurate student attendance; automatic attendance collection; daily absentee reports sent to the parents and school management; and the generation of daily, monthly and yearly attendance reports.

Shah added that as they have tested the system with them now it is ready for schools to adopt. “Soon we are going to visit various schools to demonstrate this system and we are sure with the use of technology we can prevent any danger to our children, especially if there is a factor of negligence involved,” he added.