Carousel Buses said a sizeable minority of students were making staff lives a misery on the 626 public service to The Misbourne School, which runs from Little Kimble to Great Missenden.

And Arriva Buses who transport hundreds of Vale children a day say they are planning to go into schools to highlight the problems drivers sometimes face.

Steve Burns, joint managing director of Carousel, criticised teachers for not doing enough to tackle the troublemakers.

But the school say they have worked hard to forge a positive relationship with Carousel.

Mr Burns said bad behaviour included spitting at the driver, pushing out windows, climbing in through the emergency door, stealing fire extinguishers, vandalising the onboard security cameras, igniting aerosol cans, and running from one side of the bus to the other in an attempt to tip it over.

The worst incident occurred on an afternoon in December when every single seat from the top deck was broken in half.

Mr Burns said: "It got to the point where we could not guarantee the safety of the passengers because of the misbehaviour, so we took the decision to withdraw the service."

He added that repeated calls to the school in order to identify the culprits fell on deaf ears.

He claimed: "The school washed their hands of it. We serve many other schools and have always received assistance from them when their pupils misbehave because the pupils represent their school.

"We have never before had a situation in our eight years of operating where a school has refused to even take on board a problem."

Steve McDonald, depot manager at Arriva Buses, which serves many schools in The Vale, said he had sympathy for Carousel.

Arriva are planning to hold assemblies at local schools to highlight the consequences of misbehaving, including the dangers of distracting the driver.

One serial offender who constantly smears yoghurt over the seats of the bus has even been offered the chance to see what the firm's cleaners face as a result of his actions.

Mr McDonald said: "If you compare it to the classroom, drivers are asked to look after a moving vehicle with 80 pupils on it. It is a big imbalance."

"I have sympathy with Carousel and their drivers. Staff welfare comes very high on my list and I'm sure it does on theirs too."

He said in the six months he had worked at the depot there had been three incidents which he had to report to schools, although most problems were usually fairly minor, and he has not come across a situation which threatened a service being run.

Mr McDonald added that the key to resolving problems was early intervention by informing teachers and parents. He praised ones in Aylesbury for being co-operative.

Shahzad Hussain, manager of Star Travel, which mainly picks up pupils from The Grange and Quarrendon schools, said behaviour on their buses was generally good - although fellow passengers get fed up with loud music which is played by students.

A statement from The Misbourne said: "We have worked hard to forge a positive relationship with Carousel and have taken all necessary action within our legal limits to try and address these issues as they have arisen with specific individual children.

"The school is happy to support any investigation by relevant external authorities who may wish to look into the circumstances of this decision, and the school continues to deal with any students who have unequivocally demonstrated that they have brought the school into disrepute."

Andy Clarke, team leader passenger transport at BCC, said: "The way to deal with bad behaviour is between the operator, school and where we are involved, the council. If this does not happen it is easy to see how problems can escalate."

Have you been affected by bad behaviour on school buses?

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Charlotte, who attends a local school, commented:
I get on one of the buses called Arriva and i have read what you have wrote in the Bucks Herald and i think you do have a good point but the only problem is how will we get to school because its not all of us.