School minibus smash

Photo: Darren Robinson

CONCERN: academy head Colette Macklin handles the emergency.

EIGHT children were taken to hospital after their school minibus ploughed into a safety barrier near a crossing on a busy main road.

The minibus was returning to Waterhead Academy carrying a woman teacher and seven boys and a girl aged 12-13. The party had been on a visit to the University of Manchester’s Aerospace Open Day and was only a few hundred yards from the 1,258-pupil academy when the accident happened.

The front of the bus was badly damaged after it mounted the pavement and buckled a black-painted metal safety barrier on Huddersfield Road at the junction with Culvert Street.

Teachers supervising children leaving the academy raised the alarm wmong other senior staff and a fleet of ambulances rushed to the scene.

The children stayed on the bus for medical assessment while the driver was taken by ambulance to hospital in Bury.

School head Colette Macklin said: “All the children on the bus remained very calm. They all wore their seat belts and received cuts and bruises and were shocked. My team remained with them while their injuries were assessed. The science teacher with the party was shaken by the incident.”

The school contacted the children’s families and after the children had been examined, parents went with them to hospital.